Page 138 of Never Forget
"Then that's what you'll be."
He kissed the top of my head.
"That's what I'll be."
Nine men didn't come home. Sean walked away. Graff retired. The department would never be the same. Neither would any of us—Sam would carry the parking lot in his chest for years, and I would be the one who reached for him in the dark when he woke up hearing alarms, and Rosie would grow up in a house where Uncle Sam sometimes had a look in his eyes that meant give him a minute.
But we were still here. Still together. Still holding on.
And that had to count for something.
CHAPTER 34
Sam
2025
"Alright, knock it off. B-shift's coming in."
The crew broke apart, still laughing. Cole shot me a grateful look from the middle of it, red-faced, somebody's phone still up in his face.
I crossed the bay. Past the rig. Past the steel mounted by the bay doors with its small brass plate underneath—June 18, 2007. Never Forget. Nine.A piece of the Carolina Furniture Depot roof. New probies touched it on their first shift. Some of them kissed their fingers and pressed them to it, the way Catholics cross themselves at a church door. I'd done the same thing the first shift after they mounted it.
Eighteen years.
Eighteen years since nine men died and Havensworth was forced to change.
I thought about the HFD I'd joined in 2006. The understaffing. The incompatible equipment. The fog nozzles. The radios that couldn't punch through walls. The silence that protected the wrong people.
I thought about Sean, up in Greenville with his brother's shop, who still sent Christmas cards every year and signed themyour brother always.About the culture that had said real mendon't ask for help. Don't show weakness. Don't question the way things have always been done.
That culture killed nine men.
Now, eighteen years in, everything was different.
National standards. Proper staffing. Equipment that actually worked. Communication systems that didn't fail when you needed them most.
But more than the protocols—the culture itself had shifted.
The idea of what makes a man was different now.
These young firefighters talked about their feelings. They went to therapy after bad calls. They checked on each other. They didn't mock the guy who needed a minute after pulling a kid out of a car wreck.
Cole—the sixteen-year-old kid who'd asked me a hard question on a ride-along and then, two months later in his aunt's kitchen, told me what was actually happening in his father's house—was a senior firefighter now. A damn good one. The kind who showed up for his brothers. The kind who spoke up when something was wrong, because he remembered what it was to be the kid nobody spoke up for.
I was proud of him. Proud of all of them.
I headed to my office. Hung up my captain's badge on the hook by the door. Grabbed my bag.
Captain of Station 33. I'd never imagined it, back in 2007, when I was just trying to survive.
The drive home was quiet. Familiar streets. The same route I'd taken for years, past the rebuilt house on Rutledge—we'd sold it to a young family a decade ago when we needed somethingbigger, and every time I drove by I watched for their kids on the porch.
Jamie was waiting by the door when I pulled up. That hadn't changed. Eighteen years together, and she still greeted me when I came home from a shift.
I kissed her. Held her a beat longer than necessary.
Then the thunder of footsteps. Two boys barreling toward me.
