Chapter 2 — James
The afternoon is an exercise in controlled torture.
Tess sits across from my desk with her laptop open, asking questions about training protocols and equipment maintenance schedules, and I answer like I'm not acutely aware of every shift in her posture, every time she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, every small noise she makes when she's concentrating.
She's different. I knew she would be, fourteen years is long enough to change anyone, but knowing it and experiencing it are entirely separate things.
At twenty, Tess was sharp and funny and confident in a way that felt slightly performative, like she was trying on the person she wanted to be and hoping it would fit.
She was also uncertain in ways she tried to hide, especially around me, and I watched her test the space between us constantly. Pushing to see if I'd pull back. Pulling to see if I'd follow.
I didn't follow. I convinced myself it was the right choice.
Now she's thirty-four, and the performance is gone. The confidence is real. She walks into rooms like she belongs there, asks questions without hedging, and when I tried to deflect at lunch she looked me in the eye and called me on it without blinking.
She's also hot in ways that make my brain stop working at regular intervals.
Now she's fuller through the hips and chest and thighs, and she's wearing pants that fit her properly and a blouse that doesn't hide the curve of her waist or the way her body moves when she shifts in her chair.
I've been thinking about putting my hands on her since she walked through the bay doors this morning.
Thinking about pulling her against me and finding out if she still makes that small breathless sound when I kiss her neck.
Thinking about getting my hands on those hips, on those breasts, on every fucking curve I can see through her clothes.
Every time she leans forward to read something on the screen, I can see the shape of her breasts under the blouse, the way they press together, and I have to actively redirect my thoughts before I do something monumentally stupid.
Every time she crosses her legs, the fabric of her pants pulls tight across her thighs, and I find myself wondering what it would feel like to have those thighs wrapped around me.
She has a habit of running her thumb along her bottom lip when she's thinking, and watching her do it is making me lose my mind in increments.
Shit, this is a problem.
Because she's here in a professional capacity, and I'm the captain of this station, and the last time I touched Tess Holt I convinced myself it was the mature thing to let her go.
"Captain Callahan?"
I blink. She's watching me with her eyebrows slightly raised, and I have absolutely no idea what she just asked.
"Sorry. What was the question?"
"I asked about your last equipment certification audit. When was it conducted?"
Right. The audit. The thing I should be focused on instead of the way her throat moves when she swallows, instead of imagining what it would feel like to put my mouth there.
"March. All current certifications are in the green binder."
She makes a note, her fingers moving across the keyboard with practiced efficiency, and I try very hard not to notice the way her hand moves, or the small crease between her eyebrows when she's focused, or the fact that she's bitten her bottom lip three times in the past ten minutes and I want to bite it for her.
Want to bite it and then soothe it with my tongue and swallow whatever sound she makes.
"And your apparatus maintenance schedule?" she asks, not looking up from her screen.
I pull the relevant folder from the drawer, slide it across the desk to her. Our fingers don't touch, but they come close enough that I can feel the heat of her hand, and that small almost-contact makes my jaw tight.
She pages through the folder, making notes, asking clarifying questions I answer on autopilot. I watch her work and think about fourteen years ago, about the way she looked in my bed with her hair spread across my pillow, about the sounds she made when I got my mouth on her, about how she tasted.
I wonder if she tastes the same now.
I wonder if she'd let me find out.
My radio crackles, shattering the tension. Dispatch, calling a structure fire six blocks east. Residential. Possible entrapment.
I'm on my feet before the address finishes, the shift from sitting still to moving immediate and complete. This I know how to do. This is simple.
"I need to go," I tell Tess, already moving toward the door.
She stands too, grabbing her bag with practiced efficiency. "I'm coming with you."
"You don't need to—"
"I'm supposed to observe station operations." Her voice is firm, brooking no argument. "This is station operations."
She's right, and I don't have time to argue. "Stay in the vehicle when we get there. If I clear you to approach, you follow instructions exactly."
"Understood."
The bay is already in motion when we get there. Rhett and Garrett are geared up and moving for the engine with the synchronized efficiency of people who've done this hundreds of times together.
Declan is in the driver's seat, hands sure on the wheel, already running through his mental checklist. Travis has the medical kit, his face set in the particular calm that means he's shifted into paramedic mode.
The whole station has shifted into the practiced rhythm of response, everyone knowing their role without needing to be told.
I pull on my turnout gear with the speed of someone who's done this thousands of times—pants, boots, coat, helmet. The movements are automatic, muscle memory taking over, and when I glance toward the bay doors, Tess is standing there watching me.
Her eyes track the movement of my hands as I fasten my coat. Follow the line of my body as I reach for my helmet. And there's something in her expression that looks like hunger.
Raw. Undisguised. The professional mask she's been wearing all day completely gone.
I should not be thinking about that right now.
"Let's go," I say, and we're moving.
Tess follows in her vehicle. I can see her in the side mirror, keeping pace, staying close, and some part of my brain that should be focused entirely on the call ahead is instead thinking about the fact that she's watching me do this.
That she'll see me work. That I want her to see me work in ways that have nothing to do with professional assessment and everything to do with the way she looked at me in the bay.
Like she wanted to put her hands on me.
Like she was remembering what it felt like the last time she did.
The house is fully involved when we arrive.
Smoke pouring from the second floor in thick black columns, flames visible through the upstairs windows, heat radiating from the structure in waves.
Neighbors cluster on the lawn at a safe distance, and a woman stands near the street crying and pointing at the house, her voice rising in panic.
I'm out of the engine before it fully stops, my boots hitting pavement, eyes already scanning the scene and running calculations.
"Captain," Garrett says, appearing beside me. His voice is calm, steady, exactly what I need. He nods toward the woman. "She says her husband's inside. Upstairs bedroom, northeastern corner."
I nod, processing. "Travis, set up triage. Declan, get the line ready. Garrett, you're with me."
We move.
The entry is textbook. I've done this enough times that my body knows what to do before my brain finishes processing, stay low, check the walls for heat, keep Garrett in visual range, call out every room as we clear it.
The smoke is thick enough that visibility drops to almost nothing, heavy and acrid, forcing us to rely on touch and training and the practiced communication that comes from working together for years.
The heat presses down like something solid and alive, and I can hear the fire above us, the particular roar and crack that means it's spreading.
We need to move fast.
Upstairs. The bedroom door is closed, which might have saved him. I signal Garrett, test the door for heat with the back of my hand, push through.
He's on the floor near the window, unconscious but breathing. Older, maybe sixty, dressed in pajamas.
I get him over my shoulder in a fireman's carry while Garrett clears our exit path, and we're moving back down, back through the smoke and heat, back out into the clean air and the June afternoon that feels shockingly bright after the interior darkness.
My lungs are burning. My gear is hot enough that I can feel it through the layers. But we got him out.
Travis takes over the moment we're clear. I set the man down on the grass, step back, let the paramedic do his work. My heart rate is elevated but controlled. Adrenaline singing through my system but managed.
This is what I'm good at. This is what I've trained for.
When I turn, Tess is standing twenty feet away next to her vehicle, exactly where I told her to stay.
She's watching me with an expression I can't quite read, but the intensity of it hits me like a physical thing. Her eyes track my movements as I pull off my helmet, as I wipe sweat from my face, as I shrug out of the heavy coat now that the immediate danger has passed.
She's looking at me like I'm something she wants and is trying very hard not to reach for.
The scene secures slowly. The fire gets knocked down, contained, no longer a threat. The man is conscious and breathing, being loaded into the ambulance, and his wife is crying again but this time it's relief, her hands pressed to her mouth as she watches them work.
Garrett appears beside me again, pulling off his helmet. Sweat darkens his silver hair. "Good save, Captain."
"You too. Good work in there."
He nods and moves off to help with overhaul, and I'm left standing in the middle of the street with my turnout gear half-off and Tess Holt watching me like I'm something she's trying to figure out and failing.
I should look away. I should focus on the scene, on my crew, on the job that's not quite finished.
I don't look away.
Neither does she.