Page 109 of Flint’s Strike

I let out a slow breath and shake my head.

“There was a house fire. Ten years ago. Pretty routine call. Bad wirin’ sparked while the family was havin’ dinner. Everyone made it out. Nothin’ more than some minor smoke inhalation.”

The memory isn’t fuzzy around the edges the way old memories are supposed to be. It’s sharp enough I can still smell wet drywall if I let myself think about it too long.

“We started packin’ up, and I figured that was the end of it.” I stare at the beer in my hands, but all I can see is Zack standing at the edge of his smoke-blackened front yard.

“There was this kid. Nineteen, but looked so much younger. Not because he was small. There was just somethin’ about him.” I peel another section of the label free. “Like he hadn’t yet figured out the world could be cruel.”

My throat tightens, and a sip of beer does little to loosen it. “He’d spent the whole call carrying his little sister. At some point, she’d fallen asleep on his shoulder.” I smile, but it fades too quickly. “Kids are miracles sometimes. Sirens. Smoke. Strangers everywhere. Yet she felt safe enough to take a nap because her brother was holdin’ her.”

Parker smiles too, and it’s enough for me to keep going.

“He waited until we were done before he came over. Eight of us there, but he made a beeline straight for me. Asked me how hard it was to become a firefighter.”

The beer’s gone warm, but I take another swig anyway to give myself a moment.

“We talked for a while. Long enough my crew gave me shit for keepin’ us from our bunks. I answered every question he had, wished him luck, and climbed back on the engine. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”

I rub my free hand over my left thigh, the ache there a constant reminder of how I failed the kid who trusted me to have all the answers.

“Two years later, we get a probie assigned to our house. I took one look at him and realized it was the same kid.” I let out a rough laugh. “He remembered me. Hell, he’d requested—begged—to be assigned to my house. Said if he got hired, that was where he wanted to be.”

I wish I could hold onto that moment for what it was. A kid believing in me. I was proud at the time. Even a little cocky.

But guilt has a way of rewriting history without permission.

“He was good.” My voice drops, and I look toward the window, through the glass to the darkening sky. “He asked questions instead of pretendin’ he knew all the answers. He learned. He worked harder than anyone I’d ever seen. I spent a year teaching him everything I knew.” My fingers tighten around the bottle. “How to read a building. How to recognize when something felt wrong. When to push. When to back out. How to make the call nobody wants to make, because going home matters more than being a hero.” I pause, trying to find a way to say the thing that has lived inside me for seven years. “He was my responsibility.”

Parker doesn’t react. Just waits, giving me permission to keep going.

But I’m standing at the edge of something I know I can’t come back from. The room stays quiet except for the low hum of the air conditioner.

I shake my head, a sigh heaving my shoulders. “That’s the thing people don’t understand. When you’re the one training somebody, it isn’t just about teaching them how to do the work. Anybody can teach you how to throw a ladder or pack a hose line. But mentoring a probie? The most important thing you can teach them is when not to take a risk. How to tell when a building’s warning you it’s time to get out. You teach them how to survive. And you hope it’s enough.”

I take a sip of the warm beer, praying it won’t come right back up on me.

“He was thirteen months into his career when we got called to a fire."

The memory shifts. Not softens. Never softens. It just moves from the edges of my mind to take up the whole room.

“The building was already bad when we got there. You could hear it.” My eyes unfocus, the apartment reduced to muted colors. No angles. Walls blurring into the floor. “Buildings talk. People don’t like hearing that, but they do. Every one of them has a sound when it’s failing.”

My hands shake, and I tighten them around the bottle again.

“We went in anyway. Because that’s what we do. It was all more or less by the book at first. Until it wasn’t.”

I rub my left leg, the pain as bright and terrible as it was seven years ago.

“I was on the mezzanine when it gave way.”

I stop there. Just for a second. Long enough to catch my breath. My leg remembers before my mind does. The impact. The pain. The helplessness.

“Everything happened so fast after that. One second I was standing. The next, the hose got ripped out of my hands. I was on the floor, pinned down, with my leg broken and the whole world on fire.”

I force myself to keep looking at the bottle of Shiner instead of at Parker. “The fire was below me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t get to the hose. Couldn’t get myself out.”

The words come slower now, dragged up from somewhere I’ve spent seven years locking away.