Chapter 4
Sloane
I stood in front of my closet for twenty minutes.
This was ridiculous. I was a professional.
I'd interviewed senators and CEOs and convicted murderers.
Faced down death threats from one of the most powerful families in New York and kept digging anyway.
Built a career on walking into rooms where I wasn't welcome and asking questions people didn't want to answer.
I could handle seeing my ex-fiancé.
My ex-fiancé, who still made my heart race just thinking about him. Who'd looked at me across Brian's wedding reception with those gray-blue eyes and made me forget how to breathe. Who I'd run from like a coward instead of walking over and saying—
What? What would I have said?
Hi, Garrett. Sorry, I ghosted you. Sorry, I stopped answering your letters. Sorry, I came back to New York and never once reached out, even though I think about you every single day.
I pulled a blazer off its hanger. Put it back. Pulled out another one.
Armor. That's what I needed. Something professional. Something that said I'm here to work, not to rehash the worst years of my life.
I settled on tailored black pants, a cream button-down, a navy blazer that had survived three presidential campaigns and a corruption investigation. The leather messenger bag I'd carried since my first day at the Times.
Press credentials layered over each other like badges of honor.
I looked at myself in the mirror.
You can do this.
You have to do this.
The drive to Engine 295 took forty-five minutes in morning traffic. My hands were steady on the wheel. My heart was not.
I turned on the radio. Turned it off.
Tried to focus on the case. The questions I'd ask. The angles I'd pursue. But my mind kept sliding sideways, back to where it always went when I let my guard down
The memory surfaced before I could stop it.
Sharp and vivid, the way old memories sometimes are. Preserved in amber while recent ones blur.
I was twenty-two when we first met.
A guy in a suit was berating the barista—something about a wrong order, his voice loud enough to make everyone uncomfortable. The kid behind the counter looked about nineteen and close to tears.
"Hey." I didn't realize I was going to say anything until I was already saying it. "It's coffee. Not a war crime. Maybe dial it back."
The suit turned, ready to redirect his anger. I held his gaze and didn't flinch.
"I'm sorry, is this your business?"
"It's everyone's business when you're making a scene."
Behind me, someone laughed. Low. Appreciative.
The suit puffed up, ready to escalate, but something over my shoulder made him reconsider. He muttered something about customer service and grabbed his coffee, shoving past me on his way out.
The barista exhaled. "Thank you. I'm not—he's been coming in all week and I—"
"Don't apologize." I softened my voice. "People like that count on no one pushing back."
"She's right."
I turned.
Tall. Dark brown hair. Gray-blue eyes watching me with something that looked like amusement. Square jaw. Day-old stubble. FDNY t-shirt, slightly wrinkled, like he'd just come off a long shift.
"Most people just look at their phones when someone's being an ass," he said. "And pretend they don't notice."
The barista pushed a coffee toward me. "On the house. For, um. That."
I tried to refuse. The tall firefighter told the barista to put it on his tab. I told him that wasn't necessary. He shrugged.
"Consider it a thank-you from everyone who's ever wanted to tell a guy like that to shut up."
"I'm Garrett," he said. "Garrett Stone."
"Sloane Harper."
"Nice to meet you, Sloane Harper." He picked up his own coffee—black, no sugar, I noticed without meaning to. "For what it's worth? Your fire is kind of magnificent."
He was gone before I could respond.
I thought about him for a week.
He tracked me down through my byline.
I'd published a small piece in the campus paper about housing conditions in student apartments—nothing major, just investigative work I'd done for a class that turned into something publishable. My email was at the bottom.
His message was short:
I know this is forward, but I can't stop thinking about the woman who told off a guy twice her size over a stranger's coffee order. Dinner? My treat. I promise not to make any scenes you'll have to rescue me from.
I said yes.
I shouldn't have. I had deadlines. A five-year plan. Ambitions that didn't include firefighters with devastating smiles who thought my fire was magnificent instead of something to be managed.
But I said yes.
We met at a different coffee shop—neutral territory, he called it. He was early. I was late. He didn't mention it.
He asked about my work. Actually listened when I answered. Asked follow-up questions that proved he'd read my article—really read it, not just skimmed the headline.
He told me about his job. Assigned to a station in Brooklyn. The kind of work that left marks you couldn't always see.
"Why firefighting?" I asked.
Something flickered across his face. There and gone.
"My father was FDNY. Died in the line of duty when I was seventeen." He said it simply, without self-pity. "I wanted to... I don't know. Continue what he started."
"That's—" I didn't know what to say. I'd been prepared for bravado. Hero complex. The kind of swagger I associated with men who ran toward danger.
Not this. Not quiet grief transmuted into purpose.
"Heavy for a first date," he finished. "I know. Sorry."
"Don't apologize." I reached across the table and touched his hand. Brief. Impulsive. His fingers were warm. "I asked."
He looked at where our hands had touched. Looked at me.
"Can I see you again?"
"Yes."
And then I kept saying yes. To coffee. To dinner. To walks through the city that lasted until midnight because neither of us wanted to say goodnight.
To falling so hard I forgot to be scared.
We moved in together after a year.
The apartment was in Brooklyn—small, drafty, radiators that clanked through the night. The building was old, and the neighbors were loud, and the hot water ran out if you showered longer than ten minutes.
It was perfect.
"We need a system," Garrett said, unpacking boxes. He'd brought his own, neatly labeled: Kitchen. Bathroom. Books. Mine just said Stuff on all of them. "You're chaos. I'm order. We have to find a balance."
"Chaos is creative." I was sitting on the counter, drinking wine from a coffee mug because I couldn't find the glasses. "Order is boring."
"Order keeps you from losing your keys three times a week."
"I don't lose them. They migrate."
He laughed. That full, rare laugh I'd learned to treasure—Garrett didn't give those away easily. He was serious by default. Watchful. The kind of person who held himself in reserve until he trusted you.
The laugh meant he trusted me.
We made it work. His precision, my chaos. His early mornings, my late nights. He cleaned; I cooked. He organized the bills; I remembered birthdays. Two people who shouldn't have fit, fitting perfectly.
He proposed on our rooftop.
Two years in. A Tuesday evening in September—the kind of perfect autumn night that made you understand why people wrote poems about New York. He'd asked me to come up to watch the sunset. I'd teased him about being romantic.
He'd just smiled.
The city stretched out below us, lights flickering on as dusk settled. I was leaning against the railing, telling him about a source who'd finally agreed to go on the record for a story I'd been chasing for months. Mid-sentence, I realized he'd gone quiet.
"Garrett? You okay?"
He pulled a small velvet box from his pocket.
My heart stopped. Actually stopped, for one suspended moment, I can still feel it if I close my eyes.
"Sloane Harper." He opened the box. The ring caught the fading light—simple, elegant, a solitaire diamond on a white gold band. Not flashy. Not ostentatious.
Just beautiful, in that understated way that meant he'd paid attention to who I was.
"I know you don't need anyone to complete you," he said. "You're already whole. But I'd really like to spend the rest of my life trying to keep up with you." His voice was steady, but his hands weren't. "Will you marry me?"
I said yes before he finished the sentence.
He slid the ring onto my finger, and I laughed—really laughed, the kind that came from somewhere deep—and he pulled me close.
We stood there on that rooftop with the whole city glittering below us, his arms around me, my face pressed against his chest. Everything felt possible.
We're going to have this, I thought. All of it.
I found out I was pregnant three months later.
A missed period. A test from the pharmacy down the street. Two pink lines that changed everything.
"Garrett." My voice was shaking. I couldn't make it stop. "Garrett, I'm—"
He looked at the test. Looked at me.
His face transformed. Wonder and joy and terror, all at once, cycling through so fast I could barely track them. His eyes went bright. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"We're having a baby?"
"We're having a baby."
He lifted me off my feet. Spun me around. Set me down and kissed me until neither of us could breathe.
We started planning that same night. Names—argued about them for hours, couldn't agree on anything. Nurseries—he wanted yellow, I wanted green, we compromised on sage. Bigger apartments with an extra bedroom. Places where a family could grow.
The future unfurled like a map to somewhere beautiful.
Six weeks later, the doctor frowned at my chart.
Your stress levels are concerning." She was looking at numbers I didn't understand, test results that meant something to her and nothing to me. "Your blood pressure is elevated. Ms. Harper, for the baby's sake, I need you to slow down."
Slow down.
I thought about my deadlines. The investigations I was building. The career I'd fought so hard for—the one finally starting to take shape.
Garrett took my hand in the car afterward.