9. Garrett

When we arrivedat the fire station, Gabe and I walked through the apparatus bay and kitchen, handing off coffees to whoever we passed by. It seemed like with every step that I took, the tenser my abdomen grew. I just wasn’t sure what to expect, and I didn’t like charging into unknown circumstances.

With my job, I at least got a few clues as to what we were dealing with. When it came to Zoe, who knew? I wouldn’t know until I saw her and got a read of her. Wherever she was in here.

“You sure she’s here already? Maybe we beat her here,” I asked Gabe as we ventured out of the apparatus bay and checked the kitchen.

Gabe let out a brief laugh.

“I doubt that. She was always way more punctual than we were,” he reminded me.

A smirk lined my lips as we slipped out of the kitchen and headed for the doorway to the day room. Maybe she was with the guys somewhere else. I parted my lips to voice my thought, but the words died in my throat when I saw a glimpse of familiar auburn hair.

“Hold up,” I said as I came to a sudden stop before I reached the doorway.

“Watch it,” Gabe gritted out as he gripped his cup holder tighter to keep from spilling any of the coffee. He leaned to the side and froze, his eyes landing on Zoe. “Oh, woah.”

Oh, woah was right. My eyes trailed her every movement as she tossed her hair behind her shoulders, letting it stream down her back. Sunlight reached through the nearby window to illuminate her as she flipped through a notebook on her lap. Her lips were slightly pursed in thought, and they looked as full and soft as ever.

“She looks… good,” I murmured, unable to find the right words. It was just so strange seeing her again. How the hell did our paths manage to cross again years later?

“Very good,” Gabe agreed as we lurked outside of the room, too stunned to move.

As nice as it was to ogle at a gorgeous woman, I couldn’t just stand there. I was the oldest brother after all, so I needed to kick things off. After breathing in deeply through my nose, I strode into the day room where the crew usually relaxed after getting all of their duties done, walking past the television and a few other chairs to reach her.

When she heard approaching footsteps, Zoe tore her eyes away from her notebook and looked up at us. A look of shock broke out across her face as she took in the sight of us. Matty already told her that we were firefighters, but each other’s presence was still surprising to all of us.

“Zoe, can we talk?” I asked her.

Zoe looked between us, not answering for a few moments. At first, I thought she would deny my request and leave the room, but she scooted over to one side of the sofa and nodded.

I took a seat next to her as Gabe and I placed the rest of the coffee cups on the coffee table in front of us. My appetite for my drink completely dissolved, my mouth threatening to become dry as I felt her gaze on me.

Gabe grabbed one of the coffee cups and handed it to her with a hopeful smile on his face.

“Peace offering,” he said.

The corner of Zoe’s lips turned up a little as she accepted the coffee. Once Gabe sat down on the other side of me, her face became more serious as she turned to face us better. She was definitely as tense as we were, the air growing heavy between us.

Her silence meant that she was waiting for us to go first. I did my best to piece my thoughts together, but they were a jumble. A mess of guilt and uncertainty. Seeing her now, how beautiful she looked, made my mind malfunction for a second.

“I know we gave you a hard time back in high school. Looking back, we regret everything we did to make you upset,” I told her. “You were just trying to better the school and express your ideas, and we had to be assholes and make everything a competition.”

“Really, we just wanted to talk to you, but you know how teenagers are. We couldn’t pluck up the courage to just sit down and talk to you, so we acted like fools,” Gabe added from beside me. “So, we told people to ignore you to get a reaction out of you.”

Zoe’s face didn’t shift a centimeter as she gazed at us, listening to our apologies in unsettling silence. She was probably deep in thought, but I wished I could tell what she was thinking right now. Could she hear our sympathy, or did she think that we were trying to win her over without care?

“We’re really sorry. If we could go back, we’d change everything that we did,” I said, searching her eyes for even a glimmer of forgiveness, but she was hardened and tough. She wasn’t going to give anything away. At least not yet.

Zoe looked away from us, her mouth slightly turning down in a faint frown.

“I thought you guys did what you did because… you didn’t like me,” Zoe stated, her voice wavering midway through her sentence.

Gabe and I quickly shook our heads, not wanting her to think that in the slightest. We admired her. I still admired her as she sat there firm and steady. She stood by her beliefs, even if she was under pressure from opposing forces. Which happened to be us in high school.

“We liked you a good bit. It was just hard to express that, and I think we let outside influence get to us,” I explained.

“The other popular guys in your group,” Zoe replied, her face still unwavering. “They made up rumors about me. Or was that you guys too?”

Rumors. I remembered hearing a few about Zoe that were whispered up and down the school’s hallways. Like she was actually bald and was wearing a wig. She slept with guys that she actually didn’t. Everything was a stupid lie to demean her and make people not take her seriously. It was disgusting.

“That wasn’t us, but we tried to get them to stop. It was out of line. Everything was,” Gabe said, sounding just as disgusted as I was by that behavior.

At the end of the day, we were the ones who initiated the competition, so I still felt like those rumors were indirectly our fault. We sparked something that didn’t need to be started in the first place, and we couldn’t maintain control. Everything spiraled.

Zoe slowly nodded, but her face still didn’t change. Her lips stayed in a firm line, and her eyes were slightly narrowed. She was still trying to figure out if we were sincere or not.

“I didn’t expect an apology from you two,” she admitted.

Of course, she didn’t. How could she expect an apology by the two unapologetic punks who made her high school experience worse than it should’ve been? Without us getting in the way, she could’ve probably gotten a lot done and implemented some of her ideas.

“We’ve felt guilty for a while,” Gabe told her. “But we thought we wouldn’t ever see you again since you left.”

“But we’re glad you came back so that we could apologize. Hopefully, we can help you with this case too,” I added as I shared a hopeful look with Gabe. I hoped that this was going well, but it was so damn hard to read her.

“What do you guys do?” Zoe asked as she looked between us.

“I’m a search and rescue specialist, and Gabe is a hazmat technician,” I told her.

“Maybe,” Zoe replied.

Maybe we could help her? Her tone was still unemotional and stiff, and I didn’t know if that was how she truly felt or if she was putting up a front. She didn’t do the same thing in high school. If she was pissed at us, which she typically was, she let us know that without holding back. We’d had quite a few bickering matches in the hallway before class.

A teacher even had to break up one of our fights. The fights were stupid too. One of our guys tore down one of her posters about an information meeting for her club, which led to a huge argument. She thought it was me or Gabe when it wasn’t, but we didn’t say that. We just liked getting a rise out of her.

“Anyway, we just wanted to apologize and let you know that we’re here if you need help with anything,” I told her, figuring that Gabe and I had rambled on long enough. She got the gist, and it was down to her whether or not she wanted to accept our apology. We couldn’t force her forgiveness.

Zoe’s eyes swept between us before she nodded.

“Well, thank you,” she said before falling silent. That didn’t sound all that great. Maybe she did forgive us, and that was her subtle way of saying it. Or maybe she didn’t forgive us at all. It was hard to tell.

I glanced over at Gabe, pitching him an unsure look that he returned. He didn’t know how to interpret her response either. Would we ever mend the rift between us?

Before anyone could say anything else, both mine and Gabe’s pagers suddenly went off, our eyes immediately meeting as a familiar tone hit our eyes. We knew what that meant. Everyone on our crew did.

“What’s going on?” Zoe asked as she watched us immediately get off the couch, her eyes gleaming with confusion.

“You said you wanted to go on calls with us, right?” I replied to her as Gabe took off running.

Zoe nodded, her eyes still remaining wide.

I reached my hand out to her, figuring we could settle our differences later. For both of us, the job had to come first.

“Then, come on. We’ve got a call,” I told her.

At first, Zoe looked nervous, her body tensing, but as our eyes locked, I noted that familiar glint of determination in them that I used to see all the time. She was nervous, but she was ready.

The moment she grabbed my hand, I pulled her off the couch, and we hit the ground running.