Page 7 of Her Older Fireman

Chapter 4

Gabe

“Got a second, Gabe?”

I look up and see my superior, Captain Park, poking his head into the firehouse office. I’m seated at one of the desks, typing up an incident report from a call earlier in the shift. I’m just wrapping up for the day, and hoping to get home as quickly as I can to see if Maddie wants to come over—maybe for dinner, maybe for something else.

“Sure, Captain,” I say. I close the laptop in front of me and follow the captain over to his small private office.

“Have a seat,” he says as he closes the door behind us. He circles around the desk and takes his own chair before leaning forward, his gaze intent.

“Something wrong?” I’m not especially nervous—I know my job performance is damn good—but this is unusual.

“How long have you been at this station, Gabe?” he says. He opens his own laptop and clicks away at a few things.

I shrug. “Since I was a rookie. About fifteen years.”

“I’ve been looking at your performance evaluations, your advanced training and all the commendations you’ve racked up and you’re quite an asset to the city’s fire department as a whole.” He flips the laptop around and shows me a list from my personnel file—a summary of my career, neatly tallied up in a list. “You’ve done a great job as lieutenant. Have you considered where you’d like to go next?”

I shrug. “Captain, I guess. But the right opportunity hasn’t come along, and I like it here.”

Captain Park leans in. “Well, we’re hoping we can change that. About the opportunity, that is. You know Monty King, over at Ladder 16?”

I nod. “Captain King? Yeah, everybody knows him. He’s a legend.”

“And he’s retiring,” Captain Park says. “He’s got some very big shoes to fill, and the chief is interested in you for the job. Frankly, I agree with him.”

My head spins. I hadn’t even been thinking about when I might make captain yet. “The chief wants me specifically?”

“He sure does.” Captain Park leans back in his chair and smiles at me. “You’re great with the rookies, you run a tight ship, and you do great work in the field. You’re ready for this, I promise. Big pay bump, too.”

I do just fine on my current salary, but the suggestion of more money immediately makes me think about Maddie. What if I could upgrade my house, maybe something a little nicer in a different part of town, closer to the new station? I could convince her to come with me. She could get away from her mom and focus on her own life. Maybe our life, if I’m lucky.

My blood heats up and my cock thickens at the thought of coming home to Maddie every night. Maddie naked in our shared bed. Slipping between those luscious thighs to eat her sweet pussy and thrust my cock into her scorching heat. Ever since that kiss by the lake, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her body. Maybe this promotion, and the start of a new life for both of us, is what we need to build the kind of relationship that I think both of us want.

“So what do you think?” the captain says, interrupting my daydream.

“It sounds really good,” I answer. “I want to go for it.”

“Great!” The captain pulls his laptop close and quickly types something up. “We want to move as quickly as possible on this, so you’ll know soon. You aren’t the only candidate, but I’m giving you my recommendation and Captain King is also behind you.”

I head back to my desk, finish up my report, and drive home in a daze. It’s one thing to work hard every day, but another to be recognized by the chief and in line for a huge promotion. I decide not to tell Maddie about it right away—if it falls through, it’s not a big deal, but if it happens, I have a really good pitch to get her to think about coming with me.

Fast? Yeah.

But I’m thirty-eight years old, and like I told her the other night—I know what I want.

The sun is just dipping below the horizon by the time I pull into my driveway. I head inside and open up the back door to let Bruce bolt outside. I follow him out and stand on the deck, breathing the fresh air as I peer over the fence to see if Maddie’s little car is in the driveway.

It’s there, all right, but before I can decide whether to text her, I hear a muffled shout coming from inside the little trailer. Maddie’s mom, I’m guessing. I can’t hear Maddie respond, but I realize that it’s because her mom is the only one yelling. It goes on for awhile—too long, I think—and after a couple of minutes of loud raging, it’s clear that Maddie’s relationship with her mom isn’t just complicated. It’s a fucking nightmare.

No wonder she needed to get out and talk the other night. Hot anger blasts through my nervous system. I’d like to storm over there and interrupt this bullshit, but this is Maddie’s mom, and unless things heat up a lot more or there’s violence, I don’t want to stomp through her boundaries before I know for sure what she would be comfortable with.

Still—nobody should treat Maddie that way. Nobody should treat anyone that way.

The porch door opens and I take a step back to avoid being seen. I hear heels clack against the wood planks and a short, plump figure, shadowed in the fading daylight, stomps down the steps and crunches through the gravel to one of the parked cars. The car roars to life and backs down the driveway before disappearing down the road.

“C’mon, Bruce,” I say as I climb the steps of my deck to let him back into the house. I don’t waste any time and walk straight through my house and out my front door, locking it behind me as I make a beeline for Maddie’s place.

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