Page 27 of Falling For You

Mid-afternoon. No calls in the last two hours. Knox, Travis, and Greene were at the table in the common area, three hands deep in a game that had been going since lunch. I was on the couch with my phone, half watching.

Knox laid his cards down. Travis threw his on the table.

"You cheated!"

Knox collected the pot without looking up. "You scratched your nose every time you had a pair."

"I did not." His voice went up half an octave.

"Three times," Greene said.

Knox was intense about two things in life: firefighting and poker.

A year ago, a ceiling beam came down on a call and a piece of debris tore open the side of his neck, from his ear to his collarbone. I was on that call. I watched him drop. We almost lost him that night, and the only reason we didn't was a nursing student who held him together until the medics reached us.

What I couldn't wrap my head around was that he came back. Full duty, no hesitation, first one through the door like nothing had changed. I didn't know whether I admired him for it or thought he was out of his mind. Probably both.

"I'm done." Travis shoved back from the table. "I need to take a leak."

Greene yawned and followed him toward the bunk room. "Wake me if there's a real game."

Knox started shuffling the deck out of habit. He nodded at my phone. "What are you looking at?"

I turned the screen toward him. "Gandalf and Frodo. She wants the full setup, so I'm ordering cloaks, a vest, and foam hobbit feet."

"That's a cute costume," he said.

"She's been talking about it for months. She agreed to be a hobbit as long as I wear the beard."

Knox almost smiled. "Smart kid."

I hit confirm on the order and put my phone down. The ring was already handled. Birdie had been carrying a plastic one from a goodie bag she got at a birthday party, and no amount of negotiation was going to replace it.

"What are you doing for Halloween?" I asked.

Knox shrugged. "I'll probably pick up the shift."

That was Knox. He never lied about his plans, and he never offered more than the answer to the question you asked. Outside of the job, Knox kept to himself. I didn't know if he was seeing anyone. I didn't know if he'd ever been with anyone. Whatever his personal life looked like, he kept it behind a door he never opened, and nobody on the crew pushed. If there was something on the other side of that quiet, he'd tell us when he was ready.

Carl walked through the common area with a coffee in his hand. "Man, it's been a quiet shift."

Knox and I both looked at him.

"What?" Carl said.

The tones dropped.

Carl closed his eyes. Knox was already on his feet. I got off the couch and pointed at Carl on my way to my gear.

The warehouse was fully involved by the time we arrived. Flames through the roof, black smoke rolling west across the road. There were two engines on scene ahead of us, hoses already running. Our captain positioned us on the delta side and we went to work.

Police had the perimeter. Traffic was being routed around the block, cruisers at both intersections. An officer was waving vehicles through. Firefighters and cops on the same scene were standard for anything this size. We handled the fire, they handled everything else.

I was pulling a second line off the engine when I heard him.

"Brooks. Move your rig. You're blocking my lane."

Sergeant Elliot Handler. Pressed uniform, sharp jaw, sunglasses he didn't need. He was standing ten feet from the engine with his arms crossed, looking at our apparatus like it was parked in his personal driveway.