Page 68 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"It means if I tell him, I put him back inside that fire." The words come out of me level and terrible. "Debbie, he watched me almost fall off a roof and it broke something in him. He fell ten feet so I wouldn't fall six. What do you think this does?" I touch my stomach. "You want me to stand in front of a man who's barely holding, and tell him there's another baby, another person for the fire to take?"

"That's not your call to—"

"It's triage." I hear how I sound. I keep going anyway. "You don't hand a crashing patient more weight. You stabilize first. He is not stable."

"And what are you? Because from where I'm sitting, you're about a month from a contract deadline making a decision that decides the rest of his life without him in the room."

That one lands. I let it.

"I can do this alone," I say quietly. "Alone is my native language, Debbie. I'm fluent."

She looks at me for a long time. There's a fight in her face and it's losing to something sadder.

"You know he came to my door that night?" Her voice cracks on it. "Ten o'clock. Because my phone went dark mid-sentence and that man drove straight over like the town was on fire. I stood on my own porch and told him you had a stomach bug, Nellie. I told him you had a stomach bug, and I have never in my life lied to that man."

"Swear it," I say. "You tell no one. Not Tater. Not your prayer chain. No one." I hold her eyes. "Swear on the twins."

Her jaw works. "That's dirty."

"Swear."

"I swear on my babies." She says it like it costs her a tooth. Then she jabs a finger at me, mascara still wrecked. "But I want it on the record that I hate this, and I am on record, and when this blows up, and it will blow up, I get to say I told you so at your wedding."

"There's not going to be a—"

"At. Your. Wedding." She yanks the truck into drive. "Now put your seatbelt back on. You're carrying my godchild."

***

Four nights later the cottage is too quiet.

I set the prenatal vitamins on the counter next to the coffee maker, big honest bottle, label out, because I live alone and there's nobody to hide them from, and that thought does something mean to the back of my throat.

I'm reading the label for the third time when headlights sweep the kitchen wall.

I know the sound of that truck. My body knows it before my brain does, goes warm and stupid and hopeful, and I hate every cell involved.

I open the door before he can knock.

Owen Peterson is standing on my porch holding grocery store flowers. The cheap kind, carnations dyed too bright, wrapped in crinkly plastic, and he's holding them upside down at his side like he forgot they were there, and he's showered and shaved and terrified.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey."

"These are for you." He looks down, notices the flowers pointing at the floorboards, rights them. A petal falls off. We both watch it land. "That went better in the truck."

Don't laugh. Do not laugh at this man on this porch on this night.

"Nellie, I need to say a thing, and I wrote it down and then left it in the truck, so this is the field version." He drags a breath. "I went cold. After. And it wasn't about you. It was never one inch about you. You were the best thing that's happened to me in two years and I woke up happy and I ran from it like the building was coming down, because that's what I do, and I'm done doing it."

"Owen—"

"I'm seeing someone." He hears it, winces. "A counselor. Doc McKinly, the department guy. Twice now. Thursdays. I'm not telling you that to get a gold star, I'm telling you because you deserved a man who was working on it instead of a man who wiped a whiteboard and snuck out the door."

The flowers are shaking. Barely. He doesn't seem to know it.

"I'm not asking for anything," he says, softer. "I know your contract's coming up. I know the rules. I'm not asking you to break a single one. I only came to say I'm sorry, and I'm better than I was, and if you'd let me, I'd like to take you to dinner and start over from the stitches."