37. Derek
DEREK
The apparatus bay held onto the cold long after the sun went down, concrete floor colder underfoot than it had any right to be with two trucks parked wall to wall still radiating whatever warmth they had left from the day.
I killed the overhead fluorescents on my way through, leaving just the low amber safety lights running along the baseboards, and was halfway to locking the side door when I noticed the office light still burning through the glass wall off the main floor.
Leah sat hunched over the desk in there, clipboard in one hand, pen tapping an uneven rhythm against a stack of vendor forms that had to be three inches thick by now.
I leaned in the doorway. "It's past ten."
"I know what time it is."
"You've read that same page four times since I started locking up."
"I've checked this twice." She didn't look up. "I'm going to check it a third time out of spite."
I crossed the office in three steps and took the clipboard gently out of her hands before she could stop me.
"Or you could not."
"Derek."
"Every number on that sheet has been right since six o'clock. You know that. I know that. The only thing left to check is how long you can stare at it before your eyes give out."
She let her head fall back against the chair, some of the fight going out of her shoulders all at once. "I hate tomorrow."
"You love tomorrow. You've been planning it since before the first snow fell."
"I love the idea of tomorrow. The actual day is currently trying to kill me."
"It's not going to kill you." I set the clipboard face down on the desk, out of her reach. "You've built something this whole town is going to remember for years. Tomorrow just has to happen. You already did the hard part."
"Say that again in twenty four hours when Judy's demanding a fireworks upgrade we can't pay for and Anton's threatening to quit for the third time."
"He quits every morning. It's basically a warmup stretch for him at this point."
"What if it snows?"
"Then we deal with it. We've planned for snow. We've planned for wind, for a power outage, for exactly how many portable heaters a crowd that size can safely stand around without anybody losing a finger. You planned for things I didn't even know needed planning."
"I planned for things going wrong. I didn't plan for how much it would matter to me if they did."
"They won't go wrong."
"You don't actually know that."
"No. But I know you, and you don't leave anything to chance. Whatever happens tomorrow, it won't be because you didn't do everything humanly possible to get it right."
She studied me for a second like she was deciding whether to argue the point, then let it go with a small, tired exhale. "That's annoyingly reassuring."
"I have my moments."
That got a real laugh out of her, short and surprised, and something in my chest loosened at the sound of it.
She stood, rolling her shoulders back, and followed me out of the office into the bay where the amber lights turned everything soft at the edges, the chrome on the rescue truck catching what little glow there was and throwing it back gold.
Ember lifted his head from his bed in the corner, considered the two of us with the profound disinterest of a dog who had already decided nothing interesting was about to happen, and went back to sleep.
"He's not wrong to ignore us," Leah said, watching him settle. "We're not exactly thrilling company right now."
"Speak for yourself. I find myself endlessly thrilling."
"You locked a door for six minutes straight. I timed it."
"That's called thoroughness."
"That's called avoiding your own paperwork the same way I'm avoiding mine." She wandered further into the bay, one hand trailing along the rescue truck's side panel, and glanced back at me over her shoulder. "Why are we both still here this late? Neither of us has anything left to check."
"Because going home means lying awake thinking about tomorrow instead of standing here thinking about it with company."
"That's suspiciously honest for you."
"I'm allowed one honest sentence a night. I used it already. Don't push your luck."
She laughed again, quieter this time, and leaned back against the truck's front fender with her arms crossed, watching me cross the bay toward her.
The place felt different at night with the big doors shut and the wind locked outside, quieter than it had any right to be given how much noise usually lived in it during the day.
I had spent half my adult life in this building, and it had never once felt like the kind of place romance happened in.
Diesel and rubber and old coffee did not exactly set a mood.
And yet.
"Can I tell you something stupid?" I asked.
"Always."
"If the county actually shuts this place down after tomorrow, I want one good memory in this building that isn't a call sheet or a budget meeting." I said it half joking, testing the weight of it out loud before I fully believed I meant it. "Something that isn't work. Just once."
Her smile faded into something quieter, more interested. "Is that a real possibility? The shutting down part."
"It's talk. Just talk so far." Not entirely a lie.
Not entirely the truth either, but closer to it than I'd let myself get with her before now, and I filed the rest away to hand her properly once I had something solid instead of a rumor delivered off the record.
"I'd rather not borrow trouble tonight."
"Then what kind of memory did you have in mind?"
"I don't know. Something that doesn't involve a hose reel."
"Bold of you to rule out the hose reel before I've even weighed in."
"There it is."
"What?"
"That's the firehouse pole joke building up behind your teeth. I can see it happening in real time."
"I wasn't going to say anything about the pole."
"You were absolutely going to say something about the pole."
"I was going to be tasteful about it."
"There's no tasteful version of that joke, Leah. I've heard every version this crew has ever attempted. None of them have ever once been tasteful."
She pushed off the fender and closed the distance between us, close enough now that I could see the exact moment the joke died behind her eyes and something quieter took its place.
"I wasn't really going to make the joke," she said, voice dropping.
"I know."
"I was thinking about something else."
"Also know that."
"You're very confident for a man who claims one honest sentence a night."
"I'm making an exception. Emergency circumstances."
She reached up and settled both hands against my chest, and I felt whatever restraint I'd been holding onto since I locked that side door slip loose all at once, the way it had been slipping for weeks whenever she looked at me like this.
I brought one hand up to her jaw, tilting her face toward mine, and the last careful inch of space between us disappeared.
The kiss started slow and didn't stay that way for long.
She fisted a hand in the front of my shirt and pulled, and I walked her back the two steps to the truck's cab without breaking away from her mouth, boxing her in against the cold metal with both hands braced on either side of her.
She laughed against my lips, breathless already, and the sound of it undid something in me I'd been keeping stitched shut for longer than I wanted to admit.
"This is a terrible idea," she said, not sounding remotely convinced of it.
"Historically my favorite kind."
"Someone could walk in."
"Sarge is three rooms over watching a rerun with the volume up too loud to hear anything short of the actual building coming down."
"That's a very particular thing to know."
"I've locked up after him for two years. I know his habits."
She pulled me back down before I could say anything else clever, and after that there wasn't much room left for talking.
My hands found the hem of her sweater and she shivered under the first brush of my fingers against her spine, cold air meeting warm skin, and the small sound she made against my mouth wrecked what was left of my restraint completely.
I dragged my mouth from hers to the line of her jaw, her throat, feeling her pulse jump hard and fast under my lips, her hands fisting tighter in my shirt like she needed something to hold onto to stay upright.
"Derek." My name came out of her rough, half a plea, and she arched into me like she couldn't stand to be anywhere but exactly this close.
"I've got you."
The overhead lights stayed dim and amber, the truck's chrome catching stray gold light every time either of us moved.
Everything narrowed down to heat and breath and her hands sliding under my shirt, learning the shape of me like she had all the time in the world.
I lifted her onto the truck's running board just to bring her mouth level with mine, and she wrapped herself around me, ankles locking at the small of my back, her fingers dragging through my hair hard enough to sting in the best possible way.
Every layer between us came off slow at first, then not slow at all, buttons and belts and cold air biting at newly bared skin that neither of us seemed to notice or mind.
She pulled me in like she could feel the year running out, like she needed to hold onto this fragile good thing we'd built before it slipped away.
I met her exactly where she was, unwilling to be anywhere else.
Her breath went ragged against my ear, my name breaking apart in her mouth every time my hands found somewhere new to touch.
The unhurried build we'd started with gave way, by degrees, to something faster and hungrier and a little bit desperate, both of us chasing the same singular need to feel, for just these few minutes, like nothing outside this bay existed at all.
I said her name into her skin like a vow I hadn't meant to make out loud, and she said mine back the same way.
Somewhere past that there was only motion and need, and the low, unsteady sound of both of us finally, finally letting go of everything we'd been holding so carefully in check for weeks.
Later, we ended up on an old canvas tarp spread across the concrete near the workbench, neither of us caring enough in the moment to find somewhere more dignified, my jacket balled up under her head and her fingers tracing slow, absent lines across my shoulder while we both worked on getting our breath back.
Her skin was still warm everywhere it pressed against mine, her heartbeat gradually settling from a sprint back down to something closer to a walk.
The amber lights still glowed soft along the baseboards. Ember hadn't so much as stirred.
"Well," she said eventually, voice wrecked and a little wondering. "That's certainly a memory."
"Told you I had a plan."
"You did not have a plan. You had a truck and poor impulse control."
"I prefer to call it decisive action."
She laughed, tucking herself in closer against my side, and for a long moment neither of us said anything at all, just breathing in the quiet and the smell of rubber and cold concrete and each other, and it was, without question, the best I'd felt inside these four walls in longer than I could count.
I looked down at her, hair a mess against my jacket, eyes half closed and unguarded in a way she almost never let herself be. Three words sat right at the front of my mouth, fully formed, years overdue.
I opened my mouth.
"I need to tell you something."
She went still against my side, watching my face with an intensity that told me she already knew exactly what shape the sentence was about to take.
"Derek."
"I love..."
A fist hit the door frame two rooms over hard enough to rattle it, and Sarge's voice came booming through the bay before either of us could brace for it.
"Locking up in five minutes. If either of you is still in this building I expect you fully clothed and doing something I can explain to the fire marshal."
Leah dissolved into laughter against my chest, shaking so hard she nearly knocked the breath back out of both of us, and I dropped my forehead against her hair, half laughing myself despite the words still sitting right there, unsent, aching a little at the interruption.
"We should probably move," she said, voice thick with laughter she was fighting to hold in.
"Probably."
Neither of us moved.
"You were about to say something," she said, quieter now, searching my face in the low light like she could still catch the shape of it if she looked hard enough.
"I was."
"You can still say it."
Boots hit the hallway floor outside, closer now, unmistakably headed our way, and I felt the moment slip away from us, close but not quite close enough to reach.
"Later," I said instead, brushing my thumb along her jaw. "I promise you later."
"You'd better."
We scrambled up off the tarp with about thirty seconds to spare, grinning like a couple of teenagers caught somewhere they shouldn't have been, breathless and thoroughly unfinished in every way that mattered, and I decided, tugging my shirt straight while Sarge's footsteps rounded the corner, that whatever tomorrow brought, county board included, I already had my memory.