Page 76 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"You know," she says, "Willowbend keeps what belongs to it. Ask anyone from the last six years. We have a record."

"I don't belong to anywhere."

"Mm." She smiles like a woman who already knows how this ends. "That's what they all say."

She's gone before I can argue, and I hate that my throat is tight.

The yard hits full dark and full loud. Tater tells the story of Owen at seventeen backing the chief's truck into the flagpole, and the firefighters howl, and I laugh in the right places and watch the driveway the whole time.

He comes at eight.

Showered. Clean shirt, sleeves rolled. No boot. His stride across that grass is so even you'd never know there's a rod in his shin, and his jaw is set like a man walking into a burning building, which I suppose is the one thing he knows how to do."

The yard doesn't hush, but it bends. Every conversation tilts an inch toward us without one head turning.

He crosses the grass and stops in front of me.

"You didn't answer my calls."

"Owen—"

"Six calls, Nellie."

"I know how many."

He looks at me for a long second. Then he tips his head toward the fence line where the lantern light gives out. "Five minutes."

I should say no. Debbie is watching from the potato salad with her hand pressed to her mouth.

I follow him.

The pasture past the fence is nothing but dark and cricket noise. He sets his forearms on the top rail and stares out at it, and for a while he doesn't say anything, and I stand there holding my secret in my mouth like a cut.

"I'm not gonna ask you to stay," he says.

"Good. Because—"

"I'm proud of you. That's what I came to say." He turns his head. "Thirteen weeks at a time, a whole life in a car, and you walk into every new town and you're the best thing in their hospital by week two. That's not running. Not if you say it isn't."

That is worse than begging. So much worse. I grip the rail.

"Thank you," I manage.

"That's what I rehearsed, anyway." He pushes off the fence and faces me full on. "And it's a lie."

"Owen."

"I'm not okay with it. Any of it. I'm not okay with 'passing through.' I'm not okay with watching your taillights on Route 9 tomorrow like you're a shift that ended." His voice drops rough. "Two years I've been a closed door, and you kicked it in with a suture kit and a bad attitude, and I am not going to stand in Tater's yard and pretend I'm fine losing—"

He stops. Swallows.

And I do the cowardly thing. I grab the one card in my hand that isn't the truth.

"You got cleared." It comes out like an accusation, because it is one. "Word hits the ER same day as everywhere else. Full duty, eight weeks post-op. Owen, the standard for that hardware under load is twelve weeks. Your clearance came eight weeks early."

"Nellie—"

"Bridged bone isn't load-tested bone. You know what turnout gear weighs. If that leg buckles inside a structure, on a stairwell, on a roof—"