Scorch (Devil’s Peak Fire & Rescue #7)

Chapter 1

Levi

“Lieutenant Kane?”

Her voice hits the back of my neck like a match.

I freeze with a clipboard in my hand, knuckles whitening around the edge. For a second, my body forgets how to do anything but listen.

I turn slowly.

Sadie. My Sadie stands inside the bay in full intern gear, hair pulled back tight, helmet tucked under her arm.

Turnout coat swallowed by a frame that used to fit against my chest like it belonged there.

She’s older than the girl who left. Sharper around the eyes.

The kind of pretty that doesn’t ask permission. The kind that knows.

And she’s at home in my firehouse like she never walked away from it.

“Intern Marshall,” I say, because if I say her first name, Sadie Marshall, I’m going to taste high school summers and broken promises and everything I told myself I’d stop wanting.

Her mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. Not quite not.

“Sadie,” she corrects, polite. Professional. As if she didn’t once steal my sweatshirt and sleep in it after summer bonfires and breathless kisses.

“Intern,” I repeat. My gaze drops deliberately to the badge on her chest, like I don’t know the shape of her mouth by heart. “You’re late.”

Her brows lift. “I’m three minutes early.”

Her smile flickers, and lands somewhere low in my gut.

I take one step closer, then stop myself. Space is safer. Space is control.

“Chief Marshall in his office?” she asks, nodding toward the hallway. Chief Marshall. Her father. The words are normal. The question is normal. The fact that her father’s name is now a wall between us is not.

“Yes,” I say. “He’s expecting you.” The truth is, I’ve known this day was coming for the last week when Chief announced that his daughter would be interning with us for the summer, but I still wasn’t prepared. Four years gone and she still takes my breath away.

Sadie shifts her weight, and the helmet under her arm bumps against her hip. She adjusts it like she’s adjusted this kind of weight a hundred times. Like she didn’t leave Devil’s Peak with a backpack and a scholarship and a tear-streaked face she swore was just allergies.

“Thanks,” she says, and her eyes meet mine. “Lieutenant Kane.”

There it is again. That careful distance. That formal tone. The little blade she slides between my shoulders and twists.

My jaw tightens. “Don’t.”

Her lashes lower. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t say it like that.”

A beat stretches—hot and sharp—while the rest of the bay keeps breathing around us. Hoses. Tools. Diesel and metal. The faint sound of Axel and the rest of the crew in the kitchen laughing at something stupid on someone’s phone.

Sadie’s voice drops when she speaks again. “Like what?”

Like a stranger. Like I’m just a title. Like you didn’t once call me Levi with your mouth pressed to my throat.

I don’t say any of that. I can’t. Not here.

“Just… don’t,” I grind out, and pivot away before the sound of my own pulse gives me away.

I hear her take a breath. I hear the smallest shift of gear as she turns. Then her boots tap down the hallway toward her father’s office.

The moment she’s out of my sight, my chest loosens like it’s been braced for impact and finally takes the hit. I set the clipboard down harder than necessary on the workbench.

“Damn,” Axel mutters from behind me. “Did the temperature just jump, or is that just Lieutenant Kane melting down?”

I don’t turn. “Go clean something.”

“Already did,” Axel grins like a menace. He leans against the doorframe with a mug in hand, smug as hell. “I was bored, so I cleaned the fridge. Want to see me die of boredom next, or are you gonna tell us why you look like you just saw a ghost in turnout gear?”

“She’s not a ghost,” Sawyer says, coming up beside them, eyebrows raised. “She’s very real. And she’s in our bay. Wearing our gear. And—correct me if I’m wrong—she just called you Lieutenant Kane like she was trying to keep herself from saying something else.”

The crew’s attention hits me like a spotlight. Great. Devil’s Peak Fire & Rescue: where privacy goes to die.

I hook my thumbs into my belt and force my shoulders loose. “She’s the chief’s daughter.”

“So?” Axel says. “We all know that.”

Ash’s grin widens. “We also know you dated her.”

“I did not date her,” I snap.

Three eyebrows lift in sync.

Sawyer takes a slow sip of coffee, looking amused in that steady, maddening way he has. “Uh-huh.”

I glare at him. “We were kids.”

“We were also kids,” Ash says, “and I never looked like I wanted to set a building on fire just because someone walked in.”

Axel makes a thoughtful sound. “Or like you wanted to drag her into the supply closet.”

“Axel,” I warn.

“What?” he says innocently. “I’m just saying. If you need the closet, I can clear it. For safety.”

I step toward him, and he lifts both hands, laughing. “Kidding. Kidding. Relax, Lieutenant.”

“That’s the problem,” Ash says, eyes bright with cruelty. “You look like you’re about to explode.”

I look past them toward the hallway, because my eyes do that now. Because my body does that now. Like it’s waiting for her to come back and prove this wasn’t a hallucination.

“She’s an intern,” I say flatly. “She’s here to learn. That’s it.”

Sawyer’s gaze sharpens. “And you’re her supervisor.”

My stomach drops like the floor moved under my boots. I already knew it. I just didn’t want to say it out loud.

Axel whistles. “Oh… that’s messy.”

“It’s not messy,” I lie.

Ash laughs. “Sure. Nothing messy about your ex being your boss’s daughter and your intern.”

“She’s not my ex.”

Sawyer’s mouth twitches. “Then what is she?”

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

What is she? She was the girl who handed me her heart and asked me to hold it while she chased the world, and I told her I would.

She was the future I built in my head—quiet cabin mornings, her bare feet on my hardwood, my last name on her mouth.

She was the sharpest loss I ever took without flames.

“She left,” I say finally, voice dull.

The bay goes quieter. Even Axel’s grin fades to something more careful.

Ash’s tone softens, the bastard. “Levi…”

I cut him off. “Don’t.”

Sawyer sets his mug down. “You want me to talk to the chief? Ask him to assign someone else—”

“No,” I say too fast.

Axel’s brows shoot up. “No?”

I swallow. It tastes like metal. “No. I can handle it.”

“Can you?” Sawyer asks. Not teasing now. Just… real.

I nod once. “She’s an intern. I’m a lieutenant. It’s my job.”

Ash leans closer, voice low like he’s offering a secret. “Your job, sure. But your face back there looked like you were two seconds from either kissing her or throwing her out of the bay.”

“I wasn’t,” I say, because the truth is worse.

The truth is I wanted to do both.

The truth is I wanted to grab her by the back of her coat and drag her somewhere private so I could ask her why she came back now, why she didn’t warn me, why she thinks she can walk into my life like it didn’t crack open when she left.

The truth is I wanted to press her against the wall and feel if she still trembles the same way she used to when I got too close.

The truth is I wanted to tell her I never stopped wanting her and I hate her for making that true.

The truth is… I’m not as unshakable as everyone thinks.

A door opens down the hall. Footsteps return—steady, confident. Not the hesitant cadence from before.

Sadie steps back into the bay with a clipboard now of her own, a pen behind her ear like she belongs in this world. Like she didn’t spend years away.

Her gaze lands on the three idiots watching me like it’s a live show, then on me.

“Lieutenant,” she says, louder this time. For them. For the room. For the boundary.

I hate how good she is at it.

I lift my chin. “Intern.”

Axel clears his throat dramatically. “Well, would you look at that—professionalism.”

Sadie’s eyes flick to him. “Axel Ramirez.”

Axel blinks. “You remember me.”

“I remember everyone,” she says sweetly.

Ash leans a shoulder against the engine, grin returning. “She remembers everyone, Lieutenant.”

I shoot him a look that says I will drown you in a mop bucket.

Sadie ignores them and steps closer to me, stopping just outside the distance that would feel like touching. She holds up her clipboard. “Chief said you’re in charge of my training schedule.”

“Correct.”

“And he said you’d assign me tasks.”

“Correct.”

Her smile is small. Controlled. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “Then assign away.”

My gaze drops to her hands. There’s a faint smudge of soot near her thumb—already earned, already real. Her nails are short. Practical. No polish.

Not the girl who left, then.

I glance up. “You can start by learning where everything is.”

“I know where everything is,” she says. “I grew up here.”

A couple of the guys make appreciative little noises, like they just watched her throw a dart.

I don’t smile. “Not the same.”

Her eyes narrow. “Is that your official training philosophy? ‘Not the same’?”

“Yep,” I say. “You’ll learn it.”

Sadie steps closer—half a foot, maybe. Enough that I can smell her shampoo under the firehouse scent, clean and sharp and dangerously familiar. Enough that my brain turns traitor and flashes a memory of her hair spilled over my pillow.

“Okay,” she says, voice low enough only I can hear. “Levi.”

There it is. The secret. My name on her lips lights me up like a match.

My throat tightens. I keep my face blank. “Save that for off-duty.”

“Are we off-duty?” she asks, eyes sliding down my chest like she’s reading the name stitched above my pocket.

I feel it like fingers.

I don’t move. I don’t flinch. I refuse to give her the satisfaction.

“No.”

Her smile deepens. A weapon, pretty and sharp. “Then I guess I’ll keep calling you Lieutenant Kane.”

“Good,” I say.

“Because you like it?” she challenges.

Because it keeps my hands from doing something stupid. “Because it keeps you professional.”

She hums, unimpressed. “You’ve always loved giving orders.”

Ash chokes on a laugh. I cut my eyes toward him. “Ash, find something to do.”