Page 191 of Controlled Burn
When she woke, he was still there. His breath warm at her neck. His hand curled possessively against her hip. The yellow dress tangled between them—too bright, too soft, too dangerous.
A warning.
A promise.
Chapter 65
Keep it Burning
The tones sounded different here.
Crisper. Cleaner.
Like the building didn’t hold a century’s worth of secrets in its walls.
Like no one had ever screamed in this hallway.
Like no one had ever called her a mistake with a smirk on their lips.
This place didn’t know her yet.
But it would.
The new house wasn’t flashy. Four bays. Two engines. One ladder.
A lean crew. Fast. Focused. Tight.
She liked it.
The air smelled different—fresh paint and lemon cleaner instead of mildew and smoke. The tile gleamed like someone cared enough to scrub it twice. Even the silence was different: not heavy, not haunted, just waiting.
Her locker was secondhand. Her boots slid under the bench like they’d always belonged.
The nameplate above her gear simply read:
Lt. Cross.
No initials. No qualifiers. Just her.
Station 12 had become a PR nightmare—two terminations, one suspension, and an arrest in under three months. The city cracked down hard.
Brooks? Fired. Arrested. Bonded out.
Watts? Reassigned to Community Risk Reduction—off the floor, off the fireground. On leave. Probably chasing a lawsuit.
Jake? Gone. Transferred out of city limits. No goodbye. Just absence.
And Dean? Resigned. No fanfare. No speech. Just a folded letter and a two-line text from Reyes:
He’s out.
She hadn’t replied.
She still felt him sometimes.
In the crackle of the radio. In the burn beneath her ribs. In the phantom taste of regret and bourbon.
But she didn’t spiral.
