Page 97 of Jump

My eyes narrow, because everyone who works on the front line knows that a wish for quiet is a massive fuck you to the universe, and in payment, she’ll torture a man every second until his shift ends.

“The girls are probably gonna end up at the club or something,” he continues. Sitting back in his seat and resting his arm on the doorframe, he studies the street as we pass. “They’re gonna skip the cute cocktails and head straight to the tequila, so we gotta be on duty there, too.”

“Tequila’s fun,” Ivy inserts, braver now that she’s essentially told me to shove my head up my ass and get on with life. “Tequila means they’re happy.”

“Yeah. And birthdays are Hannah’s specialty.”

My head whips up and across to the side of Axel’s face.

“Hannah’s bestie is turning twenty-five, which, according to them both, is basically thirty. That means tequila in shot glasses, and a lot of trouble to be had.”

Hannah’s bestie’s birthday?

I shove forward in my seat and slap Sloane on the back of the shoulder. “Dude. What’s the date today?”

“Don’t even,” Axel laughs. “I know you’re playing, Ruiz. It’s not funny.”

“November twenty-ninth,” Sloane answers from the front seat. “Tell me that ain’t your girl’s birthday.”

“Fuck.” My stomach drops and my heart shrivels in my chest.

I sit back against my chair and look up at the ceiling. Because I fucked up. I screwed up. I completely fucking destroyed everything, just like I told her I would. “Fuck!”

“Head on straight,” Ivy takes charge. Her eyes are hard when I glance across, and her lips firm into a line that says she’s not interested in watching me head toward a fire while… distracted. “We do the job. No one dies. We get back to the house, and then we help the lieutenant dig himself out of the hole he’s created. Forgetting a birthday is rough, Lieutenant. But dying on her birthday would be way worse. Don’t compound the problem.”

“Ten seconds out,” Sloane announces. “Focus up, crew.”

I left without speaking to her this morning. I didn’t tell her happy birthday. I didn’t give her the present I bought for her weeks ago. I didn’t show her any affection at all. Just the view of my back as I walked out the fucking door.

“Lieutenant?” Ivy smacks my knee and drags my attention back to her. “Where do you want us?”

“Axel’s in the front door with me.” My throat burns dry while, outside the truck, thick smoke wafts into the air and searches for the depths of my lungs. “Sloane’s on the pumps. Rizz, the hoses. This is a building filled with explosives, and she’s already weak from last time. It’s gonna be unstable, and none of us can expect any of the cranes to hold their own weight, so just…” I shake my head as we bounce from tarred road to muddy dirt and slide onto the driveway I used just days ago.

I brought Vivian here on Thanksgiving and gave my thanks to everything she is. To her body. To her very existence. I worshipped at the temple that is her heart, and inside mine, I begged to never lose her the way I’ve lost others. I pleaded with the universe to let me keep her. Have her. Cherish her.

And right after that, I went back to being me… the asshole who bottles up his feelings and ignores everyone because he has big emotions and an inability to process them in a healthy way.

“Where do you want me?” Ivy throws herself out the truck door the second Sloane brings us to a skidding stop, but she’s in my face, dogging my steps and demanding my attention.

“Lieutenant?” She grabs my sleeve when I intend to turn and walk away, and yanks me back until we’re toe to toe. Nose to nose, if not for the vast height difference.

“You’re distracted,” she murmurs. “You’re in your feelings. I’m still here, working under your command, even after you put in such a valiant effort to get rid of me. And now it’s your girlfriend’s birthday, and you forgot. You’re in big trouble when you get home.” With a small grin, she shakes her head. “Once we mop this one up and clear out, in about an hour, you can take off and tell her you planned it all this way as a surprise for her. Pretend you didn’t forget at all.”

“Ivy—”

“Gaslight the shit out of this situation and make her believe it was all part of the plan. But right now, right here,” she releases my sleeve and points toward the warehouse, where steel folds and small explosions rock the inside so we feel them through the ground. “I need you to focus, so you don’t get hurt. And I need to you tell me where you want me. Because I want to do my job with you. If you’re going in, then I want to come in too. If you’re on the hoses, then I wanna be at the front.”

“And if you die on my girlfriend’s birthday?” I ask above the din of my crew doing their jobs.

Even though I stand with Ivy, dealing with the same argument I’ve had a hundred times already, my crew knows their places. Because that’s how we train. I’m their general, sending his troops, just like we’ve always practiced.

“If you end up hurt on my watch,” I press, “On my girl’s birthday, how do you think that’s gonna work out for us?”

“Well, then, I guess I promise not to get hurt.”

Her eyes widen, and her cheeks pale in the same beat that a massive explosion rocks the ground we stand on. A bubble of heat warms my back and the mushroom cloud of flame dances in the reflections of Ivy’s eyes so I get a front-row seat, even without turning.

“Alright.” The fear in her expression is answer enough for me. No matter her bravado, no matter her words, she’s still not the troop I send to the front. “I want you on aerial. Stay back. Use the truck for cover. Keep the rest of your crew safe by—”

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