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Ash

Ash couldn’t sleep. Not at his apartment, not anywhere. Sleep eluded him, so he spent most of his time at the firehouse. At least there, he could be distracted by the fact that he’d been dumped. He’d thought girls loved a man in uniform. Back in the day, his job would have easily been the only thing needed to help him pick up a girl at a bar—not that he’d ever done it. But he’d seen his buddies do it plenty of times.

Cooper was still a little antsy, too. Both of them had lost someone. Marcus’s picture was now displayed in a place of honor in the main lounge area. Seeing it every day only added to the pain they were both enduring.

Ash sat at the table in the kitchen. A few months ago, Charlie had sat here and he’d fixed her a meal. They’d talked of their future. It was yet another reminder of what had happened to him, and at this point in time, he wasn’t so sure his apartment was a bad place to be.

“I’m not paying you today,” the chief said as he moved past him. “You don’t have a shift.”

“Is it against the law for me to hang out?”

Something akin to pity flickered across the chief’s face, and he shook his head before moving down the hallway to where his office was located. There were four guys on call today. One sat on a cot near the wall where a window overlooked the back parking lot. Two were in the kitchen fixing something to eat. And Cooper sat at the table across from him.

“Still thinking about her, huh?”

Ash stiffened. Cooper was the only one he’d told. Everyone he worked with knew about his relationship, but Cooper knew that it had officially imploded after Ash had been deemed a hero by the city.

“She’ll come around,” Cooper insisted. “They usually do. Take my wife, for instance. She might not have cared about my job when we were dating.”

At Ash’s incredulous expression, Cooper chuckled.

“Oh, she liked my job for the clout. She bragged all the time about dating the guy from the fireman’s calendar we put out every year. But the second she got pregnant? That was a different story.”

Ash listened with interest. If Cooper’s wife had dealt with and come down from her issues regarding her husband’s job, then maybe there would be a clue as to how Ash could convince Charlie to do the same. Then again, a pregnant wife wouldn’t go so far as to tell her husband to quit. If they were expecting, then she’d want the security of a stable job. And just like that, Ash’s hopes fizzled.

“Anyway, she was terrified that I’d leave her a single mother.”

“But she didn’t make you quit.”

Cooper shook his head. “No, but she didn’t like it either. It put a huge strain on our relationship for a while. Honestly, there was nothing I could do except be there for her.”

The difference between Cooper’s story and Ash’s was blatantly obvious. Charlie hadn’t locked in her relationship with Ash yet. She didn’t have to stick it out because they had children or they’d committed to one another before God.

Ash didn’t have anything he could say to her to get her to see his side of things. And she didn’t have to change her perspective.

“I see that look, and I’m telling you that she’ll come around.”

Ash huffed. He wanted to argue with Cooper—to remind him that their situations were very different. He wanted to lash out. But he couldn’t. Cooper didn’t mean anything by his words. He wasn’t trying to brag about his own situation. His words simply weren’t helping like he thought they might.

“Can I ask you something?” Ash said.

“Shoot.”

“If your wife had asked you… to leave your job. If she couldn’t sleep and thought she was losing her mind over worrying about your safety…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the question. Cooper would know what he was getting at.

He proved Ash right when he nodded. “Would I have quit?”

Ash raised his eyebrows, making it clear that was exactly what he was asking.

“Without question,” Cooper said, no hesitation.

Ash didn’t speak. Hearing that his friend would have given it all up for his family hit him harder than he cared to admit. Maybe Ash really was the selfish one all this time. Now, all he could do was nod. He didn’t want to think about what he’d lost—how he’d clung to something he’d thought was important.

He was a firefighter, a smoke jumper, ahero. If he didn’t have this job, then who was he? That was the biggest and worst question that seemed to linger in his mind.

WhowasMichael Ashton?