Page 74 of Knotting the Firefighters

The question catches me off-guard, genuine confusion evident in his tone, like my support isn't the response he expected.

"Yes?" I stare at him like he's grown a second head. "Why the hell would I say no when this is literally your dream? You've wanted this for years—captain position, your own station, your own crew. No more being mocked as the forever rookie, no more taking orders from people less competent than you."

My voice gains momentum as conviction builds:

"You're going to have your team execute leadership the way you've always envisioned, experience the authority and respect you've earned through years of exemplary service. Who am I to stop you just because I love?—"

The words die.

Just stop.

Mid-sentence.

Mid-declaration.

Because apparently, my mouth has decided independent operation is acceptable.

I close it with an audible click, teeth meeting with enough force to make my jaw ache.

Oh.

Oh no.

The realization crashes over me like a building collapse—sudden, devastating, impossible to escape.

I love Calder Hayes.

Time slows, the world narrowing to this single truth I've been avoiding for months. Not the casual affection of friendship, not the comfortable compatibility of sexual partners, not the convenient arrangement of two lonely people finding solace in each other's bodies.

Actual love.

The terrifying, all-consuming, life-altering kind.

The recognition forces reflection I've been carefully avoiding, makes me examine patterns I've taken for granted because I've accomplished so much—Fire Chief at twenty-eight, decorated service record, professional respect earned through competence rather than granted through privilege.

But I've never been loved.

Not really.

Not in the way romance novels describe or movies portray.

Never had someone who checked on me without an agenda, who showed up without obligation, who cared about my existence beyond what I could provide them. My parents died when I was young—too young to remember their love as anything except an abstract concept. Foster care taught me self-sufficiency rather than connection, survival over vulnerability.

Gregory's pack had wanted possession, not partnership. Wanted trophy Omega with impressive credentials, wanted access to my pension and professional network, wanted a decorative addition to their pack dynamic.

They never wanted me.

Never loved Wendolyn Murphy—flawed, stubborn, temperamental woman beneath the chief's badge.

But Calder does.

The truth settles with quiet certainty, reframing months of interactions through a new lens. The way he brought coffee without being asked, I remembered how I take it, despite never writing it down. He fixed my gate at midnight because he knew I'd been too exhausted to handle it. The gentleness in his touch contrasted against the passion in his kisses, the way he holds me like I'm simultaneously fragile and unbreakable.

He sees me.

All of me—the competence and the fear, the strength and the vulnerability, the chief and the woman.

And he stayed anyway.