Chapter Thirty-One Brielle
I am in the middle of a supply invoice when I hear the clicking of heels.
Not just any heels. Those heels. The cadence of them on the station’s concrete floor is as familiar to me as the sound of my own name. My hand pauses over the keyboard.
I hear Rory’s voice from the front bay. He sounds uncertain in a way Rory never is. “Ma’am, you can’t just—”
And then the heels keep coming.
I put down my pen.
My mother appears in the doorway of the admin office.
Ivory blouse, dark trousers, hair swept back, and understated jewelry that is more valuable than they look.
She takes in the admin office, the filing cabinets, the cluttered desk, and me sitting behind it in jeans and a station hoodie. Her nose writhes in disgust.
She closes the door behind her.
“Brielle,” she says.
“Mother,” I say.
She sits in the chair across from the desk without being invited, which has always been her way, and she folds her hands in her lap.
“Your father and I have been patient,” she says.
“Have you,” I say.
“We gave you time,” she continues. “The fire, the stress, the very public ending of your engagement. We understand these things are difficult.”
“Do you?”
“What we cannot continue to allow,” she says, as if I haven’t spoken, “is this situation. The press are still running stories. The Montgomery family is making things difficult. And you are sitting in a fire station doing administrative work and living with three men whose intentions I have serious questions about.”
I look at her.
I think about all the times I have sat across from my mother and swallowed what I actually wanted to say. All the times I smoothed my spine down, agreed, apologized, and made myself smaller so she didn’t have to accommodate me.
I think about how much of my life has been spent in that posture, bent toward her like a plant growing toward the only light source in the room.
I sit up straight.
“Their names,” I say, “are Max, Jase, and Evan. Max is going to be the captain of this station. Jase turned down Harvard Medical School to serve this community. Evan went up the side of a twenty-story building three days ago to pull a woman and three children out of a fire.” I hold her gaze. “Those are their intentions.”
My mother’s expression doesn’t change. “Brielle—”
“I’m not finished,” I say.
She stops.
I watch her register the fact that I have interrupted her, that I have said those three words to her face.
“I know what this looks like to you,” I say.
“I know what the tabloids are saying, and I know what the Montgomery PR team is putting out, and I also know that from your point of view, this is a catastrophe.” I keep my voice even.
“But you decided when I was sixteen that Richard Montgomery was a good match for me. I did everything you asked. I went to Yale. I studied abroad. I came home. I got engaged. I stood in that church in that dress, and I was about to marry a man with a pregnant mistress because it was what our family needed.” I pause.
“I did all of it for you. And I am done.”
My mother’s jaw tightens.
“You’re being dramatic,” she says.
“I’m being honest,” I reply. “Which is something I should have been a long time ago.” I lean forward.
“You cut me off. You froze my accounts. You hired a PR team to call me unstable. And none of it worked. None of it brought me back. Because for the first time in my life I am somewhere I actually want to be!”
Her eyes send daggers at me across the desk, but I look right back at her.
“You sound very certain,” she says finally.
“I am,” I say.
“You’ve known these people for weeks,” she says. “You’re making permanent decisions based on—”
“My own life,” I say. “That’s all. Just mine. For the first time. And I don’t care if I’m making the biggest mistake in the history of the world! I will learn from the experience and become a much better person because of it.”
She is quiet for a long moment.
Then she stands, smoothing her trousers. She looks at me one more time with the expression I have been reading my whole life, somewhere between disappointment and the refusal to show it.
“Your father misses you,” she says. It comes out differently from everything else. It’s quieter and stripped of the control she usually keeps over every syllable.
Something moves in my chest.
“I miss him too,” I say. “Tell him to call me himself.”
She holds my gaze for a beat. Then she picks up her bag, walks to the door, and pauses with her hand on the doorframe, her back to me.
“The accounts,” she says. “I’ll speak to the lawyers.”
Then she walks out, and I hear her heels on the concrete all the way to the front door, and then the door closes, and the station absorbs the silence she leaves behind.
I sit at my desk.
My hands are steady.
I notice, with some surprise, that my hands are steady and my breathing is even, and the thing in my chest is not grief or shame or the hollow aftermath of conflict.
I feel good.
And then my hands start shaking. Not from distress — I press my palms flat against the desk and identify it for what it is: the far edge of adrenaline, the body catching up to what the mind just did.
My breathing has gone too fast. There is something in my chest that is part fear and part something that doesn't have a name yet, the sensation of a door standing open that has been shut your entire life, and not knowing whether to run through it or stand there and look.
I am still sitting there — palms flat, breathing, working out whether I feel terrified or free or both at once — when I look up and find Max leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed and an expression on his face I have not seen there before.
“How much of that did you hear?” I say.
“Enough,” he says.
He comes into the office and sits down in the chair my mother just vacated, leans forward with his elbows on his knees, and looks at the floor.
“My father called last week,” he says.
I wait.
“He wanted to know how the captaincy was progressing. Whether Weston had confirmed a timeline. Whether I was doing everything right.” He pauses.
“Those are the only questions he ever asks. How is the job? Are you doing it correctly? Is it going to plan?” He looks up at me.
“He has never once asked me if I’m happy. ”
“Max,” I say.
“I’ve been doing this for twelve years,” he says.
“Building toward something that was decided for me before I was old enough to decide anything for myself. And I told myself that was fine, that I wanted it, that the wanting and the expectation were the same thing.” He holds my gaze.
“I watched you tell your mother that you’re done living for her version of your life, and I couldn’t look away because I understood every word of it. ”
He pauses.
“I don’t want to be captain because my father was Fire Chief,” he says. “I want to be captain because I love this station and these people, and I am good at leading them, and it matters.” He pauses. “Those are different things. I’ve been confusing them for a long time.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive,” I say. “You can want it for your own reasons and still have his shadow in the room.”
“I know,” he says. “But I’ve been letting the shadow make decisions.” He looks at me steadily. “I told you to keep your distance. I used the career as an excuse to hold everything at arm’s length, when the truth is I was scared. I was scared of what I felt, and I used the career as an excuse.”
I don’t say anything.
“I’m done letting the shadow decide,” he says.
I get up from my chair, come around the desk, and stop in front of him. He looks up at me from where he’s sitting, and neither of us says anything for a minute.
Then I reach out and put my hand against his jaw the same way I did with Jase on the floor of my room, and he closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens them they are direct and certain.
He looks at the open office door, then back at me. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Right,” I reply enthusiastically. “We need to go back to the apartment.”
***
The walk to my room feels charged with every almost-moment we have ever had. Max’s hand is on my lower back. We’d left the station at the immediate end of the work day for this reason.
The moment the door closes behind us, and he turns the lock with a quiet click, the air in the room grows thick.
We stand there facing each other. For weeks, we have circled this moment. For weeks, he has pulled away. Now there is nothing left between us but the truth.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about our last moment together in the kitchen,” Max says, his voice low and rough.
“When I had you pressed against the counter. I wanted nothing more than to bend you over it. The urge had never been stronger before then. Every single day since then, I have been fighting myself.”
He closes the distance between us and kisses me like a man who has finally run out of control.
The kiss is deep, hungry, almost desperate. His hand cups the back of my neck, holding me exactly where he wants me while his tongue slides against mine.
I moan into his mouth, and he answers with a low sound that vibrates through my chest. His other hand slides under my hoodie, palm hot against my skin as he pushes the fabric up.
We break the kiss only long enough for him to pull my hoodie and t-shirt off together. He looks at me, and his breath catches.
“You are so much more beautiful than I let myself imagine,” he murmurs. His hands move over my ribs, my waist, my breasts. “I tried so hard not to picture you like this. I told myself it was wrong. That I couldn’t have you. But every night I still thought about you.”
I tug at his shirt, and he yanks it off. The feeling of his bare skin against mine makes us both groan. Max walks me backward until my legs hit the bed, then lays me down.
He removes the rest of my clothes, kissing every new inch he uncovers—my throat, the tops of my breasts, my stomach, the sensitive skin of my inner thighs.
When he settles between my legs and looks up at me, his eyes are dark with weeks of restrained want.
“I have wanted to taste you for so long,” he says quietly.
Then his mouth is on me.
He licks me slowly, thoroughly, learning exactly what makes my hips lift, and my breath catch.
When he finds the rhythm I like, he stays there, sucking gently on my clit while two thick fingers slide inside me. I moan his name, my fingers tightening in his hair. He growls against me, the vibration sending sparks through my whole body.
“Max… oh God…”
He keeps going, steady and relentless, until pleasure crashes over me. My thighs tremble around his shoulders as I come hard, crying out. He stays with me through every wave, only pulling back when I am boneless and breathing hard.
Max kisses his way up my body and rests his forehead against mine. I can feel how hard he is, pressing hot and heavy against my thigh.
“I have spent weeks trying to be responsible,” he says, voice strained. “Weeks trying not to touch you the way I wanted to. And you… You feel so much better than anything I imagined. Warmer. Wetter. Perfect.”
I reach between us and wrap my hand around him. He is thick and pulsing in my palm. Max groans deeply and presses his face into my neck.
“I need you inside me,” I whisper.
He nods, and lines himself up. He pushes in inch by inch, stretching me open until he is buried to the hilt. We both go still, breathing hard.
“Fuck, Brielle,” he breathes. “This is… You are so much better than my fantasies. I can’t believe I waited this long.”
He starts to move, deep and powerful strokes that make the bed creak beneath us.
Every thrust is deliberate, controlled, but I can feel the hunger underneath it.
I wrap my legs around his waist and meet him thrust for thrust. The sound of our bodies meeting fills the room along with our moans and ragged breathing.
“Look at me,” he says.
I open my eyes. His gaze is locked on mine, intense and raw. He leans down and kisses me fiercely as he drives into me harder.
“You feel so good,” he groans against my mouth. “So fucking good. I thought about this every time I saw you. Every time I had to walk away. I wanted you so badly it hurt.”
The pleasure builds fast and deep inside me. I dig my nails into his back and moan his name. Max shifts his angle and hits that perfect spot again and again until I come hard around him, crying out as my body clenches tight.
He doesn’t stop. He fucks me through it, then suddenly flips us so I am on top. His hands grip my hips almost bruising as he guides me, thrusting up hard while I ride him. I brace my hands on his chest and move with him, grinding down every time he drives up.
“That’s it,” he says, voice rough. “Take what you need.”
I move faster, chasing another peak. Max watches me with dark, hungry eyes, his thumbs stroking my skin. When I come again, it is even stronger. My head falls back as pleasure floods through me.
Max suddenly flips me onto my back again, hooks one of my legs over his arm, and drives into me with deep, powerful strokes. His control is fraying. His breathing is ragged. He buries his face in my neck as his rhythm starts to break.
“Brielle,” he groans, saying my name like it is the only word he knows. “Fuck— I’m—”
He thrusts deep one final time and comes hard, groaning my name against my skin as his body shakes.
We stay locked together for a long time, breathing hard. Eventually, Max pulls out carefully.
He pulls me against his chest without a word, wrapping one strong arm around me and stroking my back with his other hand.
Neither of us speaks.
In the quiet dark, I listen to his steady heartbeat and feel the warmth of a man who has finally stopped holding himself back.