Chapter 19
Pippa
AJ arrives at the station seven minutes before the shift starts.
Not late. Not early enough to be suspicious. Exactly the sort of reasonable timing that gives no one any useful excuse to comment.
Except me, apparently, because I notice it immediately.
I am in the kitchen when he walks in, sleeves pushed up, jacket open. He looks like himself. That is the problem. He looks like the AJ who has spent nearly two weeks in this station being too observant, too useful, too quick with a line and too careful when it matters.
He does not look like a man who had his mouth on my shoulder less than an hour ago.
Mish looks up from the table. Kev is standing by the toaster. Dan is leaning against the counter with a mug.
AJ steps in, and my entire body goes, Oh. There you are.
Deeply unhelpful.
“Evening,” he says.
A normal word.
A very normal word.
I should be able to handle one normal word from a man in a station kitchen.
“Evening,” I say.
Also normal.
Congratulations to us both.
His eyes meet mine for half a second too long, and there it is.
Not enough for anyone else to catch. Not really. Just a tiny pause. A private misfire in the middle of ordinary station noise.
I look away first because I am the watch manager and because if I keep looking at him, I am going to remember his hand around my wrist, his voice against my ear and the precise way he smiled when he told me he was in charge.
Work.
This is work.
Kev points at AJ with a slice of toast. “You look smug.”
I nearly drop my tea.
AJ, infuriatingly, does not even blink. “That’s just my face.”
“No, your face usually looks like you’re about to correct a menu.”
“That is a very specific insult.”
Mish glances up. “He does look a bit smug.”
“I had a nap,” AJ says.
Dan studies him over the rim of his mug. “That’ll do it.”
I turn towards the sink and wash my mug. Then I wash it for a few seconds longer than strictly necessary, because I need a task before my face stages a rebellion.
“You’re all very invested in his expression,” I say.
Kev bites into his toast. “It’s changed.”
“It has not.”
AJ looks at me.
Only briefly.
That is worse.
“Maybe I’m maturing,” he says.
Mish makes a small sound into her coffee. “No.”
“Developing professionally?”
“No.”
“Settling into the rhythm of the station?”
Dan shakes his head. “Also no.”
AJ leans against the counter, not quite smiling. “Tough room.”
“You chose journalism,” Kev says. “You should be used to rejection.”
“I’m used to emails not being answered. That’s different.”
I should not smile.
I nearly do.
Then AJ’s gaze drops to my mouth.
Not visibly. Not in any way someone else would notice. But I notice because I now know what his mouth feels like there, and apparently my nervous system has decided to keep a log.
His eyes come back to mine.
I pick up the document folder.
“Briefing room,” I say, perhaps a shade too briskly. “Five minutes.”
Mish looks at me.
Not suspicious.
Just attentive.
“Everything all right?” she asks.
“Yes.”
The answer comes too quickly.
AJ’s mouth does something dangerously close to amusement.
I give him a look that would usually make grown firefighters remember urgent tasks elsewhere.
He looks down into his coffee.
Good.
Mostly good.
Kev gathers his toast and mug. “Final night for babyface.”
“Don’t sound emotional,” AJ says.
“You’ll miss us.”
“I’ve already begun processing the grief.”
Dan pushes away from the counter. “You’ll miss the biscuits.”
“That too.”
I head towards the briefing room before this conversation can become any more ordinary.
Once the meeting starts, I stand at the front and do my job.
That part comes easier.
Thank God.
Weather. Road conditions. Control updates.
Appliance availability. Notes from days.
A reminder about the lower lanes after the rain.
Possible nuisance calls if the forecast turns ugly again.
Final night of AJ’s placement, which I mention because it is relevant and not because the words feel like grit in my mouth.
“Same as before,” I say, looking at the room rather than at him specifically. “If we’re called out, you follow instructions immediately. No drifting, no getting curious, no assuming quiet means safe.”
AJ nods. “Understood.”
His voice is professional.
Mine is professional.
The room is professional.
I hate all of us.
Kev raises a hand.
“No,” I say.
“You don’t know what I was going to ask.”
“I know enough.”
“I was going to ask whether we’re doing a leaving speech for him.”
“No.”
AJ puts a hand to his chest. “That was fast.”
“You’ve only been here two weeks.”
“And yet I’ve given so much.”
“You moved the tea bags,” Mish says.
“To the place labelled tea bags.”
“Nobody asked for logic.”
“That should go in the feature,” Dan says. “Journalist arrives. Morale collapses under basic organisation.”
AJ points at him. “That is very good. Can I use that?”
“No.”
“Shame.”
I let the banter run for another few seconds because it is normal, and normal is useful. Then I cut it off.
“Right. Let’s get on.”
Chairs move. People stand. The night gathers itself around us.
AJ lingers half a step behind as the others filter out, and for a second I think he is going to say something.
I want him to.
I do not want him to.
He looks at me, and all the sensible air leaves the room.
“Pippa,” he says quietly.
I glance towards the open door.
“Not here.”
His expression shifts.
Not hurt.
Understanding, maybe.
“Yes,” he says. “Of course.”
That should settle me.
It does not.
Because he steps back immediately. Because he does not push. Because he understands that here I am not the woman who told him to pay the bill and crossed the road with him in silence.
Here, I am Watch Manager Hart.
And somehow him respecting that makes everything more complicated, not less.
I pick up the folder. “You’ll be with Dan for the first round of checks.”
“Right.”
“He’ll show you the inventory sheet.”
“Good.”
“You like sheets.”
“I like a system.”
“You don’t need to tell me.”
My eyes lock with him and immediately my heart starts beating faster.
His voice lowers by a fraction. “Yes, you do know me.”
My fingers tighten on the folder.
“Inventory,” I say.
“Inventory,” he agrees.
Then he leaves the room before I can decide whether to murder him or drag him into the nearest storage cupboard.
Neither would be appropriate.
I give myself three seconds.
Then I walk back into the station like a woman who has absolutely not spent the last several hours making decisions she has no idea how to categorise.
The next forty minutes are almost bearable.
Work helps. It always does.
There are checks to review, a minor report to finish, a rota query from next week, and a message from Josh asking whether AJ’s final night is going smoothly, which is so badly timed I stare at my phone for a full five seconds before replying with a thumbs-up and immediately regretting it.
A thumbs-up.
Who am I?
AJ is in the appliance bay with Dan, clipboard in hand, listening as Dan talks him through the inventory sheet. He has his journalist face on, but not the polished one. The newer one. Focused. Less eager to prove. More interested in getting it right.
He asks a question.
Dan answers.
AJ writes something down.
Normal.
Fine.
Then AJ shifts his weight, and his T-shirt pulls slightly across his shoulders, and my brain supplies an extremely vivid memory of another of his T-shirts on my bedroom floor.
Not fine.
I turn around and nearly walk into Mish.
She catches the movement with one eyebrow. “All right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re very yes tonight.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Neither do I yet.”
Brilliant.
Mish folds her arms and looks past me towards the bay.
I follow her gaze.
AJ is now crouching beside an open compartment while Dan points at something. Kev is pretending not to be listening from three feet away, which means he is definitely listening.
“He’s done all right,” Mish says.
I look back at her. “AJ?”
“No, the ghost of the kettle. Yes, AJ.”
“He has.”
“Better than expected.”
“Yes.”
“Less annoying too.”
“That’s generous.”
“Not by much,” I grin.
Mish studies me for a moment. “You’ll miss having him around.”
My face goes carefully still.
There is nothing in her tone. No implication. No slyness. She means the station. The feature. The fact that AJ has become part of the rhythm in a very short space of time and tomorrow he will not be here cleaning mugs, asking questions and irritating everyone with practical filing suggestions.
That is all.
Still, the sentence lands badly.
“I’ll survive,” I say.
“Didn’t say you wouldn’t.”
I look towards the bay again.
AJ laughs at something Dan says. Not loudly. Just enough that his head dips and the corner of his mouth lifts.
Yes.
I will survive.
That is not the question.
Mish leans closer, voice dropping. “For what it’s worth, he sees the job differently now.”
I look at her.
“He sees you differently too,” she adds.
My pulse gives one stupid kick.
“Mish.”
She holds up a hand. “Not like that. I mean professionally.”
“Right.”
“He came in thinking this was punishment. Now he watches. He listens before he writes. He doesn’t treat any of it like content.”
The relief I feel is embarrassing.
Not because she is wrong.
Because she is right, and because that should be all I need from this.
A good article. Better understanding. Work seen properly.
That was the point.
That was always the point.
“I know,” I say.
Mish’s expression softens in the smallest possible way. “That matters.”
“Yes.”
“And it matters because you made him understand it.”
I do not know what to do with that.
So I make my voice dry.
“I did throw a lot of hose at him.”
“Educationally.”
“Obviously.”
Mish smiles and walks away, leaving me with the deeply inconvenient knowledge that she has said something kind and I have no useful place to put it.
The station settles into the strange suspended rhythm of a final night.
Nobody says it out loud, but everyone knows AJ’s placement ends after this shift.
Kev mentions that the biscuits are now safer.
Dan says the kitchen will be messier by Monday.
Mish says she is hiding the label maker before AJ develops opinions about filing.
AJ takes all of it with that familiar, increasingly dangerous ease.
He belongs just enough that his leaving will leave a gap.
Not a large one.
Not one anyone will name.
But there.
At half past nine, I walk into the kitchen and find him alone.
Of course.
Because apparently the building has a sense of humour.
He is standing by the counter, rinsing a mug that is not his. His jacket is off, sleeves rolled up, forearms damp where water has splashed. The radio on the windowsill mutters quietly. The rest of the crew are somewhere between the bay, the office and the crew room.
He turns when I come in.
For one second, we just look at each other.
Just him, me and a mug under running water.
“Hi,” he says.
I close the door halfway behind me.
“Hi.”
His eyes move to the door, then back to me.
“You all right?”
There it is again.
Simple question.
Impossible question.
“Yes.”
His mouth twitches, not amused exactly. “You keep saying that.”
“It remains true.”
“Okay.”
He turns the tap off and sets the mug on the draining board. Then he dries his hands on the tea towel, slower than necessary, as if giving me time to decide what this conversation is.
I have no idea what this conversation is.
That is the problem.
My body remembers him all at once, which is unreasonable because it has had no time to forget. The heat of him. The weight. His mouth at the back of my neck. The low, wrecked sound he made when control finally broke.
He is standing three feet away in my workplace.
I am thinking about his hands on my hips.
This is a disaster.
He takes one step towards me.
“I didn’t want to make this awkward,” he says.
“That ship may have left port.”
“I know.”
“I’m the watch manager here.”
“I know that too.”
“And tonight is your last shift.”
“Also true.”
“And after that you go back to Carlisle.”
His face stills.
“Yes.”
There is the shape of it.
The thing neither of us named in my flat because naming it would have made it larger than we had time for.
The end of this strange, intense, temporary arrangement that has somehow become the centre of my life in less than two weeks.
AJ looks at me carefully. “That doesn’t have to mean—”
The kitchen door swings open.
Kev walks in.
AJ steps back so quickly it would be funny under any other circumstances.
Kev stops, looks at us, then at the mug on the draining board.
“You two having a management discussion about washing up?”
“Yes,” I say.
At exactly the same time, AJ says, “Mugs.”
Kev looks between us.
Then nods slowly. “Important.”
“Vital,” AJ says.
I pick up the nearest clipboard because I need to look like a person with a reason to exist in this room.
Kev opens a cupboard. “Don’t mind me. Emergency biscuit retrieval.”
“No one was minding you,” I say.
“Good. That’s the tone I like from management.”
AJ clears his throat. “I’ll go find Dan.”
“Inventory romance,” Kev says into the cupboard. “Beautiful.”
“What?” I say, too fast.
Kev emerges with the biscuit tin and blinks at me. “Inventory. He’s been in love with that sheet all evening. Honestly, Pip, keep up.”
AJ’s face is a masterpiece of restraint.
I am going to die.
Not professionally.
Personally.
“In that case,” AJ says, “I’ll return to the paperwork that truly understands me.”
“Good lad,” Kev says.
AJ leaves, and he does not look back.
Which is wise.
Because if he did, I would either laugh, panic or commit a serious breach of workplace conduct beside the emergency biscuit tin.
Kev watches him go, then looks at me.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Kev.”
“You seem twitchy.”
“I am not twitchy.”
“You’re a bit twitchy.”
“I am considering whether to assign you to restock the entire prevention cupboard alphabetically.”
He points a biscuit at me. “That would be abuse of power.”
“It would be leadership.”
He grins. “Good to have you back, boss.”
“I never left.”
The words leave my mouth before I understand them.
Kev, mercifully, does not hear anything in them.
He just bites into his biscuit and wanders out.
I stand alone in the kitchen for a moment, clipboard in hand, door half-open, heart behaving like it has been given bad instructions.
I never left.
No.
But something has shifted.
Something I cannot put back where it was before AJ touched the corner of my mouth in a bakery and everything that happened afterwards became inevitable.
I look towards the corridor where he disappeared.
Then I look down at the clipboard.
Work first.
Feelings later.
If at all.
The radio crackles.
Control’s voice cuts through the station.
And just like that, the night changes.