“I always top off the chain saws,” Nick grumbled.
“Good.” Joe arched a dark eyebrow at the burly redhead. “You can show Sandy how it’s done, so you two can alternate from now on.”
“But, Lieutenant—” Sandy began, shooting daggers at Nick, who gave her a shit-eating grin.
“I don’t want to hear it.” Joe held up his hand, ending the discussion, and headed toward Frederick. “Hey, Captain. I didn’t expect you for another hour.”
“Things wrapped up quicker than I’d thought,” Frederick said vaguely, making straight for the hallway that led to his office.
“The kids usually ask a ton of questions at those things.” Joe smirked. “You must’ve bored the shit out of them.”
Frederick gave him the bird without breaking his stride. “How did this morning go?”
“What do you mean how did it go?” His friend bristled. “It went fine. I can handle roll call without you holding my hand.”
“Whoa. Why areyouso touchy this morning?” Frederick stopped in front of his office, gawking at the other man. “Of courseyou can handle roll call, but it’s my job to follow up with you.”
“I know. Sorry. It’s just… Coraline wants to change thecolor scheme again.” Joe heaved a sigh and followed Frederick into his office. “She had me on the phone until one o’clock last night.”
“That’s rough.” Frederick cringed in sympathy. Coraline Hong was Joe’s fiancée and Bethany’s older sister. She was a lovely woman, but she was fraying around the edges, juggling her legal career with the wedding planning.
“The flowers, the cake, and the decorations have to be changed yet again.” Joe clutched his short black curls in both his fists. “I know the drill after the last two times she changed her mind, so I can handle most of the replanning. That’s not the problem. It’s just that Coraline will be stressed out of her mind.”
“And a stressed-out fiancée is not a happy fiancée.” Frederick clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. Iamone of your groomsmen.”
“You already did me a huge favor by going to speak to Bethany’s class.” Joe released his hair from his punishing grasp. “You know how I feel about public speaking.”
“Yeah, second graders can be a tough crowd,” Frederick joked, even as he recalled why he’d been in such a hurry to hit the gym. His friend’s wedding woes had briefly distracted him from his own troubles, but the tension crept back into his shoulders as memories of this morning resurfaced. “Do you have time to spot me in the gym?”
“Sure.” Joe pointed his thumb at the door over his shoulder. “Why don’t you start warming up? I’ll be there after a quick walk-through.”
Frederick changed into his workout clothes in the small bedroom attached to his office and headed for the gym. He found the area empty with his crew still busy wrapping up their equipment check. He breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that he believed in stiff formality between him and his team, but he also couldn’t display all his emotions and vulnerabilities in front of them.
They could talk shit and laugh like friends at the station, but he had to command their trust and respect when the bells hit, signaling an emergency. Their lives and the lives of the people they protected depended on it. In other words, he needed to get his shit together.
He started with a slow jog on the treadmill, but he was soon flat-out sprinting, his feet pounding the belt. He remembered her too-pale face. The sound of his name on her lips. Her voice trembling as she said,I’m sorry.The tip of her nose turning pink as tears threatened to fall. He couldn’t block out any of it. And he felt like an asshole for almost making her cry.
Anne broke his heart, but she wasn’t a bad person. Far from it. She was kind, gentle, and thoughtful. But she lacked a strength of character that allowed her to know her own mind and to hold her ground. She’d hurt him when she broke up with him, but she had also disappointed him.
He’d believed they had the kind of love that would persevere and grow through all odds—the forever kind of love. She had to have known that, too, but she still let her imo persuade her to leave him to pursue an acting career in Korea. Her uncertainty had sullied the verity of their love.
Did Anne still believe she made the right choice in breaking up with him? Did she still believe he was unworthy of her like her imo thought? That he was a dumb jock without a promising future? Was being a fire captain too blue-collar for the likes of her bougie family? The memory of the betrayal, heartbreak, and humiliation made Frederick’s insides wither like a fragile leaf under the scorching beam of a magnifying glass.
“Fuck,” he spat, shoving his sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes.
It had taken him a long time—years of therapy—to stop blaming himself. To stop hating himself for not being enough. It was Anne and her imo who were not enough. Their arrogance, vanity, and delusions of superiority weretheirshortcomings.
It didn’t matter what they thought of him. He was enough. Even his jarring run-in with Anne couldn’t shake his faith in that fundamental truth. He would never allow anyone to make him doubt that again.
Frederick shut the treadmill off and stood bent over at the waist, panting and dripping sweat on the belt. But he wasn’t being fair. Anne wasn’t like her imo. He would never have fallen in love with someone like that. She just hadn’t loved him enough to stand up for him. He stepped down from the treadmill, pulling his T-shirt up to wipe the salt out of his eyes.
The only thing that mattered about that sad little story was that it was all ancient history. It was safe to shove all his feelings away without going through the effort of properly processing them. He wasn’t going to run into Anne again. There was no point engaging in painful self-reflection for the sake of his future self. Besides, he hardly had any feelings to process.
“Right,” he scoffed under his breath. He could almost see his therapist’s slow, disappointed headshake. “Whatever.”
Deliberately regressing from years of progress might not be the wisest move, but it was the only move Frederick could make right now. He was overwhelmed, overcome, over… everything, so he needed to give himself some grace. If that looked like working out until he couldn’t see straight to avoid thinking about Anne, then he needed to give himself permission to do just that.
Frederick wrapped up his workout an hour later—heeding his lieutenant’s suggestion tostop killing himself—and returned to his office. Then he trudged into his bedroom and its adjacent bathroom to take a long—he checked his watch—ashorthot shower before he hit the stack of reports hard in preparation for his meeting with Pete.
