Page 51 of One Night Flame

My fingers twitched, instinctively brushing hers back. I caught the curl of her smile when I did.

She didn’t know it, but there was a ring box tucked deep in my sock drawer at home. I’d stared at it more times than I wanted to admit. Picked it up. Put it back.

I wasn’t proposing today. But I was thinking about it. Hard. Because some things stop feeling like a gamble and start feeling like gravity. And Lucy Sullivan? She was the pull I hadn’t seen coming.

Liam lined up at the kid-sized hose station like he was reporting for duty. I crouched behind him, showing him how to adjust his grip, bracing the nozzle so he wouldn’t soak the poor volunteer holding the cardboard “flames” cutout.

“Okay, little man,” I said, grinning. “Aim for the fire, not the person.”

He nodded like I’d handed him classified orders. “Copythat.”

He squeezed the handle with all the strength his seven-year-old arms could muster. A spurt of water arced out, clipped the edge of a cardboard house, and splashed right over onto Twitch’s boots.

From across the lane, Twitch yelped, leaping back like he’d just hit a live wire. Liam burst into delighted giggles.

I glanced over and gave him a helpless shrug. “Hazard of the job.”

“You’re dead to me, Hollywood,” Twitch called back—but he was grinning as he said it.

Lucy was chatting nearby with a cluster of department spouses and girlfriends, laughing at something one of them said. She looked like she belonged there—hands gesturing as she talked, that quick, easy smile lighting up her face.

Someone nudged me from behind. I turned to find Donkey grinning like he knew something I didn’t.

“You know, last fall, you were the reigning bachelor of the year,” he said, balancing a plate of ribs and coleslaw like a professional. “Now look at you. Hose duty and juice boxes.”

I huffed a laugh. “What can I say? I upgraded.”

He laughed, wandered off toward the grill.

But he wasn’t wrong.

If you’d told me a year ago I’d be here—at the fire department’s annual picnic, in the middle of a makeshift kid-zone, helping a seven-year-old win a foam hat for dousing fake flames—I would’ve laughed in your face.

But I didn’t feel out of place. I felt… settled. Steady.

Liam tugged my sleeve. “Did I win?”

I leaned down. “Buddy, you crushed it.”

His whole face lit up. He beamed like I’d handed him a trophy, and I swear something in my chest cracked wide open again. It did that a lot with this kid, proving my heart could grow three sizes, Grinch-style, on the regular.

We’d just settled under the tent near the lemonade table when I caught a flicker of movement out by the parking lot. I handed Lucy her drink—she kissed my cheek without thinking, which still short-circuited something in my chest—and followed her line of sight.

A tall woman in jeans and sunglasses was walking across the grass like she had a mission. Not fast, not urgent. Just… intentional. She scanned the crowd, expression hidden by dark lenses, but I didn’t need to see her eyes to know the second they landed on Lucy.

Because that’s when Lucy lit up.

“Gillian,” she breathed, already setting her drink down and sprinting across the grass.

I watched as she threw her arms around the woman, laughing like her whole body remembered her. That kind of hug said shared secrets and the kind of best-friend bond people built whole lifetimes around.

I stayed back, sipping my lemonade and pretending not to stare while Lucy tugged her toward me.

“Cord,” she said, still half-glowing, “this is Gillian Holliday—my best friend and the reason I didn’t become a full-on feral raccoon in high school.”

“Hey now,” Gillian said, slipping off her sunglasses with a grin that was all confidence and curiosity. “You were halfway there. I just taught you how to weaponize it.”

Her eyes landed on me—sharp, assessing, but not unkind. “So you’re the famous Cord. I’ve been hearing about you since the firefighter auction. Hottest thing on two feet, according to half the text messages I got.”

---