Chapter 18
Sloane
The ER was chaos, but the curtained-off section Ava had claimed for me was quiet.
I sat on the edge of the bed, an oxygen mask hanging loose around my neck. My throat still burned. My lungs felt heavy, like I'd been breathing through wet cloth for hours. Every breath came with a faint wheeze.
But I was alive.
"Oxygen levels are stabilizing," Ava said, making a note on her tablet. "You inhaled a lot of smoke, but your lungs are handling it. No signs of significant damage."
"That's good."
"It's very good." She set the tablet down and looked at me properly, the way doctors did when they were assessing more than just vitals.
"You're going to feel like hell for a few days.
Sore throat, coughing, fatigue. Your body needs time to clear out everything you breathed in.
" She held my gaze. "No work. No running around chasing stories. Just rest."
"I can do that."
She raised an eyebrow but didn't push it. We both knew my track record with sitting still.
"You got lucky tonight," she continued. "The burns on your hands are minor. The smoke inhalation could have been much worse. A few more minutes in there and we'd be having a very different conversation."
I looked down at the bandages wrapped around my palms. White gauze against skin that still felt too warm. Pounding on the glass. The heat pressing against the door. Rebecca's face as she struck the match, that strange calm in her eyes, like she'd finally found peace in destruction.
"I know," I said quietly.
Ava's hand found my shoulder. Squeezed gently.
"You're going to be fine," she said. "Physically, at least. The rest takes time. But you've got people who care about you. That helps more than most patients realize."
"It does."
She stepped back. Checked one more reading. Nodded to herself, satisfied.
"I'm going to send Garrett in." She was already moving toward the curtain. "He's been wearing a hole in the waiting room floor. I think the nurses are ready to sedate him."
I laughed. It hurt, a sharp ache in my chest that made me cough, but I laughed anyway.
Garrett pacing. Checking his phone. Asking for updates every thirty seconds until someone threatened to throw him out.
"Thank you, Ava. For everything."
"That's what family's for." She smiled once more, warm and genuine, then slipped through the curtain.
Footsteps hurrying past. Voices murmuring in other curtained sections. The steady beep of monitors.
The endless cycle of crisis and recovery that never stopped, not even at three in the morning.
The curtain rustled.
Garrett stepped through.
Soot on his face. Smudged along his jaw where he'd wiped at it with the back of his hand. Hair damp with sweat, plastered to his forehead in dark streaks. Turnout coat gone, but the smell of smoke clung to his clothes. Sharp and familiar.
His eyes were red-rimmed. Exhausted. But the wild edge of fear I'd seen when he burst through that office door was finally starting to fade.
He was here. Whole. Alive.
"Hey," I said.
He crossed the space in three steps. His hands found my face, cupping my jaw, tilting my head up so he could look at me.
Like he needed to see me breathing, blinking, present, before he could believe any of this had actually happened.
"You're okay." His voice was rough. Scraped raw, like he'd been breathing smoke too.
Which he had. For me.
"I'm okay."
"Ava said your lungs are fine. Your oxygen is stabilizing. The burns are minor."
"She told me."
"You're okay." He said it again, like saying it made it true.
"I'm okay. Because of you."
His eyes closed. He pressed his forehead to mine, and the shudder that ran through him, I felt all of it. The release of everything he'd been holding.
"I thought I lost you," he whispered.
"You didn't."
"When I heard your message. When I heard you say you were trapped." His breath hitched. "Nothing else mattered. Not the fire, not the building, not anything. Just you."
"You got to me." I lifted my bandaged hands to his face. Traced the line of his jaw, rough with stubble, smudged with ash. "You came for me."
"Of course I did." He pulled back enough to look at me. Gray-blue eyes fierce with determination and relief and love, all tangled together. "I'll always come for you. Every time. No matter what."
"I know."
"I'd run into a thousand burning buildings if it meant getting you out."
"Let's hope you don't have to."
He almost smiled. The ghost of it flickered across his face before the weight of the night pulled it back down. "But if I do, I will. That's not even a question."
I pulled him closer. Pressed my lips to his. Soft and slow and full of everything I couldn't put into words.
Gratitude. Relief. Love so big it felt like it might swallow me whole.
When we pulled apart, his forehead rested against mine again.
Breathing together. Existing together.
Letting the reality of survival sink in.
"I love you," I said.
"I love you too." His thumb brushed my cheek, gentle against the soot I hadn't managed to wipe away. "More than anything."
A knock on the curtain frame broke the moment.
Brian's head appeared through the gap. Tired but relieved, the easy grin softened by genuine concern.
He'd been in that building too. The night had aged all of us.
"Just checking in," he said. "You two okay?"
"We're okay," Garrett said, not moving from my side. His hand found mine, fingers interlacing, like he couldn't bear to not be touching me.
"Good. That's good." Brian hesitated, something shifting in his expression. "Detective Diaz is here. She wants to talk to you both, if you're up for it."
I looked at Garrett. He looked at me.
We both knew this was coming.
"Send her in," I said.
Brian nodded and disappeared. A moment later, the curtain rustled again and Detective Diaz stepped through.
She looked exhausted. The kind of bone-deep tired that came from too many long nights and not enough wins. Dark circles under her eyes. Hair escaping from its usual neat style.
Another fire. Another crime scene. Another case that had spiraled beyond what anyone expected.
But there was something else in her face. Something heavier. Something that told me the news she was carrying wasn't entirely good.
"I'm glad you're both okay," she said. "When I heard about the fire, when I heard you were inside..." She shook her head, the professional mask slipping for just a moment. ""This is going to cause some disruption at the Times. The insurance company is going to have a meltdown."
"I'm sure Marianne will handle it." My editor had faced down senators and CEOs. An insurance company wouldn't stand a chance.
"I'm sure she will." Diaz paused. The heaviness in her expression shifted forward, becoming harder to ignore. "I have news. About Rebecca Marsh."
The room went quiet. Even the distant sounds of the ER seemed to fade.
"Lieutenant Stone got her out." Diaz's voice was careful. Measured. "She was brought here. Crush injury, the compression from the beam. When they freed her, the damage was already done internally. Toxins in the bloodstream, cardiac arrest. Dr. Park worked on her for almost an hour."
She met my eyes.
"They couldn't get her back. I'm sorry. She didn't make it."
I'd known. Somewhere deep down, from the moment I'd seen Brian carrying her out of the stairwell.
But hearing it confirmed was different.
Garrett's hand tightened on mine.
He'd tried to save her. And it still hadn't been enough.
"She was ready," I said quietly. "At the end. I think she was ready to be with Emma."
Diaz nodded slowly. "I'll need formal statements from both of you when you're feeling up to it. But there's no rush. Take the time you need to recover."
"Thank you."
She nodded to Garrett, then to me, and slipped back through the curtain.
The silence she left behind was full of things neither of us knew how to say.
Crush injury. The compression from the beam. When they freed her—
When we freed her.
I stared at the curtain Diaz had disappeared through. My hands were still in Sloane's. The same hands that had lifted the beam. The same hands that had held Rebecca upright while Brian carried her down twelve flights.
The same hands that had.
Garrett's arm came around my shoulders. I leaned into him, pressing my face against his chest. Smoke and sweat and him.
He was solid. Warm. Real. Alive.
"She's at peace now," he said. "With Emma."
"I hope so." I closed my eyes. Pictured Rebecca's face in the firelight. That moment of calm when she'd dropped the match.
"I really hope so."
A week later, we stood at Rebecca's grave.
The cemetery was quiet. Early morning, before the city fully woke up.
Mist hung low over the grass, softening the edges of the headstones. Just us and the graves and the soft gray light of a cloudy day.
I'd brought flowers. Yellow roses. I didn't know if Rebecca had liked yellow roses. I didn't know much about what she'd liked at all, beyond the daughter she'd loved and the justice she'd died chasing.
But yellow felt right. Bright against the gray.
Emma's grave was beside her mother's. A small headstone with a carved angel, wings folded gently around a heart. Emma Marsh, beloved daughter. Forever in our hearts.
Eight years old.
Young enough to still believe in Santa Claus. Young enough to sleep with a nightlight. She never got to grow up. Never got to have a first crush or a first heartbreak.
All of that — stolen by a building that should have been condemned and a system that looked the other way.
I set the roses between the two headstones. Stepped back.
Garrett stood beside me. His hand warm in mine.
He'd been quiet on the drive over. I hadn't pushed. Some silences needed to be sat with.
We stood there for a long moment. Watching the mist drift through the grass. Listening to the distant sound of traffic, the city waking up around us. Two people who'd survived a fire, visiting the grave of a woman who hadn't.
"I've been thinking," Garrett said finally. His voice was rough. Careful. Like he was choosing each word deliberately. "About grief. About how we carry it."
I turned to look at him. His jaw was tight. His eyes fixed on Emma's headstone, on the little carved angel with its folded wings.
"Rebecca carried hers alone. For seven years." His jaw tightened. "And it turned into something that consumed her. Something that burned down everything it touched."
"Garrett."
"I carried mine alone too. After Emma." He paused. Swallowed hard. "I thought that's just what you did. You buried the grief somewhere deep and you kept moving and you didn't let anyone see how much it was eating you alive."
I squeezed his hand. Waited for him to find the rest of the words.
“I don't want to do that anymore." He turned to face me. Something fierce in his gray-blue eyes, like he'd made a decision and he wasn't going to back down from it.
"I want to remember them properly. Rebecca. Emma." His voice roughened, cracking on the edges.
"Our baby. The one we never got to meet."
My throat tightened. The grief I'd carried for so long, hidden behind work and ambition and the wall I'd built around my heart, surged up without warning.
In my chest. In my eyes. In the way my breath caught.
"We never mourned her." Garrett's voice was quiet now. Certain. "Never got to grieve together. Never got to say goodbye to the future we'd been planning."
"No." Barely a whisper. "We didn't."
"I want to do something. Plant a tree. Set up a scholarship. Something that means they're not forgotten." He squeezed my hand. "Is that crazy?"
"It's not crazy." I stepped closer. Wrapped my arms around him, pressing my face against his chest.
"It's exactly right."
"A scholarship, maybe. For kids who want to be firefighters. In Emma's name." His arms came around me, pulling me close.
"And a tree." His voice was thick. "For our baby. Somewhere we can visit. Somewhere we can sit and remember."
"I'd like that." I pulled back enough to look at him. Reached up to touch his face. "I'd like that a lot."
We stood like that for a while. The mist drifting around us. The city sounds distant and muffled.
Two people who'd carried grief alone for too long, finally learning how to carry it together.
We walked back to the car slowly.
No rush. No urgency. Just the two of us and the quiet morning and the weight of everything we'd survived. The mist was starting to lift, pale sunlight breaking through the clouds, turning the wet grass silver.
Grief came in waves. Some days you barely felt it. Other days it knocked you off your feet, in grocery stores and at traffic lights and in the middle of conversations about nothing at all.
It never really left. I understood that now.
But it didn't have to destroy you.
Rebecca had let hers become a fire. I'd let mine become a wall. Somewhere along the way, we'd both gotten lost in it.
I didn't want to be lost anymore.
Garrett opened the car door for me. I slid into the passenger seat, watched him walk around to the driver's side.
He moved differently now. Lighter, somehow. Like he'd set something down.
Maybe we both had.
"Ready to go home?" he asked, starting the engine.
Home. His apartment that was now our apartment. The couch where I fell asleep waiting for him. The kitchen where he'd asked me to stay.
The bed where we woke up tangled together every morning.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm ready."
He reached over. Took my hand. Held it the whole way home.
The city passed by outside the windows. Buildings and traffic and people starting their days, unaware of everything that had happened.
Grief would come again. I knew that.
But I wouldn't be carrying it alone anymore.
That was what Rebecca never had. Someone to hold her hand through the waves. Someone to help her find her way back when the darkness got too deep.
I had Garrett. I had Shane and Maya. Brian and Ava. Rodriguez and his crew, the found family that had accepted me as one of their own.
And sometimes, that was enough.
Garrett pulled into the parking spot outside our building. Turned off the engine. Sat there for a moment, looking at me.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." He smiled. A real smile this time, soft and warm. "I'm just glad you're here."
"Me too."
He leaned over. Kissed me. Soft and slow, like we had all the time in the world.
Because we did.
We'd fought for this. Survived fires and grief and eight years of silence. Found our way back to each other.
We had forever now.
And I wasn't going to waste a single day of it.