Chapter 22
Sam
The past week had felt like something out of a dream I didn’t want to wake up from.
Mornings with Jamie's head on my chest. Her hair spread across my shoulder. The way she'd shift in her sleep and reach for me even in dreams I'd never know about. I'd started waking up before my alarm just so I could have a few minutes of watching her breathe before the day pulled us apart.
The drive to the station with coffee Jamie had made stronger than I'd have made it myself.
The shift passing slower than it used to because I knew what was waiting for me at the end of it.
Pulling into the parking lot of their apartment and seeing the kitchen window lit up.
Rosie's drawings taped to the fridge. The smell of whatever Jamie had thrown together for dinner.
Playing guitar for Rosie in the living room while Jamie washed dishes she wouldn't let me help with.
Tucking Rosie into bed with stories I made up because I'd run out of the ones I remembered.
Falling into bed with Jamie after. Her mouth on mine in the dark.
Her hands in my hair. The small sounds she made that I'd been carrying with me through every shift since the first time.
I'd never had this.
I hadn't even known what this was until she came back to Havensworth.
I'd thought I was building a life before she did.
I'd thought Amber and the apartment and the job were the shape of it.
But none of that had felt like this. None of that had made me wake up before my alarm just to look at someone.
I leaned against the engine in the bay and let myself sit in it.
The quiet shift was a gift. Nothing had gone wrong all morning.
The checks were done. Tyler was somewhere with his certification packet.
Sean was on the back lot pretending no one could smell his cigarettes.
Pale light came through the bay doors and settled on the concrete, and I thought about Jamie.
She'd said something the other night about staying in Havensworth.
I'd told her if she decided to go back to New York, I'd go with her.
I'd meant it. I still meant it. I'd quit the department.
I'd figure out the FDNY. I'd pack up and drive eighteen hours north and start over in a city I didn't know for a woman I'd loved my whole life.
That part was easy.
But I thought about the poker games that ran past midnight, Sean losing every hand and still dealing himself back in.
Tyler's mother dropping off a pan of brownies once a month because she worried we weren't eating enough, and the way the whole crew acted like starving orphans when she walked through the door.
The morning Cap caught us trying to teach the new ambulance driver how to back the rig into the bay and stood there shaking his head for a full minute before he said a word.
If Jamie asked me to leave this, I'd leave it. I wouldn't hesitate.
But I'd miss it.
"Reeves."
Cap's voice came from the direction of his office. I pushed off the engine.
"Got a minute?"
I wiped my hands on a rag and followed him across the bay. He held the door to his office open, waited for me to pass, then pulled it shut behind us.
He gestured to the chair across from him. I sat.
"New class of probies is coming in next month," he said. "Four of them. Fresh out of the academy."
I nodded. I'd heard. Every station was getting new bodies. The department had run thin for a while, and someone upstairs had finally decided to do something about it.
"I want you to take point on them."
I looked up.
"Show them the station. Teach them how we do things. Break them in the right way." Cap leaned back in his chair. "You've been doing good work, Sam. The guys respect you. The newer ones come to you before they come to me half the time. I've been watching."
I didn't know what to say.
"I know you didn't ask for this." Cap's voice was steady. "But I'm asking you to do it. The probies we get this year are going to shape this station for the next decade. I want them shaped by someone who gives a damn."
"Thank you, Cap."
I sat with the weight of what he was handing me for a moment.
I thought about the kid I'd been when I walked into the academy.
Scared out of my mind. Convinced I was going to wash out in the first week.
I hadn't signed up because I knew what I was doing.
I'd signed up because Jack told me to. He'd said I'd find what he found there. Brothers. A place that made sense.
He'd been right. He'd been right about all of it.
If I told him about this, he would have grinned in a stupid way and told me it was about time Cap pulled his head out.
He would have bought me a beer. He would have given me shit for the rest of the week about how I was going to ruin a whole generation of Havensworth firefighters before he finally admitted, late at night, somewhere between the third and fourth round, that he was proud of me.
I wanted to tell him. I wanted to walk out of this office and find him in the bay and tell him.
Grief was a funny thing. Some days I forgot for whole stretches of time.
Some days I'd hear the rumble of the engine coming back from a call and half expect to see Jack swing down from the cab.
Some days I'd reach for my phone to text him something and remember, right as my thumb hit the screen, that there was no one on the other end.
"I won't let you down, Cap."
"I know." His face softened. "That's why I'm asking."
The knock came before either of us had moved.
"Sutton, I'm stealing a minute of your time—"
Deputy Chief Graff was already halfway through the door by the time Cap looked up. He moved through the station the way he moved through every room in the department, like the space belonged to him and he was generous enough to let the rest of us occupy it.
"Henry." Cap leaned back in his chair. "You always did know how to make an entrance."
Graff laughed. "Forty years, Sutton. I've earned it."
He crossed the office and stopped when he saw me.
"Reeves." His face broke into the easy grin he saved for moments like this.
"Chief." I straightened in my chair.
"I've been meaning to catch you." He clapped me once on the shoulder. "What's this I hear about Donovan's sister talking to our firefighters? Something about a reform proposal?"
I took a breath before I answered.
"She's noticed some gaps between how the department runs and how other cities do things. She thinks some of it could stand a second look."
Graff's smile didn't quite move, but something behind it did.
"And what does a girl from New York know about firefighting?"
Jamie's voice rose in my head before I could answer. So do we wait for more people to die before anything changes?
"Bless her heart." Graff's voice had gone fond. "She's been through something most people couldn't come back from. Losing her brother like that. Raising that little girl on her own. Women need to have something to occupy their minds. Especially after something like that."
He clapped me on the shoulder a second time. "Take good care of her, Reeves. She's lucky to have you."
He turned to Cap and started in on whatever he'd come to say.
I stood up. Nodded to them both, though neither was looking at me. Walked out of the office.
Tyler was still in the back somewhere. Sean was at the coffee maker, muttering at it the way he muttered at anything that failed him twice in a row.
I went back to the engine and started checking the gear I'd already checked an hour ago.
Graff's voice had been sitting in my chest since yesterday.
Bless her heart. Women should have something to occupy their minds.
I hadn't told Jamie and I wasn't going to. She already knew what she was up against. She'd been up against it since the day she filed the first appeal for Jack, and putting Graff's words in her head would only give her one more thing to carry.
We'd picked up signatures over the past few weeks.
A couple of dispatchers. A few first responders.
A handful of firefighters, which was more than I'd thought we'd get.
Tyler was one of them. He'd come to Megan's kitchen one night and put his name down without making a thing of it, and I'd watched Jamie try not to cry at the table.
It wasn't a lot. We both knew it wasn't a lot. But maybe—maybe—if we kept showing up, kept collecting names, someone higher up than Graff would hear it. It was a long shot. I knew it was a long shot. But I wasn't going to be the one who told her to stop trying.
"I think it's that one," Jamie said, pointing. "1142."
I pulled into the lot and parked in one of the visitor spaces.
Jenna had asked us to come by that afternoon.
The apartment building was three stories, red brick, with a small playground in the side yard.
Jenna and Quinn had been living here since the fire.
I didn't know the building, but I knew the neighborhood.
It was the kind of place people moved to when their old place was gone and they needed somewhere to land.
Jamie didn't move right away. I watched her gather herself, the way she did before every meeting like this one. She closed her notebook. Took a breath.
"Ready?" I asked.
She nodded.
I came around the front of the truck and met her on the sidewalk. Took her hand without asking. She let me.
Jenna opened the door before we could knock.
"Jamie." She stepped back and waved us in. "Come in."
She hugged Jamie briefly—not the hug of old friends, but the hug of women who had been in rooms with each other during the worst days of their lives. Jamie held on for a second longer than a greeting. Jenna let her.
"I'm sorry it took me this long to come by."
"Don't be." Jenna pulled back. "I know exactly how long it takes. Come sit."