Page 60 of Tameron

He swiveled his chair around and looked at me. “Why do you think you did?”

I laughed. “Because I know this is about Tam.”

His lips twitched and he looked like he wanted to say more, but after a beat, he shook his head. “It took me a while to get him to talk about the dinner. He liked it, by the way. He liked your family. A lot. He’s, ah…you know he’s been hanging out at the garage with Dax?”

Yeah.I knew.Dax hadn’t talked a lot about it, and despite wanting to pin him down and force him to tell me every detail about working with Tameron, I’d been good. “Dax likes him. Says he’s a quick learner.”

“He is. He’s a fuckin’ brilliant guy. All my guys are.” His voice went quiet, and I knew he was dealing with more than just Tameron wanting things to be easier at home. “I don’t like letting people down.”

I leaned over the table and stretched my arm out so I could squeeze his. “Do you think you’ve let any of them down?”

His eyes met mine, and he didn’t answer that question. “You know how hard it is to be the one in control. Whatever goes right is on you. But whatever goes wrong…” He trailed off.

The weight in my chest was heavy and I fought the urge to touch the scar on my stomach. I knew. I knew how wrong it could go when someone made a bad call. The scars were one of the many reasons I wanted to become a chief. I wanted to be better than the one who’d given me an order that had scarred me.

“I thought the weight of being in charge would ease once we were here. Civilians again,” he said, then laughed. “Ridiculous. I mean, I doubt we’ll ever really be civilians again.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. People like my family had been banned from serving—even in times of war, they were always seen as less than. I’d never done anything except register for the draft at eighteen. I had a couple of friends who’d been in ROTC in high school, but I had no plans to give myself or my life to an organization that treated the people who raised me like they were second-class.

But getting to know these guys, I understood the nuance now. There was the military system, and then there were the people who served in it. Whatever their reasons, whatever their background, they were people who had suffered.

They were men like Nash—good men who would never be able to fully shake the pain of trauma and loss and would probably always struggle to talk about it.

“Was tonight too much?” I asked.

He looked startled, then laughed. “No. I—ah. I feel like I owe you an apology. It’s still kind of instinct for me to take over.”

I grinned at him and squeezed his arm once more before settling back. “You were good on that call, and I don’t mind being bossed around by EMTs who know what they’re talking about. And you do. I can see you getting into leadership sooner than you think,” I added. “If that’s what you want.”

He looked torn. “It’s a lot of responsibility.”

“It is.”

Silence settled around us again. The sky began to lighten even more on the horizon.

“I want to know I’m doing right by them,” Nash said quietly after a long, long while. “My guys. I want to know that when they leave, they won’t need to come back because I did everything I could to get them to the point they were ready to be on their own.”

“Who’s leaving?” My heart began to thud. Who and where are they going? I wanted to ask. Was it Tameron? Did he want to go back home—wherever he was from?

He took a while to answer. “Bean’s gettin’ married. And Creek wants to move in with Heath. That one stings less. Heath got himself a new place to live just up the street. Doubt those two fuckers will be cookin’ for themselves most nights. But Jarek lives near the Bay. In the city.”

An hour wasn’t an impossible drive, but it was a long distance. I basked in the relief that it was someone besides Tameron. I had no say over him, of course. We weren’t dating. There were no strings, as much as I wouldn’t mind being tied down.

But I wasn’t ready to give up yet on what could be.

“You gonna retire from here when you’re old?” Nash asked, interrupting my thoughts.

I cleared my throat, then finally gave in and let myself cough for a few seconds. My mouth tasted like ash. “Maybe. I don’t know. I like teaching at the gym, and I might want to do that before my joints are too fucked to be good at it anymore.”

He grinned and pushed his hood back, turning his face toward the sky. He took in a deep breath that ended in his own coughing fit, and he swiped his hand over the back of his mouth. “Tastes the same.”

“Mm?”

“The smoke.” He’d been close enough to the fire to get a good lungful, and I remember what that was like—my first call to a fire. The taste didn’t leave my mouth for weeks.

He turned his chair toward me a bit more. “How can I make his life easier? What can I do at home so he…?” He stopped and swallowed back the words he clearly wanted to say.So he doesn’t leave? “So it’s easier for him?”

I smiled gently. “Why don’t I make you a list?”

---