Page 47 of Breaking Through

"Found you." Holden's footsteps were quiet on the stone path. "I figured you'd need a breather."

He carried his suit jacket over one arm, his tie loosened just enough to show the hollow of his throat. In the soft lighting, he looked impossibly young and somehow ageless at the same time.

"How'd you know about this place?"

"Rodriguez told me." He settled beside me on the bench. "Said you used to come here to sketch between calls."

Of course, Rodriguez remembered that. He'd caught me once, drawing shadows playing across the maple's trunk. Instead of teasing, he'd sat quietly until I finished, then asked if I could teach him how to capture light that way.

"I haven't drawn this garden since—" The words stuck, but Holden waited patiently. "Since the morning of the warehouse fire. Jenkins was with me. He was practicing his daughter's school play lines. She was playing a tree, and he wanted to help her with the movements..."

My voice cracked. Holden's hand found mine, warm and steady.

"Tell me about her." It wasn't a demand, just an invitation.

"She was eight. All knees and elbows and determined to be the best damn tree that the stage had ever seen." The memory rose up, bittersweet but no longer suffocating. "Jenkins kept saying she got her stubbornness from her mother, but we all knew better. He was the one who spent three hours building her a practice costume out of old workout gear."

"She sounds amazing."

"She is. Was. Is." I squeezed his fingers. "She's in high school now. Leads the drama club. I saw her name in the department newsletter."

Holden shifted closer, his shoulder pressing against mine. "What was Martinez practicing that morning?"

"His vows." I closed my eyes, letting the garden's peace wrap around us. "He couldn't decide if 'you're the air in my lungs' was too cheesy. We told him it was perfect."

"It was."

"Yeah." I opened my eyes to find Holden observing me. "He would have loved you, you know. Would have asked a millionquestions about your camera, and he probably would have asked you to document the whole wedding."

"I would have liked that. Not the wedding, but seeing you in your element before..."

"I'm not that man anymore."

"No." He turned to face me fully. "You're more now. You're everything he was, plus everything you've become."

"I dream about them." The confession spilled out in the garden where I'd last seen them whole. "Not just the fire anymore, but real memories. I see Jenkins teaching his kid tree poses and hear Martinez practicing his vows. They are little moments I thought I'd lost."

"That's good, isn't it?" Holden's voice was soft. "It means you're remembering them as people, not just losses."

I leaned in and kissed him right there in the firehouse garden, under lights that had witnessed countless moments of grief and joy.

When we broke apart, Holden rested his hand on my thigh. "You're shaking."

"Good kind of shaking." I kept my eyes closed, breathing him in. "It's the kind that comes with letting go of a weight you've carried far too long."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I opened my eyes to find him smiling. "I think I'm ready to go home."

"To Blue Harbor?"

"To you." The words were easier to speak than I expected. "To pine trees and lake mornings and ridiculous squirrel gangs. To whatever story we're writing next."

Above us, the last maple leaves on the tree rustled in a gentle breeze. I could have sworn I heard Jenkins' laugh on the wind. It wasn't mocking, just gently haunting—happy that I'd finally found my way back to living life.

Chapter fifteen

Holden

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