Page 163 of Rising Heat

The question comes out rougher than I intend. I hear it the second it leaves my mouth.

Tyler definitely does too, judging by the way his mouth twitches.

Coop blinks.

“Because I gave it to her? She’s cool. I’m allowed to have friends.”

“You don’t have friends.”

“Rude,” he frowns.

“You have a roster.”

“That’s…offensive.”

Tyler’s already laughing when I open my mouth to answer him⁠—

—and the tones drop.

The first one cuts straight through the bay. Before the second hits, Coop’s sandwich is on the workbench, Tyler’s reaching for his turnout coat, and I’m already moving, dispatch cracking over the speaker.

Engine 37, Ladder 26, Rescue 1—box alarm, Huntington and Mass Ave. Reported structure fire with occupants trapped.

Whatever we were talking about gets shoved aside without a second thought. There’s time to finish it later if we’re lucky.

I shrug into my turnout coat as I head for the Truck, Tyler falling into step beside me while Coop breaks for the Engine. The bay doors roll open, cold air flooding inside as diesel rumbles to life beneath us.

I haul myself into the cab and settle into the seat, every movement automatic by now. Everything else waits. Darcy. Tyler. Whatever the hell this thing between the three of us is becoming.

I hit the air horn as we pull into traffic, watching the cars scatter while Boston opens up in front of us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

darcy

The windows are open for the first time since I moved in, and every few minutes a cool breeze moves through the apartment carrying that sharp early spring Boston air that somehow still smells a little like winter.

The curtains lift softly when it comes through, and the whole place feels different with sunlight stretching across the floors instead of the permanent gray radiator haze I’ve apparently been living in since February.

I’ve already made the bed twice, reorganized the fruit bowl for absolutely no reason, and straightened the towels hanging on the bathroom rack three separate times.

Bex is the one person who’s known every version of me since I was eight years old. She knew me before Brett. She knew me during Brett, which honestly feels more incriminating. And now she’s about to meet whatever version of me exists here in Boston—the one who goes to farmers markets on Saturdays, willingly attends Pilates, and sleeps with her two ridiculously hot landlords.

I’d tried getting ahead of this over the phone. Three separate conversations’ worth of strategic vagueness before she started dismantling every defense mechanism I’ve developed since the third grade.

“So you’re in a soft-launch throuple with your landlords.”

“Bex! Definitely not calling it that.”

“I’m not calling it anything.”

She’d paused just long enough for me to think I’d won.

“I’m observing it.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Darcy…the situation you just described is the opposite of complicated. You know exactly what’s happening. You just don’t want to say it out loud yet.”