Page 24 of Fighting For You

"We're taking Birdie to the shelter on her birthday and letting her choose," Wyatt said.

"There are so many cute ones at this shelter, though. Look." Andy turned her phone toward me and started scrolling through photos. A gray one. A striped one. An orange one sitting in a shoe.

"They all look the same to me."

Andy lowered the phone and gave me a look.

"I don't know what to tell you," I said. "I've just always preferred dogs."

"That's exactly what Doug Price said. Now Duchess sleeps on his chest every night and Diana says he talks to her in a baby voice when he thinks nobody's around." She put her phone down and shook her head.

I took a sip of my beer. "The only good thing about cats is they won't tattle on you to the cops."

"Watch your mouth or I will arrest you right here at this table."

Wyatt snorted into his beer. I couldn't help it either.

Andy had been one of the better additions to the group. She was easy company, and it was always entertaining to watch her get annoyed.

A couple of hours in, the table had settled into its usual shape. Travis, Greene, and Carl had drifted to the pool table, and I could hear Travis arguing about a bank shot from across the room.

At our end, it was just the three of us. Wyatt had his arm around Andy's chair.

"So." Wyatt looked at me. "Have you heard from her?"

Andy straightened. "Her?" She looked at Wyatt, then at me. "Who's her? Are you seeing someone?"

Wyatt smiled. "Tell her."

"Tell me what?"

I looked at my glass. Then I told her.

Two years ago, the crew responded to a structure collapse after an earthquake. I found a woman on the second floor, crouched behind a counter. I was getting her out when a beam came down across my neck. She started pulling the debris off me before Wyatt even reached us. The two of them carried me down the stairs and out to the parking lot.

My neck was open from my ear to my collarbone. Wyatt had pressure on it, but we needed a stretcher. She told him she was a nursing student and she could hold it. He put her hands where his had been and went.

She talked to me the whole time. Asked me my name, what I did for fun, what I wanted to do with my life. She kept me awake until the helicopter came and the medics took over. She walked beside the stretcher with her hands on my neck until they pulled her off.

By the time they loaded me, she was gone. I never got her name. I spent two years looking for her. Every ER, every gas station, every woman in scrubs I passed on the street. Nothing.

Then the crew got dispatched to a house fire. I pulled a woman out of a second-floor bedroom. When the smoke cleared, I was looking at the same face.

Andy pressed both hands over her mouth.

"Knox."

She smacked Wyatt's arm. "Why didn't you tell me this story?"

"It wasn't my story to tell."

She turned back to me. "So how are things going? Have you asked her out?"

"No."

"But you want to?"

I thought about the past week. She texted me at two in the morning because she couldn't sleep, and we ended up talking about nothing for an hour. She sent me a photo of the sunset from Gracelyn's balcony with the caption I think I can see the Strip from here if I squint. I'd started checking my phone between calls, and when something from her was waiting, the rest of the shift felt lighter.