Chapter Two
Smoke In My Lungs, You In My Head
Darren
Some calls get under your skin.
Most of the time, you suit up, you do the job, you come back to the station, you wash the smoke out of your gear and the adrenaline out of your blood. You crack jokes. You eat whatever disaster someone calls dinner. You sleep if you’re lucky.
And then there are calls like this. Calls that don’t wash out. Calls that look at you with big, terrified eyes and wrap their shaking fingers into your jacket like you’re the only solid thing left in the world.
Calls with names like Olivia.
“Cole! C-side! Watch the collapse zone!” Captain Draven yells, pointing with his gloved hand toward the rear corner of the house where the roof is sagging like a broken spine.
“On it!” I shout back, even though my head is still half in that ambulance pulling away.
Focus. There’ll be time to think later. Right now, it’s water, heat, angles, and structure failure that require my attention.
We move in rhythm, the crew and I, like we share one brain split between different bodies.
Hoses thrum, ladders slam into place, and radios crackle.
The house screams as flames chew through what used to be walls and photo frames and a life.
I hate house fires.
Commercial buildings are awful, sure, but houses? Homes? Those feel personal. These are where people sleep. Where they laugh and cry and make breakfast and argue about stupid shit. Where they think they’re safe until the world, or some asshole, proves them wrong.
“Cole, watch your right!” Matt barks.
I pivot just as a section of gutter detaches and takes a suicidal dive toward my head. It glances off my shoulder instead, just a glancing blow, but still enough to send a jolt down my arm.
“I’m good,” I call back, shaking it off.
We drown the beast inch by inch. It fights tooth and nail. They always do.
By the time the flames are more steam than fire, my muscles are singing and sweat sticks to my back beneath the gear. The night air bites at any exposed skin, cold and sharp, a slap back to reality.
But my mind? It’s still in that bedroom. Still lifting her. Still feeling the way she curled into me like I wasn’t just some random guy doing his job but something ... more. Like I mattered. Like I was safe too.
Olivia.
Soft, scared, and beautifully stubborn even in a crisis. ‘I’m heavy,’ and, yeah, that one punched the air right out of my chest. Christ, the shit people make women believe about themselves. About their bodies. About their worth.
If I ever meet the man who did that to her... My jaw locks.
No. Not if. When.
Because women don’t get that kind of fear etched into their bones from nowhere. That kind of shrinking doesn’t grow naturally, somebody waters it. I know the pattern too well. I grew up watching it play out in slow motion until it ended with a sheet over my sister’s face.
Rae. Her name is a scar I don’t cover.
“Cole.” Captain Draven’s voice pulls me back. He claps a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Nice work inside. You got her out fast. EMS said she’s stable.”
Relief loosens something in my chest I didn’t realize was wound tight. “Good.”
He studies me for a beat through the slowing chaos. “Go get a bottle of water and get out of your head.”
“I’m fine,” I lie automatically.
He snorts. “You’re twenty-three and you think you invented brooding. Hydrate anyway.”
I huff a laugh and obey because he’s right and because he’ll ride my ass if I don’t. I shed my SCBA, crack a water bottle, and tip it back. The liquid is lukewarm and still tastes like the plastic bottle it came in, but it helps.
My hands don’t stop shaking. Not visibly. Not in a way anyone but me would notice. But I can feel it in my bones, that buzzing, low-grade electricity. The aftershock of walking through fire while your brain whispers about every possible way it could’ve gone wrong.
She could’ve been unconscious. The ceiling could’ve come down. I could’ve been too late.
I close my eyes for half a second and there she is again, big eyes, soot-smudged cheeks, mascara streaked like she’d been crying for a century.
And still beautiful. Not in some delicate, breakable way.
In a soft, real, woman way. Curves hewn by life.
That mouth. Those hands fisted in my gear like she’d decided I was the only thing she trusted.
I’m in trouble.
“Yo, Cole.” Matt sidles up next to me, his shoulder bumping mine. He’s grinning, because he’s always grinning unless someone’s dying, and sometimes even then. “You look like someone smacked you with a two-by-four made of feelings.”
“Go away,” I mutter, but my lips twitch.
“Aha. He does have feelings. Knew it.” He unscrews his own bottle and chugs half. “Was that the homeowner you carried out? Cute. In a soot-smeared-librarian-pinup kind of way.”
Heat flares under my collar, protective and irrational and instant. “Watch it.”
He lifts his hands in surrender. “Hey, relax. Compliment, not insult.” Then his eyes sharpen just enough to let me know he saw the reaction I didn’t want him to. “Are you good?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re lying,” he says pleasantly. “And badly.”
I give up and shrug. “She was scared.”
“They usually are,” he says gently. That’s the thing about Matt—under all the bullshit, he’s one of the most solid people I have ever known. “You did your job. You saved her.”
It doesn’t feel like just a job.
There’s a line you’re supposed to keep as a firefighter. Professional distance. Compassion without attachment. Help, but don’t hold on. But she’s under my skin already and I know it.
“I’m going check on her at the hospital,” I hear myself say.
He nods like that makes perfect sense. “Good. Closure.”
That’s not the word for what I want. I want to see her breathing without the mask. I want to hear her voice again, not shredded by smoke this time. I want to know who the hell hurt her enough that ‘I’m heavy’ is the first thing she tells a man carrying her out of a burning building.
And, yeah. I want to see her smile.
We finish the overhaul, pack the hoses, and finally, eventually, climb back into the engine. The house still smolders behind us, a blackened skeleton against the night, and guilt sits heavy in my gut even though I know better. We saved what we could. Sometimes “enough” still feels like failure.
At the station, the familiar rhythms take over.
Gear hung.
Report written.
Shower.
The water runs grey for a while before my dark skin shows through again. Steam curls around me, but it isn’t the same as the smoke. It doesn’t choke. It doesn’t cling. I brace my hands against the tile and bow my head under the spray, letting the noise drown out the echo of sirens.
I see Rae’s face if I close my eyes too long. So I don’t.
I towel off, pull on sweats, and flop onto my assigned bunk. My phone stares at me from the little shelf next to the bed like it knows exactly what I’m considering.
Don’t get involved, the rational part of my brain says. Too late, the rest of me replies. I grab my phone.
Hospitals all smell the same—disinfectant and fear and overcooked coffee—and I hate them for that. I tend to avoid them at all costs if possible. But I hate not knowing more. I pull up the ER number, staring at it long enough to feel ridiculous.
I’m not family. I’m not anything. Not yet, some stupid reckless part of me whispers. I hit CALL before I can talk myself out of it.
“Emergency department, this is Casey,” a tired female voice answers.
“Hey,” I say, clearing my throat. “Uh. This is Firefighter Darren Cole with Kidds Beach FD. I brought in a woman from the house fire on Willow Road tonight. Her name’s Olivia Reed. I just wanted to make sure she’s okay.”
There’s typing on the other end, the clack of keys. “One moment.”
I drum my fingers on my thigh. Please be okay. Please don’t be another ghost.
“She’s stable,” Casey says finally. “Mild smoke inhalation and no significant burns. We’re keeping her overnight for observation, but she’s resting comfortably.”
The breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding leaves me in a rush. “Thank you.”
“Do you want me to pass along a message?”
My mouth works before my brain gets a vote. “Yeah. Just tell her Darren checked in. Darren Cole. And that ... I meant it when I said she’s safe now.”
There’s a smile in the nurse’s voice when she replies. “I’ll tell her.”
I hang up and collapse back against the thin pillow, staring at the bunk above mine.
This is stupid. This is fast. This is everything I swore I wouldn’t do again—wrap myself around someone’s pain like it’s my responsibility to fix it, to shield them, to make up for the fact that I couldn’t save my sister.
But this doesn’t feel like penance. It feels like fate.
I think about the way Olivia said, ‘I’m with you,’ breathless and raw behind that oxygen mask, like she didn’t mean to say it out loud. Like it was a truth that slipped out anyway.
Yeah. I’m with you too.
Sleep takes me in fits and starts, full of smoke and wide brown eyes, and when morning finally filters weakly through the station windows, I already know where I’m going before anyone suggests breakfast.
Matt raises a brow as I pull on clean jeans and a hoodie.
“Errand?” he drawls.
“Hospital,” I say simply.
He grins. “Tell soot-smudged librarian I said hi.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Coward.” He laughs freely as he ribs me.
I flip him off on my way out, which only makes him laugh harder.
The drive is short. The walk from the lot to the sliding glass doors feels longer. My heart kicks up in a way that has nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the fact that I’m about to see her again without the world burning down around us.
Inside, fluorescent lights hum overhead. I check in at the desk, get directed to her room, and force myself not to run.
I stop in the doorway.
She’s propped up in the hospital bed, hair messy, face clean now except for a faint shadow where smoke tried to claim her. She’s reading the little dry-erase board with her name and the date on it like it personally offended her.
She looks alive. She looks tired. She looks fucking beautiful.
Her eyes flick up at the sound of my knock on the doorframe. They widen in shock before she schools her features.
“Hey,” I say, suddenly weirdly nervous for a guy who runs into burning buildings for a living. “Told you I’d check on you.”
Her lips part. And just like that, the buzzing in my veins quiets, the world narrows, and every reckless instinct I have leans forward.
Yeah. No washing this one out.