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I carried her to bed. When I came back, Alex was wiping down the counter.

"Can I ask you something?"

He didn't look up from the counter. "Yeah."

"Have you seen the video from the play?"

"My crew made sure of it."

He glanced up and stopped wiping.

"What's wrong?"

I let the breath go. "I'm not comfortable having my face on the internet. Erin got the original taken down, but it's had tens of thousands of views."

He put the towel down. "Is there anything I can do?"

I shook my head. "No. I just needed to tell someone."

CHAPTER 9

Bottom Shelf

ALEX

"So the princess has opinions about social media," he said while we restocked the engine after a medical assist. "Interesting."

"Drop it, Sawyer."

"Dropped." He stacked an oxygen tank in the compartment. "Just observing that you left on time yesterday. And the day before. And that you've been checking your phone between calls and smiling at the screen."

I handed him another tank. "I had somewhere to be."

"You had somewhere to be." He repeated it like he was tasting the sentence. "Captain Alex Holloway, the man who once ran overtime for three consecutive weeks because he didn't want to go home, had somewhere to be."

"Are you going to keep talking, or are you going to finish loading the tanks?"

He leaned against the engine, crossed his arms, and looked at me with an expression that was, for Sawyer, remarkably serious.

"I'm saying it's good. Whatever this is."

I didn't know what to do with that. He gave me grief daily and I knew how to handle it. Sawyer being genuine was uncharted territory.

"Thanks," I said.

"You're welcome." The grin came back. "Now tell me who she is."

"Load the tanks, Sawyer."

I was halfway down the bay when he called after me.

"Was it the princess?"

I kept walking.

Erin invited me over to watch the Bruins on Sunday. I said yes before I thought about it.

The Bruins were up 2-1 in the second. A forward stripped the puck at the blue line, crossed over to his backhand, and buried it glove side before the goalie had time to set.