Forever (Heart on Fire #3)

Chapter 1

Garrett

I had a system for everything except forgetting her.

A job that mattered. Brothers who'd walk through fire for me, literally. A routine so precise I could run it in my sleep.

Most mornings, I did.

Thirty-four years old. Ten years on the job. A life built brick by careful brick into something that looked, from the outside, like purpose.

It worked. Most days.

My alarm went off at 5:15. No snooze. Never snooze.

Snooze was for people who had something worth staying in bed for.

The coffee maker had already started—automatic timer, set the night before like everything else in my apartment.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat there in the dark.

Listened to the gurgle and hiss from the kitchen.

The radiator clanked through the wall, but I'd stopped hearing it years ago.

White noise. Background static to a life lived on mute.

Twenty minutes of weights in the corner of my living room. Pull-up bar in the doorframe. Dumbbells that had seen better days. A routine I could do without thinking.

That was the point. Thinking was dangerous before coffee.

Shower. Seven minutes exactly. I wiped the fog from the mirror with my palm, clearing just enough space to shave.

Thirty-four. Dark hair I kept short because it was easier under a helmet. Gray-blue eyes my mother once said noticed too much for my own good.

She'd been right about that.

Square jaw. Stubble I'd scrape off before shift. The scar on my left shoulder caught the bathroom light—raised and pink, skin still tight when I reached too far. Warehouse fire, three years ago. I didn't look at it long. Another scar on my right forearm. Broken glass during a vehicle extraction.

The body keeps score, someone told me once. I had the receipts to prove it.

I looked like a man who had his life together.

Ten years since a woman in a coffee shop made me forget how to speak. Eight since she walked out the door.

I looked like a man who had his life together.

Engine 295 sat on a corner in Queens that hadn't changed much in sixty years. Red brick gone pink from decades of sun and exhaust. White trim the probies repainted every spring. Three bay doors that rattled when they opened.

The building smelled like diesel and old coffee, rubber, and sweat that never fully aired out, no matter how many times we mopped the floors.

I arrived twenty minutes early. Always did.

Parked in the back lot. Grabbed my bag. Walked through the side door into the apparatus bay, where the engine sat gleaming under fluorescent lights. Someone had washed her overnight.

Martinez. Compulsive about it.

The firehouse was already alive. Lockers slamming. Boots on concrete. Coffee machine working overtime.

I moved through it like water through a familiar channel—nodding at the guys coming off shift, dropping my bag in my locker, heading for the common room to check the board.

Captain Rodriguez was in his office, phone pressed to his ear, already putting out fires that had nothing to do with actual flames.

Thirty years on the job. Married to Maria for almost as long. Two kids who treated this firehouse like a second home—Lucia, eleven, and Marco, nine. Both of them knew more about FDNY operations than half the probies we trained.

Rodriguez ran Engine 295 the way he ran his family: steady hands, zero tolerance for bullshit, loyalty that ran deeper than rank.

Shane Briggs was at the coffee station, arguing with the machine like it had personally offended him.

"Come on, you temperamental piece of—"

"Works better if you don't threaten it."

He turned, grinning. Second-in-command at thirty-six, built like the quarterback he probably was in high school, with an easy smile that hid one of the sharpest tactical minds I'd ever worked with.

Four years ago, he'd run into a burning school for the woman he loved and the troubled kid who'd tried to kill her. Now Maya was his wife. Zoe was seventeen, already talking about college. They were fostering Lily, fifteen, showed up scared and silent, slowly learning to trust them.

Shane had everything I'd once wanted.

"Stone." He handed me a cup of coffee, black, no sugar. He'd remembered. "You look like you actually slept last night."

"Miracles are your department, Briggs. I just show up."

Brian Torres appeared from the apparatus bay, wiping grease from his hands with a rag that had seen better days. Thirty-four, same as me—we'd come up through the academy together, back when we were both too young and too stupid to know what we were getting into.

They'd assigned him to a house in the Bronx after graduation, me to one in Brooklyn, before the transfer papers came through, and we ended up at Engine 295 together.

That was eight years ago.

Shane was already here for four years, already establishing himself as the guy everyone trusted. Brian was a paramedic now, and recently married to Dr. Ava Rothwell. They'd been neighbors for four years before either of them admitted what everyone else could see: they were inevitable.

"Garrett." Brian nodded at me, tossing the rag over his shoulder. "Ready for another thrilling day of false alarms and chest pain calls?"

"Living the dream."

Shane snorted. "Careful what you wish for. Last time you said that, we got the warehouse fire in Long Island City."

"That was your fault. You jinxed it."

"I don't believe in jinxes."

"Tell that to your wife," Brian said. "She made you knock on wood three times before your last shift."

Shane's expression softened the way it always did when someone mentioned Maya. Subtle—a loosening around his eyes, warmth creeping into his voice—but I'd known him long enough to recognize it.

Love looked like that on him. Easy. Natural. Like breathing.

I remembered what that felt like.

"She worries," Shane said.

"She's got good instincts."

The tones saved me from having to say anything else.

"Engine 295, Ladder 118, respond to structure fire, 2847 Crescent Avenue. Multiple calls reporting flames from second-floor windows."

We moved like a single organism.

Boots. Turnout pants. Suspenders up. Coat. Helmet. Gloves in my pocket—I'd grab them in the rig.

Muscle memory. I didn't have to think anymore.

Good. Thinking slowed you down. In this job, slow got people killed.

Captain Rodriguez was already in the officer's seat when I swung into the jump seat. Shane slid in beside me, Brian on his other side with his medic bag between his feet. Martinez took the wheel, engine rumbling to life as the bay doors rattled open. Sirens split the morning air.

I ran scenarios.

Second-floor windows meant the fire had established itself. Decent ventilation. Could go either way depending on fuel load and construction. Multiple calls meant civilians had noticed, which meant visible flames, which meant past the incipient stage.

Old neighborhood. Pre-war construction. Wood frame, narrow stairs—the kind of building subdivided into too many apartments with too few exits.

My hands were steady. They always were.

We rounded the corner.

Three-story walk-up, old brick—exactly what I'd expected. Smoke poured from a second-floor window. Black and oily. Synthetics burning. Plastics. Foam.

Toxic and fast.

"Engine 295 on scene, establishing command," Rodriguez said into the radio. He turned to us. "Second-floor primary search. Go."

We pulled lines. Martinez and Kowalski took the exterior.

Shane and I went in.

Front door unlocked. Small mercy.

The stairwell was already filling with smoke, visibility dropping with every step. I pulled my mask down. Felt the seal against my face. The hiss of my own breathing, amplified.

We found them on the second floor.

Family of four. Mother, father, two kids pressed against the far wall of a back bedroom—as far from the flames as they could get. The father shielding them with his body. The mother holding her children so tight her knuckles went white in my flashlight beam.

"FDNY! We're getting you out!"

Shane took the kids first. A boy, maybe six, clutching his younger sister like he was the only thing keeping her safe.

He was. That determination in his face—the kind kids shouldn't have to learn but somehow do.

Shane got them both in his arms and turned for the stairs.

I went back for the parents.

The mother was unconscious. Smoke inhalation. The father was dragging her toward the window, his face a mask of terror and desperate hope. I pulled her into a carry, motioned for him to follow.

We moved.

The hallway was an oven. Visibility dropped to nothing. Heat through my gear—that deep, dangerous warmth that meant the fire was growing. Feeding. Getting ready to show us what it could really do.

We made it to the stairs. The kids were already outside—Brian on the radio, calling for more units, reporting two pediatric patients stable. The father behind me, coughing, stumbling, but moving. The mother deadweight on my shoulder.

But she was breathing. Her ribs expanded against my arm.

Everyone was going to make it.

We emerged into sunlight and chaos.

Paramedics rushed forward. The father collapsed beside his wife, grabbing her hand, sobbing something I couldn't hear over the noise. Shane crouched beside the kids, voice low and calm—the way he got when he was making sure someone felt safe.

The little girl was crying.

Maybe four years old. Dark hair tangled and smoke-stained. Tears cut tracks through the soot on her face.

Safe. Alive.

And for one terrible moment, I saw another girl.

Eight years old. Blonde hair. Blue eyes wide with terror.

Emma.

I heard her screaming.

Then nothing.

The memory hit so hard I had to turn away. Brace my hands on my knees. Breathe through the tightness in my chest.

Seven years.

Seven years, and I still saw her face on every child I pulled from the flames.

"Stone." Shane's hand on my shoulder. "You good?"

I straightened. Pulled the mask off. Met his eyes with the blank expression I'd perfected over a decade.

"Good save," I said.

He didn't believe me. I could see it in the way his gaze lingered. But Shane knew me well enough to understand there were doors I didn't open.

"Good save," he agreed.

The family was loaded into ambulances. The fire was knocked down. Reports were filed.

I went through the motions.

It's what I did.

The diner was chrome and vinyl, unchanged since approximately 1973. Coffee strong enough to strip paint. A waitress named Dotty who'd been calling us "honey" since before any of us made lieutenant.

Shane and Brian had dragged me here after the shift. Tradition after a good save, they said.

I think they just didn't want to leave me alone.

They'd gotten protective over the years. Subtle about it, never pushing, but always there. Found family, Maya called us once.

She wasn't wrong.

We took our usual booth in the back. Brian slid in across from me, Shane beside him. Dotty appeared with a pot of coffee before we'd even opened the menus.

"The usual, boys?"

"Please, Dotty. And extra bacon for this one." Shane jerked his thumb at me. "He needs the calories."

"I really don't."

"You look like you've been skipping meals again." Brian's voice was carefully casual. "Ava noticed at dinner last week."

"I'm fine."

The look they exchanged said they didn't believe me.

A young woman at the counter had been glancing at Shane since we sat down. Pretty. Early twenties. The kind of bold that came from not knowing any better.

She finally worked up the nerve to approach, sliding toward our booth with a smile that probably worked on most guys.

"Hi." She tucked her hair behind her ear. "My friends dared me to come over and get one of your numbers. Preferably the tall one." Her eyes landed on Shane.

Shane held up his left hand. Wedding ring catching the light.

"Flattered," he said. "But spoken for."

Her gaze shifted to me. Hopeful.

"He's not on the market either," Brian said, and I was grateful for the save even as something in my chest twisted.

After she retreated, I said, "You didn't have to do that." I wrapped my hands around my coffee cup. "She seemed nice."

"She seemed interested in the uniform." Shane's voice was gentle. Worse than blunt. "You deserve better than that."

I did. I knew I did. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was that “better” had walked out of my life eight years ago, and no one since had come close.

"Besides." Shane leaned back. "Aren't you seeing that accountant?"

"Lauren?" I shrugged. "We broke up. A month ago."

They exchanged another look.

"Sorry, man."

"Don't be. It wasn't going anywhere."

None of them ever did.

"There's someone out there for you," Brian said. "Someone who sees the real you."

I thought about the only person who ever had.

Changed the subject.

My apartment was quiet when I got home.

It was always quiet.

I showered. Changed. Went through the motions of existing in a space that had never quite become home.

The place was clean to the point of being sterile. No photos on the walls. No personal touches. Functional furniture and a bookshelf full of fire science manuals I'd already memorized.

The radiator clanked. The refrigerator hummed. Outside, the city moved on without me.

On the coffee table: the only personal items in the entire apartment.

A stack of newspaper clippings.

All from the New York Times.

All by the same byline.

Sloane Harper.

I didn't remember when I'd started collecting them. The Tommy Vickers exposé, maybe—three parts that changed foster care legislation across the state. I'd read it and thought: That's my Sloane. Still fighting for the truth.

Except she wasn't mine anymore.

Hadn't been for eight years.

I picked up the most recent clipping. Housing discrimination in the outer boroughs. Her prose was sharp, precise, relentless—the same qualities that had drawn me to her in a coffee shop near Columbia.

She was twenty-two. Arguing with a barista about a wrong order. I'd stepped in. She'd turned that fire on me instead.

I was gone before she finished her sentence.

The memory surfaced before I could stop it.

Sloane in our first apartment. Boxes everywhere. Laughing because I'd packed my turnout gear but forgotten dishes.

Sloane's face when I opened the ring box. That look of wonder and joy I'd carried with me through every bad shift for two years.

I'm pregnant. Her eyes were bright with a future neither of us could see clearly.

I put the articles down.

Washed my face.

Stood in front of the bathroom mirror again.

The man I'd become in the years since she left stared back. Harder. Quieter. So careful about keeping people at arm's length, I'd forgotten how to let anyone in.

She was out there somewhere. Same city. Different lives.

I turned off the light. Went to bed in an apartment that had never felt like home.

Maybe, I told myself, that's how it should stay.

But I didn't believe it.

I never had.