Chapter 62

Noah

Girl…

I stared down at my phone, unable to believe what I was reading. We’d talked about getting testing done, but Millie hadn’t given us any indication she’d actually done anything about it. I couldn’t focus on that, not when this news was still fresh in my mind. The baby was just a small, vague presence for me right now. I knew it was growing inside Millie, had watched her body change and grow more beautiful every day, but this… It turned an amorphous pink blob into someone real. Millie’s cheeky grin on a little girl as I watched her romp through life. Someone just as daring, just as wild as her mother. My chest started to ache, that same feeling I felt any time I was around Millie, only more intense. My little girl… I’d be her daddy, and she’d?—

“There you are, you fucking cuck.”

For a second, all I could do was blink. Dave had strolled into the break room with a shit-eating grin on his face, like a shark that scented blood in the water. What the hell had set him off, I didn’t know. Neither did everyone else, as every firefighter in the room went silent. Conflict happened. You couldn’t do a job as important as ours and not have people disagreeing, but we all knew how to resolve it. Talk shit out, usually with Brent as arbiter, and then move on.

Brent wouldn’t be stepping in for this fight, though.

Dave was perfectly alert, every sense in overdrive as he prowled closer.

“What the fuck are you on about?” I sneered, shaking my head and making clear I had no interest in dealing with him. He wasn’t what mattered. He never was.

“You, you dumb cunt.” My head snapped up. He had my attention now, throwing words like that around. Rhett got to his feet, moving slowly towards me, some of the other guys doing the same. Far too many stopped where they were, not even pretending to eat their lunch anymore. “I knew you were fucking pussy whipped by that open holed?—”

He was going to say something about Millie, that’s what had me moving. For a second, there was a flicker of memories of all the times I’d been bullied by idiots like him at school, but not for long. No one, especially not Dave, was going to keep me down again. I had the front of his shirt in my hands and was twisting it, choking off anything else he had to say as I shoved him against the wall. Dimly, I was aware that this was not smart. Nothing would announce what Millie was to me like this, but I couldn’t seem to care. Some raging need burned inside me, not satisfied until Dave was clawing at his neck, fighting for a breath.

“You don’t want to kill him.” Rhett appeared beside me before shooting Dave a scornful look. “I mean you do. Fuck, I want to as well, the fucking prick.” I stared at him, hearing a faint whine inside my head. “But he’s not worth it, Noah.”

That’s what had me letting go. Fighting in the station would mean a disciplinary hearing with possible penalties, and I couldn’t afford that. Each one of us was desperate for Millie to quit this job. She was always exhausted, falling asleep on the toilet the other day. This was the time for her to rest, not work herself to the bone. I, we, would provide for her, the need burning hot in our chests, and to do that, I needed to release Dave.

“Don’t say another thing.” My voice was curiously calm. “Not one more. Get out of the fucking break room and away from me, or god help me?—”

“Baby’s not yours.”

How could someone look so rough and yet so gleeful all at the same time? I knew he had a nasty streak, but it was only now how fucking shit Dave was became apparent.

“What baby?” Rhett looked confused and so did everyone else, beginning to mutter, and that’s when fear finally bled in. “What baby, Noah?”

We had to keep this quiet; we’d promised Millie.

“There’s—” I started to say.

“That little bitch—” Dave sneered.

“Shut the fuck up,” I snarled. “Shut up!”

“Millie.” You could’ve heard a pin drop in the room, which made the fact that people were coming running down the hall apparent. “This cunt is panting after her like a bitch in heat, but she’s the slut bearing another man’s child and turning you into some beta cuck, willing to raise it.”

That would be how he would see the arrangement, as there was something fundamentally broken in Dave. He could never, ever understand what we had. It wasn’t even the sharing of a girl that was alien to him. If it was just me and Mills, he’d still struggle. There was no generosity, no good feeling, in him. Every man was an idiot to try to dominate. Every woman a hole to masturbate in. For a second, I felt a little compassion for him.

Right before the need to tear his fucking head off won out.

My fist shot out, crossing the distance between us, my entire weight behind it. Rhys had trained me for hours on the bag, making sure I knew how to throw a punch. I put that to good use now, smacking the bastard in the face, his nose breaking with a satisfying crunch. I watched his hands snap up, his eyes going wide as he registered what had happened, obviously thinking I wouldn’t have the balls to belt him. Oh, I had more than enough to get this job done. I was on him, pushing past Rhett, everyone, clawing my way through my colleagues as they all swarmed. I’d kill him, I shouted, over and over, my hands raking through the air.

I’d beat Dave until there was nothing other than a bloody smear, because right when I had everything I’d ever wanted, he tried to step in and take it.

“What the fuck is going on?”

Knox walked in and took in the situation quickly, but before anyone could answer, a shrill bell rang. A fire. I shook my head, unable to believe the timing, but people didn’t have emergencies on our schedule.

“We’ve gotta go,” Gareth snapped. “Whatever the fuck this is, it can wait until we find out how big the job is.” Dave went to claw himself up, the thin whine that escaped him satisfying me on a cellular level. “You stay here. Rhett, you can lead Dave’s team.”

It was just as well, because we’d need all hands on deck.

“What happened?” Charlie hissed as we ran towards our truck, but when we grabbed our gear down from the wall, Henry stepped in.

“Head in the game.” He shot the two of us a dark look. “You can’t go into an emergency situation with your mind elsewhere. Get it together now, or stay here.”

Where Millie was, unaware of the drama. I swallowed hard, half tempted to take him up on his offer. I could shield her, get her out of this place and home where it was safe, but the people relying on us needed that too. I yanked my jerkin off the peg and started wrenching it on. Seconds later, we were all piling into the truck.

“Address?” Knox barked.

“Got it.” Charlie gave him directions right before the sirens were switched on and then our truck, all of the trucks, went rushing out of the station.

“Jesus fuck…”

Hearing Henry curse made clear just how bad this was. Smoke could be seen for kilometres before we got even close to the fire site, filling the air with an acrid stink. The windows were kept wound up tight, the air conditioning turned off as we prepared to walk into hell.

There was nothing we hated more than private recycling centres. Getting rid of rubbish cost builders and industry big bucks, so selling their waste onto recyclers made good sense. In theory, it meant resources were redirected from landfill and reused. In practise, we’d found too many businesses had taken over old sheds or compounds and piled them high with highly flammable items, creating massive fuel loads, ready to go up, and that’s what this looked like. Black smoke billowed everywhere, making visibility difficult.

“What have we got here?” Knox asked as we pulled up, the other trucks parking

“Supposed to be a paper and cardboard recycler,” Charlie replied.

“Doesn’t look like that to me.” I pressed my face closer to the window. “Black smoke, stink in the air.” I stared at the pedestrians as we pulled up, some fighting to catch a breath as the ambulance medics saw to them. “Some pretty bad smoke inhalation cases for people on the street.”

Then there were the workers.

A huddle of people wearing uniforms sporting the same logo as the plant sign were also being seen by ambulance staff.

This, unfortunately, was also something we’d seen before. Recyclers storing items that they weren’t licensed to store. If they were prepared to bend the rules on that, you could guarantee they weren’t following proper storage protocols either.

“There could be anything in there,” Henry snapped, staring at the windscreen, as if he could see past the smoke to the cause of it. “Chemicals, petrol.” He looked over at me. “Lithium batteries.”

“Calling in for more back up,” Knox said, jumping on the radio to do just that as we jumped out.

“This is bigger than us,” Rhett said as soon as we got close, “but we can put a dent in it for now. From what I can see, there’s a shed and it's the yard at the back that’s on fire.”

“So let's get a move on and try and put this out before it gets to the shed, because who the hell knows what’s in there,” Gareth said, nodding to Knox as he arrived.

We had our orders, so we all moved, jogging over to our trucks and unrolling hoses as Gareth’s team got the cherry picker moving, the crane lifting and then stretching out across the shed roof, disappearing into the smoke. Masks were shoved on, oxygen tanks engaged, hoses gripped as we prepared to do what we did best. All the issues, the news about our baby girl, even Millie and Dave disappeared, because Henry was right. The only way I was coming out of this, walking into her office and swinging her up into my arms, was if I focussed right now. Smoke billowed all around us as we walked into the shed, turning the junk stacked inside into ominous shadows. We walked past them and into the burning maw of this fire.

I played D&D with a group of friends, and this was the closest I’d ever come to understanding what a knight felt as he approached a dragon. The fire was a living, breathing thing, eating up the piled high junk in great gulps.

“Ready?” A voice came through the speakers into my helmet.

“Let’s do this,” I said, right as I pulled the bale back and unleashed a spray of water.

Putting out a fire was always the best moment of the job, the start of one coming in second best, because you went in full of optimism, sure you’d be able to extinguish the blaze. This was the bit that sucked. My arms ached from holding the hose, from directing litres and litres of water at a fire that just seemed to burn on despite everything we did.

“When are the other teams getting here?” Henry snapped, but the muffled sounds of sirens wailing answered his questions. “Finally, because… Oh, fuck.”

That was exactly the thing I didn’t want to hear. Nothing fazed Henry. He was a hardened veteran so nothing surprised him. It made him an excellent team member, because no matter what we dealt with, he’d already done so before and had useful advice on how to tackle it. Anything that had him swearing was bad, really bad. My head swung around, seeing what the issue was.

We needed to keep the fire away from the shed. Not only did it cut us off from the trucks and our water sources, but we’d be dealing with unknown fuel sources.

And all the risk therein.

“Roof, now!” Knox barked, but we were already moving.

It couldn’t have been built out of corrugated iron, could it? Instead, it was one of those old places built over a hundred years ago of solid, red brick.

And timber.

Bone dry and well-seasoned, the embers were like seeds sprinkled over fertile soil, and they took root instantly. Small points of red covered the roof, growing larger by the second. Streams of water, so many streams, wove across the roof, trying to douse it all, when we heard the one thing we didn’t want to hear.

“Get back to the trucks!” The voice wasn’t a familiar one, meaning it was someone from one of the other stations that had arrived to lend a hand. “There’s a heap of gas bottles stacked in the shed!”

We’d started this whole journey with Millie because of a gas bottle. I didn’t want to end it due to one. I was moving, so were the others, turning off the water and just running. The site would need to be cleared, onlookers would need to be pushed back as we tried to deal with this new challenge.

Every business was supposed to know where their gas bottles were, have protocols in place to protect the contents from fire, but by the look of this place, they wouldn’t know a WHS regulation if it came and bit them on the arse. I cursed the owner under my breath, over and over, as we ran towards the door.

But not fast enough.

I’ll always remember that sound. A roar that became elongated, stretching on and on, my own shout lost within it. I turned and looked behind me, always a mistake, just in time to see the corner of the shed was on fire and the shapes of the bottles were outlined by the flames, right before the explosion hit.

Being picked up and thrown like a doll, that’s what I remember. A bright point of pain, followed by a much bigger, duller one as I slammed into the ground.

“Noah…!”

I dimly heard her voice calling me, even though that wasn’t possible. Millie wasn’t, couldn’t, be here. I wished she was, though, with my entire heart, as I felt it beat faster and faster, sending blood and pain rushing through my body, right before a black heat swallowed me.