Chapter 12
Cal
The crib came in pieces. Forty-seven of them, according to the instruction manual, which was written in a font so small I had to squint to read it.
Assembly time: approximately two hours.
It was past midnight. Gabrielle had been home for less than twelve hours, and Owen and I had been at this for three.
He'd shown up without being asked. That was Owen's way. He'd been at the station when someone left Gabrielle at the door, had watched me bundle her up and drive her to Lucy at the café. By the time we came back from the hospital, he was already there with his toolbox and a bag of takeout.
"Figured you'd need an extra set of hands," he'd said. No questions about why I was spending my off-hours assembling furniture for my neighbor. No raised eyebrows or knowing looks. Just Owen, steady and solid, ready to help.
Lucy's apartment was quiet except for the soft sounds coming from the bedroom.
Her voice, low and gentle, singing something I couldn't quite make out.
Gabrielle had been fussy all evening, that particular newborn cry that meant nothing was wrong except everything was new and overwhelming.
Lucy had taken her into the bedroom an hour ago, and gradually the crying had faded to whimpers, then to silence.
Owen held slat A in place while I fitted it into bracket B. We worked in comfortable silence, the kind that came from years of moving together on calls, anticipating each other's needs without having to speak.
Riley had dropped off supplies earlier. Showed up at the door with two bags full of diapers, formula, onesies, and a pack-and-play that she'd "borrowed" from the station's community closet.
Liam had followed with more bags of blankets, bottles, and a stuffed elephant that someone had grabbed from somewhere.
"The crew wanted to help," Riley had said, like it was nothing. Like the entire B-shift hadn't pooled their resources within hours of hearing the news.
That was the thing about firefighters, but about this crew in particular. When one of us needed something, the rest showed up. No questions. No hesitation. Just hands reaching out to help carry the weight.
Owen passed me a screw without my asking. I tightened it, checked the alignment, moved on to the next one.
From the bedroom, I heard Lucy's voice again. Still singing, soft and sweet. Something about stars and sleep and dreams. A lullaby, probably. Something her mother had sung to her.
Owen heard it too. His hands paused on the wood.
"She seems good," he said quietly. "With the baby."
"She is."
A beat of silence. Owen wasn't the type to pry, but I could feel the question in the air between us.
"You're good with her too," he added. Not quite a question. Not quite a statement. Just an observation, offered without judgment.
I didn't answer. Didn't know how.
This is what it would feel like.
The thought came unbidden, unwelcome. A family.
A life. Coming home to someone, to the sound of lullabies and the weight of a baby in your arms. Building something together, piece by piece, the way I was building this crib.
Something solid. Something that would last. Something to rest, in this case: my heart and my head.
Everything I'd never let myself want.
Owen handed me another screw. We kept working.
By the time we finished, it was almost 4 AM. The crib stood in the corner of Lucy's living room, sturdy and solid, ready for a baby who was finally sleeping in her mother's arms.
Owen gathered his tools and clapped me on the shoulder once.
"Get some sleep, Cal," he tried to advise me. "You look like you need it."
He let himself out. I stood there looking at the crib for a long moment, at this thing we'd built together for a baby who wasn't mine, in an apartment that wasn't mine, for a woman who was becoming everything to me.
Then I grabbed my jacket and let myself out, quiet as I could.
I didn't trust myself enough to stay.
We fell into a rhythm without planning it.
The first night, Lucy tried to do everything herself. Insisted she was fine, that she didn't need help, that she'd figure it out. By 3 AM, I heard Gabrielle crying through the wall, heard Lucy's exhausted voice trying to soothe her, heard the particular silence of someone at the end of their rope.
I knocked on her door. She opened it with shadows under her eyes and a crying baby in her arms and something like defeat on her face.
"Let me," I was offering help with those words.
She didn't argue. Just handed Gabrielle to me and stumbled toward the bedroom.
"Wake me if—"
"I won't," I interrupted her. She needed to rest. "Sleep."
While she was sleeping, I walked up and down the hallway.
Gabrielle pressed against my chest, her tiny body warm through my shirt.
She was so small. She fussed for the first few minutes.
Little sounds of protest, her face scrunching, her fists waving.
I talked to her while I moved through the room, low and steady.
I spoke nonsense words that didn't mean anything.
Just sound. Just presence. Just someone there in the dark, letting her know she wasn't alone.
Gradually, she settled. Her eyes drifted closed. Her breathing evened out. Her small hand found my finger and held on.
I stood in the dark hallway and felt something crack open in my chest.
She was so vulnerable. So completely dependent on whoever was holding her.
She could be crying, protesting, because somehow I am still a stranger, but she'd chosen to fall asleep in my arms, this tiny person who didn't know anything about me except that I was warm and my heartbeat was steady and I hadn't put her down.
That trust. That absolute, unearned trust. It undid me in ways I wasn't prepared for.
I thought about Lucy in the next room, finally getting the rest she desperately needed.
Thought about how she'd looked at me when she handed Gabrielle over—exhausted, grateful, something else underneath that I didn't let myself name.
Thought about how easy it would be to get used to this.
The late nights. The quiet moments. The way this already felt like something I'd miss if it ended.
My attention returned to the moment. I looked down at Gabrielle, who sighed in her sleep, and then I realized that her fingers were still tightened around mine.
I brought them to the station on day four.
Lucy needed to get out of the apartment. I could see it in the way she paced, the way she stared at the walls like they were closing in. New motherhood was exhausting enough without adding isolation to the mix.
"Come to the station," I invited her, hoping she would accept. "The crew's been asking about Gabrielle every shift. They want to see how she's doing."
She hesitated for a while before saying, "I don't want to be in the way."
"You won't be. It's a quiet day." I paused. "Besides, Liam's been dying to try out his funny faces on her. He claims he can make any baby laugh within thirty seconds. Very competitive about it."
That got a small smile. "Funny faces?"
"He's been practicing. It's honestly a little concerning."
She laughed. A real laugh. God, I loved that sound.
"Okay," she said. "Okay, let's go."
The station came alive the moment we walked in.
Liam appeared first, abandoning whatever he'd been doing and hit the hand sanitizer dispenser on the wall without breaking stride—Cal had installed it the week Gabrielle started visiting—and crouched in front of the carrier. "There she is! The little firefighter."
He started making faces at Gabrielle. Ridiculous faces, crossing his eyes and puffing out his cheeks like a blowfish. She stopped fussing and stared at him, her dark eyes tracking his movements with that intense newborn focus.
"She's watching! Did you see that?" He looked up at me like he'd just witnessed a miracle. "Every time, she locks right onto me. I'm telling you, she knows greatness when she sees it."
"She's a few days old," Riley said, arriving with a stack of files. "She can barely see your face."
"She can see enough to know I'm her favorite." Liam turned to Owen. "Pay up, Mitchell."
Owen rolled his eyes but pulled out his wallet. Then he crouched down too, reaching for Gabrielle with hands that knew exactly what they were doing. Supporting her head, cradling her weight, lifting her against his chest like he'd done it a thousand times.
"She's bigger already," The voice of Owen sounded kind of soft, something soft in his voice. "Growing fast."
Riley made her way over to Lucy. They'd bonded over the past few days, I'd noticed. Two women who understood what it meant to raise someone else's child, to fight for a family that wasn't given to you by blood.
"How are you holding up?" Riley asked. "Getting any sleep?"
"Some," Her voice showed some tiredness. "Cal's been helping with the night feedings."
Riley glanced at me, something knowing in her expression that I chose to ignore. Then she turned back to Lucy and started sharing tips—which formula was easiest on newborn stomachs, the trick to getting a baby to sleep through the night that she'd discovered by accident and now swore by.
Lucy listened. Asked questions. Laughed at something Riley said. And I watched her in this chaos—surrounded by people, accepted without question, part of something bigger than herself—and I thought: she has a community now. She has again. She belongs again
The crew had adopted her the same way they'd adopted me, fifteen years ago. The same way they adopted anyone who needed them. No hesitation or conditions. Just open arms and terrible jokes and a willingness to show up.
And I want to be part of it.
The thought caught me off guard. Not just wanting to help her have this, or making sure she's okay. I wanted to be part of it, part of her life.
I wanted to be the one she called at 2 AM. The one she leaned on when things got hard. The one who was there, not just as a neighbor or a protector or a promise kept, but as something more.
I wanted to be hers.
And that terrified me more than any fire I'd ever faced.
Four days in, and I was spending more time in Lucy's apartment than my own.
When she finally fell asleep, it was around midnight. I'd promised to take the night shift for the baby, told her I'd wake her if anything was wrong, and for once she hadn't argued. Just nodded, kissed Gabrielle's forehead, and disappeared into the bedroom.
Now it was 3 AM, and I was on her couch with Gabrielle in my arms.
She was awake. Not fussy, not hungry, just... awake. Staring up at me with those dark, unfocused eyes, her gaze drifting across my face like she was trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing here.
"Good question," I told her quietly. "I'm not sure I know either."
She blinked at me. Made a small sound that might have been agreement or might have been gas. Hard to tell with newborns.
"Here's the thing," I said. My voice was barely a whisper, meant only for her.
"There was this guy. Mateo. He was my best friend.
The best person I ever knew. And he loved your mom.
He loved her so much, and they were going to get married, and they were going to have kids, and it was going to be this whole beautiful life. "
Gabrielle's hand found my finger again. Wrapped around it, held on.
"But he died. He died, and I was there, and I couldn't save him.
And the last thing he said to me was to take care of her.
To take care of Lucy." I swallowed hard.
"So that's what I've been trying to do. That's why I moved into the building across the hall.
That's why I've been here, every day, trying to be whatever she needs. "
The apartment was quiet around us. Just the hum of the refrigerator, the distant sound of traffic, the soft rhythm of Gabrielle's breathing.
"But here's the part I didn't expect," I continued. "I didn't expect to fall in love with her. I didn't expect to want this—you, her, all of it—so much that it scares me. I didn't expect to start building the life he should have had."
Gabrielle yawned. Clearly unimpressed by my confession.
"Your mom doesn't know it yet," I whispered. "But she's saving me too. Every day. Just by letting me be here. Just by letting me help."
I looked down at her tiny face, this baby who had no idea what she'd stumbled into. This abandoned scrap of life who had somehow become the center of everything.
"I don't know what I'm doing," I admitted. "I don't know if this is right. I don't know if Mateo would forgive me."
Gabrielle blinked at me one more time.
Then she closed her eyes and went to sleep, still holding my finger.
I was in love.
Not just with Lucy. With this life. With midnight feedings and crib assembly and the way Lucy looked at me when I showed up with diapers without being asked.
With the sound of Gabrielle's cries and her weight in my arms whenever I picked her up to soothe her despair, and the particular exhaustion of caring for a newborn, the kind that left you wrung out and strangely happy at the same time.
With the family we were building, even though neither of us had meant to. Even though we'd never said the word out loud.
I was in love with all of it. The guilt still surfaced sometimes—that whisper about building happiness on Mateo's grave.
But it was quieter now than it used to be.
Maybe Liam was right. Maybe forgiveness wasn't something I had to earn, just something I had to accept.
I wasn't there yet. But I could finally imagine getting there.
Because this should have been Mateo's life. Mateo's family. It should be Mateo walking the hallway at 2 AM with a baby against his chest, assembling cribs and making bottles and watching Lucy smile in a way she hadn't smiled in years.
Mateo should be here. Should be the one falling in love with his fiancée all over again, building the future he planned with her, raising children with her.
Instead he was six feet under the ground, and I was in his place, and no matter how many times I told myself he’d want this for us.
Yet, because he couldn't be there, some part of me couldn't stop feeling like a thief.
I was building a life on my best friend's grave.
And I didn't know how to stop. Didn't know if I wanted to stop. Didn't know anything anymore except that when Gabrielle wrapped her tiny hand around my finger, impossibly small, but strong, my whole world narrowed to that single point of contact.
Mateo should be here.
The thought was a knife in my chest.
Mateo should be the one holding his daughter, building his family, loving Lucy the way she deserved.
Instead, it was me. And I didn't know if that made me the luckiest man alive or the worst kind of traitor.