Page 3 of Her Fire Master (Master Me #5)

L ia

I hop off the Staten Island Railway a couple blocks from my parents’ place and hoof it over, a pan of triple chocolate brownies in hand.

It’s my nephew’s birthday, which means the entire house will be packed with family—my brothers and their wives and children, parents, uncles, aunts and then any neighbors who feel like stopping by and enduring the mayhem of the Burke family.

I know I’m not always up for it, that’s for damn sure. Still, there’s comfort in the known. The predictability of how the afternoon will play out. Every annoying comment has already been said before.

Of course, this is the first time I’ve seen everyone since I got the job at the fire station, so I have to brace myself for the millions of questions that will entail.

I look up at the house, rebuilt to look exactly the same after the fire destroyed everything ten years ago.

Given the chance for something new, my mom chose the known.

Like her life could only be imagined one way and anything different would be wrong.

Me—I never wanted to come back here. Certainly not after the fire.

Not now after being on my own for five years.

I took off the second I graduated high school to ‘find myself.’ But I’m used to the familiar ache in my chest at returning.

The heaviness of being back with everything so familiar and foreign at once.

Three of the older children bang out the door and race down the steps, laughing like they’re up to no good. Which I fully applaud.

I step inside. “Hey, everyone!” I call out.

“Lia! Whatcha got there?” My Uncle Juan—my mother’s brother—peers into my pan and snags a chunk of brownie where it crumbled up when I cut it. “Mmm.” He pops it into his mouth. “That’s a winner.”

I twist to hold the pan out of his reach and walk past him to the kitchen toward the long table packed with every other dish of party food brought by the masses.

Like my crazy family, a combination of Puerto Rican—my mom’s side, and Irish—my dad’s, favorites.

Plates heaped with fried plantains, sliced jicama with lime squeezed over it, cilantro rice and beans, plus the platter of barbequed meat—hamburgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, Italian sausage.

Packages of buns riddle the table, along with every condiment known to man.

I plunk the brownies down as my brother, Tommy, sweeps by and grabs a handful of chips. “There’s the little traitor.”

They like to rib me for joining the fire department instead of the police force.

As if they ever would’ve let me follow them into the profession.

I give him a hug and kiss my niece, Madison, the cherubic three-year-old perched on his hip.

She kicks to be let down and runs off to join the rest of the kids.

My mom gets me next, with the two-cheeked kisses and a stream of chatter I don’t even hear.

I have this automatic tune-out that happens when I’m here.

I’m so used to being talked over, unheard, projected on, that I just sort of settle into the hologram of what they see me as.

I swear, until the day I packed up to join the Forest Service summer hotshot crew, no one comprehended I really intended to pursue my ambition to become a firefighter.

I still don’t think anyone believes I can do it.

“Hey, squirt.” My brother Eddie wraps an arm around me from behind, picks me off my feet and gives me a shake. “Yep. Still tiny.”

“Small in size, not in personality,” I sing. Again, this is routine. I could do it in my sleep.

“Hey, there she is!” My dad gives me a kiss. “You giving them hell over there?”

“Yep, Dad. All good.” I pat his shoulder. Don’t need Dad or my brothers to go apeshit protective on me. Because Lord knows, they would.

He shakes his head. “I still don’t like the idea of you?—”

I hold up my hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know—way too dangerous for your little girl. I can take care of myself, Dad.”

My father looks genuinely pained and I experience a moment of remorse. I’m sure he does worry about me. And it’s true this job is dangerous. But no more or less dangerous than being a cop, which was fine for all of my brothers.

It’s the curse of being the youngest, a girl, and the only one in the family who got my mother’s height. It’s like they will forever think I’m still that little girl running around in footed pajamas or something.

All he says is, “I sure hope so, sweetheart,” and ambles on.

I fix myself a plate of food and head outside to the back, where more meat is being grilled by the man-pack gathered around.

This is where I feel like I don’t belong.

I’ve always had that sense. The women here are all talking about the children, and families and stuff that doesn’t interest me.

Before there were nieces and nephews, they were talking about girl shit that didn’t interest me.

I can fake it, but I always have that sense I’m a stranger in my own family.

I open a folding chair and plunk myself down on it.

My oldest brother, Alex, sets up a chair beside me. “So?”

“So, what?”

“The guys hazing you?”

I roll my eyes. “That’s what Dad asked, too. Are you going to go kick their asses if I say they are?”

“Hell yeah, I’m going to kick their asses! Nobody messes with my baby sister.”

I bump shoulders with him and stand up. “I can take care of myself.”

“Wait up, Lia.” I turn back. “I got a friend over there—not at your station, but he’s a battalion chief. He told me they’re taking bets on how long you’ll last.”

Seriously?

Even though I’d guessed this much, hearing it confirmed sends a flush of white hot anger and oily humiliation mixing in my veins. I suddenly hate the men I work with, and my brother for relaying this shit to me. I blink rapidly, my eyes and nose burning.

“Oh yeah?” I square my shoulders. “What are you betting?”

He holds his hands up. “Whoa, whoa. I’m on your side.”

“Really? How is telling me that a help?” I snap. I’ve raised my voice, which gathers some attention from the family members around.

He pulls a long face and shoves his hands deep in his pockets. “I just thought you should know what you’re up against.”

“Yeah, I do know. Not that every member of this family hasn’t warned me at least fifty times each.”

I have a tendency to exaggerate. Sue me.

I turn on my heel and head into the house, ignoring Alex calling my name.

Inside my mom is talking to one of my sisters-in-law about some toy. “I had the same set of alphabet blocks my mother saved for me. All five kids played with them—long after they were little. It breaks my heart they were all lost in the fire.”

My eyes dart to the burn scars on her forearm and my stomach clenches. I’ve heard this refrain so often over the last ten years but it never gets easier. The gnawing guilt never goes away.

And this is why I’m not giving up. I’m not going to be hazed into quitting.

I had to become a firefighter.

Because me and fire—we like each other way too much. And if there’s anyone who should be running into burning buildings and pulling out kids, it’s me.

I owe the world that much.