Chapter 10 #3
"Try to what? Trust me?" Erin turned back, and she could see her own pain reflected in Lena's face. "You just told me you think I'm careless and reckless and that I’m trying to prove myself instead of just being good at what I do. How do we work through that?"
"I'm scared," Lena said, and the admission sounded torn from somewhere deep. "I'm terrified something will happen to you, and I won't be able to live with myself if I could have prevented it."
For a moment, Erin felt her anger waver. She could see the genuine fear in Lena's eyes. She could understand the terrible weight of caring about someone whose job involved real danger. But understanding didn't change what had happened, what Lena had done.
"I'm scared too," Erin said softly. "I'm scared of being with someone who doesn't respect me enough to let me make my own choices. I'm scared of loving someone who sees me as careless instead of competent."
"I don't—" Lena started, then stopped. Something in her expression shifted, like she was finally hearing what Erin was actually saying. "I do see you as competent. You're brilliant at what you do."
"But you also think I'm reckless."
Silence, long enough to be an answer.
"You can't have it both ways, Lena." Erin reached out to grab the doorknob, and she could feel herself shaking—with anger, with hurt, with the effort of not breaking down completely. "You can't tell me I'm brilliant and then go to my boss because you think I can't assess my own safety."
"Erin, please—"
"I told you Friday what I needed from you.
I needed you to trust me, to respect my judgment, to let me do my job without trying to protect me from it.
" Each word felt like carving another wound into what they'd created together.
"Instead, you went behind my back and confirmed every fear I have about how people perceive me in this position. "
"I can change—"
"Can you?" The question stopped Lena cold. "Can you watch me walk into a dangerous scene and not try to stop me? Can you trust that I know what I'm doing, even when you're scared? Can you respect my expertise even when it conflicts with your need to keep me safe?"
Lena opened her mouth, then closed it. Erin could see her struggling, trying to find an answer that would save this, but they both knew the truth.
"That's what I thought," Erin said quietly.
She opened the door, and the cool morning air slapped her face. Behind her, she heard Lena say her name—desperate, pleading—but she didn't turn around.
"I can't be with someone who doesn't respect me," Erin said without looking back. "And you've made it very clear that you don't."
She walked to her truck with her spine straight and her vision blurring, and this time when Lena called her name, her voice already sounded like it was coming from very far away.
She knew that some things, once broken, couldn't be put back together. And some people, once they showed you exactly how they saw you, had to be believed.
Erin made it three blocks before she had to pull over.
Her hands were shaking too hard to grip the steering wheel safely, and the tears she'd held back during the fight were threatening to blur her vision completely.
She parked in front of a small neighborhood park where kids were playing on swings while their parents watched from benches, the picture of Sunday morning normalcy that felt like it belonged to a different universe.
She turned off the engine and let the silence wash over her. No more angry voices, no more desperate explanations, no more words that cut like knives. Just the distant sound of children laughing and birds cawing from the trees.
Her phone buzzed in the cup holder. Lena's name flashed on the screen. Erin didn't even read the preview. She turned the phone face down and focused on breathing until her hands stopped trembling.
When she felt steady enough to drive, she started the truck and headed home, taking the long way through residential streets where the biggest drama was probably someone's sprinkler hitting their neighbor's driveway. Normal people living normal lives.
The drive gave her too much time to think.
Every red light felt like an invitation to replay the conversation and dissect each moment where things had gone from bad to worse to irreparable.
She found herself gripping the steering wheel again, her knuckles white against the black leather, and forced herself to loosen her grip.
She pressed the gas pedal a little harder than necessary.
By the time she pulled into her apartment complex, her jaw ached from clenching it, and she could feel the beginning of a headache building behind her eyes.
She sat in her truck for a moment, looking up at her second-floor windows, trying to remember what it felt like to come home to a space that was entirely hers, that didn't carry traces of someone else's presence.
Her apartment felt smaller when she walked in, like the walls had shifted inward while she was gone. The case files were still scattered across the kitchen table, coffee stains marking the spot where her morning had started with hope and ended with devastation.
Erin gathered the papers on autopilot, stacking them neatly despite the coffee damage. Some of the photos were ruined, evidence reports smeared into illegibility, but she straightened them anyway. Chaos to order, even if it was meaningless.
Her phone buzzed again. Then again.
She pulled it out and saw five missed texts from Lena, the preview lines visible even though she hadn't opened them:
Please call me…
I know you're angry but we need to...
That's not what I meant about...
Can we please just...
Erin, please…
She turned the phone off completely and set it in a kitchen drawer, closing it with a definitive click.
The silence that followed felt both peaceful and oppressive. No buzzing, no notifications, no desperate attempts to walk back words that couldn't be taken back. Just her, in her apartment, with the remains of what had been one of the most significant relationships in her life.
Erin changed out of her fire department polo and into clothes that didn't remind her of work: sweatpants and an old college t-shirt.
She made fresh coffee, throwing out the ruined pot from this morning along with the soggy paper towels.
The familiar ritual felt grounding—measure, pour, wait.
Simple steps that didn't require emotional labor.
While the coffee brewed, she looked around her apartment with new eyes.
It hadn’t felt like “just hers” in a while.
Over the past few weeks, traces of Lena had crept in: a book left on the coffee table, a hair tie on the bathroom counter, the lingering scent of her perfume on the couch cushions.
Now those traces felt like evidence of something that had never been as real as she'd thought.
The book went back in her bag and the hair tie in the trash. She opened the windows to clear the air.
By evening, Erin had cleaned her apartment twice, reorganized her files and bookshelf, and started a load of laundry that didn't really need washing.
Keeping busy felt better than sitting still, better than thinking about the look on Lena's face when she'd asked if she could really change and gotten only silence in return.
She ordered takeout from the Thai place she'd introduced to Lena, then immediately regretted it when the familiar flavors reminded her of nights when their biggest decision had been whether to eat on the couch or at the table.
She pushed the food around on her plate until it got cold, then put it in the refrigerator next to leftovers she'd probably never eat.
The apartment felt too quiet without the constant buzzing of her phone.
She'd gotten used to texts throughout the day: case updates, random observations, pictures of crime scenes or coffee cups or whatever had caught Lena's attention.
The silence was what she'd asked for, what she'd needed, but it felt heavier than she'd expected.
She retrieved her phone from the drawer long enough to check for work messages, scrolling past fourteen texts from Lena without reading them. No fires, no emergencies, no reason to break the radio silence she'd imposed.
The phone went back in the drawer.
As night crept in, Erin sat on her couch with a cup of tea she didn't want and a book she couldn't focus on. The apartment was clean, her laundry was folded, and she'd successfully avoided thinking about Detective Lena Soto for entire minutes at a time.
But the solitude and quiet were getting to her.
She'd spent so many evenings here with Lena, talking about the case or sharing takeout or finding excuses to touch each other while pretending they were just colleagues.
The couch still held the impression of where Lena liked to sit, curled against the armrest with her legs tucked under her, stealing bites of whatever Erin was eating.
Those memories felt both precious and poisonous now, evidence of something beautiful that had been built on a foundation of fundamental incompatibility.
Erin closed her book and looked out her window at the city lights. Somewhere out there, Lena was probably sitting in her own living room, maybe staring at her phone, maybe wondering if this was really how things had to end.
Or maybe she was relieved. Maybe this confirmed what she'd thought all along—that Erin was too reckless, too stubborn, too young to be worth the worry.
The thought should have made her angry again, but she just felt tired.
Her phone buzzed from the drawer, a sound she could hear even through the wood. Then again. Then again.
Erin sat perfectly still and let it buzz.
She'd told Lena what she needed: trust, respect, the freedom to do her job without being second-guessed or undermined. Simple things that shouldn't have been too much to ask from someone who claimed to care about her.
But Lena couldn't give her those things. She had admitted as much when she'd called Erin careless, when she'd stood there unable to promise she could change. Love without respect wasn't love at all.
The buzzing stopped.
Erin picked up her cup of tea, cold now, and took a sip anyway.
Tomorrow she'd have to go back to work, back to the fire station where everyone would eventually figure out that whatever had been happening between the fire marshal and the detective was over.
She'd have to work with the police department, maybe even with Lena, and pretend that her personal life hadn't just imploded.
But she'd handle it. She'd been handling her job perfectly well before Lena Soto came along, and she'd continue handling it after.
The case would get solved. The arsonist would be caught. Phoenix Ridge would be safe again.
And Erin would do it all without someone looking over her shoulder, questioning her decisions, or going behind her back to her boss.
She'd do it alone, the way she'd always done everything important.
Her phone buzzed one more time, then fell silent.
Erin finished her cold tea, rinsed the cup, and went to bed early. Tomorrow was Monday, and she had fire scenes to investigate, evidence to analyze, and a professional reputation to maintain.