Page 71 of My Grumpy Fire Chief Next Door
It feels like stepping into a memory that never finished forming; in a sense, it is because it’s the nursery we never finished setting up.
It’s half a room, half a ghost. One wall is painted that soft sage Josie loved; she said it looked like spring. Like something green could still grow even after the frost.
The rest is untouched.
Boxes stacked in the corner, sealed shut like they’re keeping something dangerous in. A tiny mobile, unopened. Crib parts leaning haphazardly against the wall, untouched for twenty years.
The rocking chair she found at a secondhand store—only ever used once, the day we brought it home—sits in the far corner, turned, like someone just stepped out of it.
I drop to my knees before I even realize I’m falling.
My palms hit the rug, and the smell hits me next; dust and wood and the faintest trace of the lavender detergent Josie used on everything baby-related. My lungs fold in on themselves. The air feels sharp, like breathing through broken glass.
And then I break.
Just the sound of something giving out inside me. Quiet. Hollow.
It’s the kind of collapse no one hears until they walk into the wreckage.
My chest caves, slow, and then all at once, something bone-deep is tearing loose. The sob that comes out of me isn’t clean or cinematic; it’s the raw sound a man makes when he’s out of places to bury his pain.
I press my forehead to the rug and fist the fibers as if they’ll hold me steady. As if I can claw my way back in time.
Back before the silence in that sterile delivery room.
Before I had to learn what it means to hold someone while they die with their arms around your future.
It comes out of me in waves. Ugly. Loud. Years of silence rupturing into sound.
I don’t know how long I cried.
But it’s long enough for Blaze to edge in beside me, pressing his body against my ribs like he’s trying to carry the weight for me. His nose bumps under my arm, nudging until my hand finds his fur and grips.
I bury my face into the side of his neck. His coat still smells like Kate, now combined with something warm and alive. It hurts.
God, ithurtsbecause it smells like Parker. Like Kate. Like the life I never thought I’d be brave enough to want again.
When the sobs slow, still jagged, still sharp, but not constant. I whisper to Blaze hoarsely and quietly, “Do you think she’d forgive me?”
Blaze stops nudging against me. His tail taps once against the floor, then stops again.
“Josie,” I say, voice splintered. “Do you think she’d forgive me… for moving on? For wanting something more than the ache?”
I don’t know who I’m asking. Him. The walls. Her. Myself.
I was eighteen when I lost her. Just a kid with a full ride and a mouth full of promises I didn’t get to keep. I gave it all up for her, for the baby. And now I’m thirty-eight.
Thirty-fucking-eight.
And all I have to show for it is this house, this broken-down room full of dreams that never got to breathe, and a heart that starts beating like it belongs to someone else every time Kate walks into the room.
I bury my face in Blaze’s fur, shaking with the kind of cry that leaves me empty and untouched, “I’m sorry,” I whisper into the stillness.
I don’t know if I’m talking to Blaze or Josie, or the part of me I lost back then.
“I didn’t mean to leave you behind. I never could.” Now, I’m definitely talking to her.
My voice cracks, splinters against the quiet, my lungs burning. “But she’s here, Josie. And I see her… in the kitchen. On the porch swing. In every damn sunrise, I thought I’d stopped noticing.”
