Page 33 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

I don't decide to. My hand does it on its own, the same traitor hand that held his one beat too long over a suture line five weeks ago.

He goes still. Looks at my hand like it's something that wandered in from outside.

Then he turns his palm up under mine, slow, and his fingers close, warm and careful, like I'm the one who might spook.

Neither of us mentions it. We talk about other things. Amos Kessler's dog. The engine that runs on prayer and baling wire. Charlene refills the tea twice, and both times we let go, and both times, after, we find our way back.

***

He walks me to my car. Because of course he does. Man probably walks little old ladies across streets they weren't fixing to cross.

The gravel crunches. The night's gone soft and warm, crickets sawing away in the ditch grass, and my car is right there, and I am walking as slow as a human being can walk without medically qualifying as stopped.

"This was—" I start.

"Don't say fine."

"I was going to say tolerable."

"High praise."

"Don't let it go to your head."

We're at my door. I should get the keys out. My keys stay in my bag. The wind pushes a piece of hair across my face and before I can get it, his hand is there, tucking it back behind my ear, and his fingers graze my jaw on the way down and every nerve I own reports for duty.

"Nellie."

"That's my name."

"I'm gonna need you to stop being funny for about ten seconds."

"That's a big ask."

But I've already stopped. My hand's found the front of his jacket, gripping it, and I don't remember telling it to. He's close. He smells like clean cotton and woodsmoke and bad decisions. His eyes drop to my mouth. Mine drop to his. There is exactly one inch of Texas air left between us and it is losing ground fast, and rule three is somewhere in the parking lot yelling and I cannot hear a word she's saying, and—

His hip shrieks.

My purse shrieks.

Both at once, the exact same second, his pager and my phone going off in a two-part harmony from hell. We jerk apart like teenagers caught on a porch.

He's already reading his pager. I'm already reading my screen. ER group text, all caps, Debbie Sue: MASS CASUALTY ACTIVATION. MVA, MULTIPLE VEHICLES. ALL HANDS. COME NOW.

"Multi-vehicle," Owen says. His voice is different now. Flat. Fast. Radio voice. "They're toning out everybody."

"I have to go." I'm fumbling keys. He's five steps gone already, then turns, walks backward toward his truck, and for one second the man from the booth looks out at me from inside all that gear-up focus.

"This isn't over," he says. "Any of it."

"Go, Peterson."

He goes. Truck door, engine, gravel spitting. My hands are steady when I start the car, because that's the job, that's the switch, you flip it and your hands don't get a vote.

His window's down as he pulls past me, radio already squawking, and I catch the dispatch through the open glass, some other-county voice reading the scene address into the night.

"—multiple vehicles, entrapment reported, twelve hundred block of Juniper Lane—"

Juniper Lane.