Page 16 of Stuck with my Brother's Firefighter Besties

“You were there, right, Colt?” Dad asked, his gaze settling on him.

Colt nodded, his green eyes darkening as he set his beer down. “We all were. It was an all-hands-on-deck situation. The fire spread fast, faster than we expected.”

“What happened?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Colt’s gaze flicked to me, his expression softening. “We got a call about someone trapped inside, an older guy who couldn’t get out on his own. The problem was, the roof was already starting to cave in by the time we got there.”

My stomach twisted at the thought. Ryan took over, his voice subdued. “We had to split up. Jaxon and Colt went in while the rest of us worked on containment. It was touch and go for a while.”

“More like ‘touch and pray’,” Jaxon muttered, his voice low.

Colt nodded. “The guy was in the back office, pinned under some debris. Took us a while to get to him, and by the time we did, the heat was… intense.”

“Intense?” Dad’s brow furrowed. “Sounds worse than that.”

Colt shrugged, but his jaw tightened. “It’s part of the job.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, the smirk I’d gotten used to now replaced by something heavier. “But not every call ends with everyone walking out. This one did, though.”

The table fell silent for a moment, the weight of Ryan’s words pressing down on the room like a blanket of smoke.

I stared at the faces around me—my brother, his friends, my dad—and felt the air shift. It was like stepping into a story I’d forgotten I was part of.

The firehouse had always been a big part of life in Medford.

Growing up, it was background noise—stories shared over dinner, the occasional alarm piercing the stillness of the night, and Nate’s quiet pride when he followed in Dad’s footsteps.

But I’d been gone for so long, living a different life, that I’d pushed it all into a neat little corner of my mind.

Now, that neat little corner was being ripped wide open.

Jaxon’s voice was low, almost too quiet to hear. “It’s not something you forget. That kind of heat… it stays with you.”

His words struck something deep in me, and I realized for the first time just how dangerous this life was. My brother’s life. Jaxon’s. Ryan’s. Colt’s.

They weren’t just laughing, easygoing guys who teased each other over dinner and made jokes about burned bagels and charity calendars.

They were men who ran straight into danger while everyone else ran away.

“Were you hurt?” The question came out before I could stop it, my voice smaller than I intended.

I wasn’t sure who I was asking—Jaxon, Colt, Ryan, Nate—but I needed to know.

Jaxon’s piercing blue eyes met mine, steady but guarded. “We got out in time.”

“But it was close,” Colt added. “Too close.”

Nate shifted in his seat, his expression tight. “It’s part of the job, Lila. You know that.”

I blinked, feeling a surge of something I couldn’t quite name. Fear, guilt, maybe both.

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Before the tension could become too much and the mood could sink, Biscuit must have decided he’d had enough of waiting for scraps. In a blur of fur, he trotted into the dining room and made a beeline for the table.

Before anyone could react, his tiny corgi frame managed to jump just high enough to snag a piece of bread from the edge of Colt’s plate.

The room went silent for a split second, and then erupted into laughter.

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