Page 72 of Igniting Her

“The arrangement ends here.”

Ellie nodded once.

Cassie signed the form.

Her name took less than three seconds. The same hand had held Ellie’s face, wiped water from her jaw, threaded through her hair while pretending to sleep. Now it wrote Captain Cassandra Everett in clean black ink and moved one firefighter out of reach.

Ellie watched the pen lift. “They’re still running the rescue on the news.”

“Public attention is not relevant to this decision.”

“No.” A brief sound left Ellie, not quite a laugh. “It never is once the cameras have what they need.”

Cassie heard the back steps in the sentence. Everyone claps until you’re inconvenient. Then you’re gone.

“This is not Los Angeles,” she said.

“I know.” Ellie looked at the reassignment form. “In Los Angeles, they needed me out of the department. You only need me out of your sight.”

“That is not what this is.”

“Then tell me what it is without using the word command.”

Cassie could not.

Ellie’s eyes shone, but she did not look away. “That’s what I thought.”

The office held everything Cassie had refused to say and one document that said enough.

She pushed the form across the desk. “Sign the acknowledgment.”

Ellie took the pen. Her signature ran quick and slanted beneath Cassie’s. She put the pen down with care.

“I told you I was falling in love with you,” she said. “You moved me to another shift.”

Each word was factual. None could be corrected.

Cassie kept her voice level because anything else would have asked Ellie to comfort the person discarding her. “You cannot remain under my direct supervision.”

“Then move yourself.”

For one second, the answer existed.

It was impossible. Cassie commanded A shift. Station assignments were not personal pieces to rearrange because she had crossed the line with a subordinate. Her duty was here. Her crew was here. Ellie was the newer variable, the firefighter who had violated a direct order and made impartial command impossible.

Cassie had rules for this.

“The decision is made,” she said.

Something closed in Ellie’s face. Not anger. Anger would have left a door.

She picked up her copy of the form and opened the office door.

“Ridge.” Cassie did not know what she meant to add.

Ellie stopped but did not turn.

Cassie could have told her the transfer was not punishment. She could have said that six minutes had split time open, that the sight of her alive had not repaired it, that command would never be clean while Cassie loved the firefighter inside the building. Every explanation made the injury more personal, not less.