Page 94 of Igniting Her

Cassie exhaled. The breath shook, then emptied fully.

“I don’t know what happens next,” Ellie said. “The review is still real. My transfer is still a choice. What happened between us doesn’t disappear because you finally said the right thing.”

Cassie nodded. “I know.”

“But I love you.”

Cassie’s eyes closed. “I know that too,” she whispered.

Dawn thinned the darkness around the blinds. The rain had stopped. Water moved through the gutter outside in an occasional silver rush.

Ellie lay with one leg over Cassie’s and Cassie’s head beneath her chin. Their hands remained joined against the center of Ellie’s chest. Sometime during the telling, the vigilance had left Cassie’s body. Her breathing deepened without being arranged. The line between her brows eased.

Ellie stayed awake long enough to feel the exact moment Cassie stopped keeping watch.

Cassie slept.

23

ELLIE

The collar of Ellie’s dress uniform had been designed by someone with a personal grievance against necks.

She resisted the urge to fit two fingers beneath it as Chief Marsh crossed the stage. Beside her, Teak shifted in a folding chair and whispered, “If you pass out, fall left. Priya has better reflexes than Jamie.”

“I heard that,” Jamie murmured from the other side of Priya.

“Then prepare to be motivated.”

The department auditorium held more people than any room with beige walls deserved. Uniformed crews filled the center rows. Families and city officials occupied the front, and three news cameras had been arranged along the back beneath an exit sign. Their red recording lights should have been the part Ellie noticed.

They weren’t.

Sofia sat in the front row between her mother and an empty aisle seat, both hands wrapped around a toy fire engine. Someone had painted a white 12 on each side of it. The numbers leaned in opposite directions. A yellow plastic ladder rose from the roof and trembled whenever she moved.

She looked smaller than she had in Ellie’s arms.

At Mirador Crest, there had been no room for the fact that the body beneath Ellie’s turnout coat belonged to a seven-year-old who hated grape medicine and collected polished rocks. There had only been weight, heat, the failing doorway, and the next surface Ellie could reach without bringing the roof down on them both. Later came a name. Then a hospital visit, a drawing of Engine 12 with flames coming from every window, and a mother who had held Ellie for a long time without asking whether she had followed orders.

The department had asked.

Two weeks earlier, the operational review had arrived in separate envelopes. The first sustained the finding that Ellie had violated a defensive withdrawal order, left her assigned crew, and entered a structure without authorization. It placed a formal reprimand in her file and required additional incident-accountability training. The second informed her that she would receive the Santa Vera Fire Department’s Lifesaving Commendation.

No sealed meeting. No resignation dressed up as an option. No quiet removal after the cameras went home.

The department had held both truths and kept her anyway.

“Firefighter Ellie Ridge.”

Chief Marsh’s voice carried through the auditorium.

Ellie stood.

Station 12 rose with her. Mo was first, his broad hands meeting once before the rest of the room caught up. Priya stood. Jamie stood. Teak came upright so quickly her chair struck the one behind it. The applause spread through the crews and reached the public rows, where Sofia lifted the toy engine above her head.

Ellie had heard applause like this before. She knew how easily it could become cover for a door closing somewhere else. Her body prepared for the old division: smile for the room, brace for the office.

Then she saw Cassie.