“Not your time?” Roman’s voice went serious. Dead serious. “Or there hasn’t been enough time since Trent?”
It was like a vise clamped on and tightened around his chest at the sound of his friend’s name. It was accompanied by the all too familiar burn of guilt. “Trent has nothing to do with me getting promoted or not.”
“Really?” Roman sat back. “Because every time you get close to a promotion you do something stupid, almost like you’re challenging the universe to see if it’s okay to get on with your life.”
“You don’t move on from something like that.”
Roman blew out a breath. “No, you don’t. But you also can’t let his death stop you from living yours. You’re one of the best, Adam. You make solid choices when it counts and crap ones when you’re off the clock, like you’re giving the department just enough reason to hesitate.”
Was that what he was doing? Adam hoped to hell not. He’d busted his ass to become a better firefighter, to assess a situation in seconds with the highest probability of success—to be the kind of firefighter Trent would have been. Then Adam thought about all the stupid pranks he’d pulled, the way he’d lived his life, and knew he wasn’t anywhere near the man Trent would have become. “Maybe they have reason to hesitate.”
“You act like I wasn’t there,” Roman said quietly. “Like I wouldn’t have made the same exact call.”
“But you didn’t.” Adam had. And even after a decade of playing it over in his mind, reevaluating every possible outcome, forward and backward until they were tattooed to the inside of his eyelids, he still couldn’t say with certainty what the hell had gone wrong. One minute they were in control of the fire, the next the wind turned and the blaze swallowed them whole.
“Had I been working on logic instead of raw adrenaline, I would have pulled back to the line the second the smoke shifted.”
“We were young, all gung ho and hopped up on FNG invincibility, pretending we weren’t scared as shit. And we all made that decision, Adam. So you don’t have exclusive rights to carry the guilt.”
“I was the senior guy there,” Adam bit off.
“By nine months.”
Adam gritted his teeth to keep from arguing. Nine months, nine years—it didn’t matter. When communication was cut with incident command, the choice to pull back or not fell to Adam. He’d made the wrong one.
In their line of work, courage was as necessary as water. But a good firefighter had a healthy dose of fear when it came to fire. Fear caused them to slow down, think through the situation, and give them time to let their training kick in.
Training that would have noticed the telltale sign of the fire pushing the air up. Training that could have ensured that one of the best firefighters and friends Adam had ever had would still be there.
Giving me shit about kissing the hometown sweetheart, he silently added, knowing Trent was probably in heaven shaking his head right then thanking Jesus, Gandhi, Babe Ruth, and anyone else who would listen that his buddy had hooked up with a crazy cutie.
“You want to know why I’m here and you’re still there? Because I didn’t let Trent’s death overshadow my life,” Roman said, making sure Adam knew they weren’t just talking about his position in the department.
“I let it fuel me to be better, make smarter choices, grow up. Then I worked my way into a position to where, if I got cut off from incident command, I’d know, without a doubt, what to do. And I didn’t wait for the department to move me up to captain—I proved to them I was ready. That I had what it took to go from lieutenant to captain to chief and beyond.”
“Because you’re the real deal,” Adam said. Roman was as skilled, methodical, and honorable as they came. He never hesitated and never missed important facts, even in the middle of a hell-blazer. He was captain for a reason.
“So are you. You’re just too busy jumping from one hot spot to the next to prove it.”
And wasn’t that the heart of the problem? By design, Adam was moving so fast he didn’t have time to think—about anything. Which had worked for him in the past, since thinking led to feelings and events he didn’t want to revisit. But maybe Roman was right, and his methods were also keeping him from moving forward.
Suddenly, he felt as if he’d spent most of his life running only to find himself in the same place. And if he wanted to make a difference, he needed to focus and show them he was serious. About his career—and his life. If he wanted to be a lieutenant, he didn’t just have to prove he was ready for the job.
He had to prove he was the job.
St. Helena had three truths Harper could always count on.
Keeping a secret was as realistic as winning the lottery without a ticket. The only person who benefited from lying was the liar—until they got caught. And when you challenged the first two, the only thing left to do was eat your weight in cookies.