Whoa.

“But that”—she pulled her reading glasses down her nose—“was before yesterday.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything.

She studied me. “What the hell happened, Hanwell?”

What the hell did happen? How to even begin? I stared at my hands.

“I want to help you,” the captain said. “But I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

It wasn’t that I wouldn’t talk to her. I wasn’t sure if I could.

I took a breath. “The councilman?” I began. “From last night? I knew him in high school. He was a senior when I was a sophomore.”

She waited, all impatient patience. “And?”

But I couldn’t seem to arrange my thoughts into words. Subject-verb-object. It shouldn’t be that hard. I opened my mouth, but no sounds came out.

She shook her head. “You’ve got to give me something.”

I nodded. Something. Okay. I leaned forward and looked right into her eyes. “He’s a bad person,” I said at last.

She waited for more, and when it didn’t come, she lifted her hands. That’s it?

I nodded. That pretty much summed it up. I leaned a little closer. “He’s a very, very bad person.”

Then her face shifted. She seemed to get it somehow. Not that she suddenly, telepathically knew the specifics of how he was a bad person, but she got that on some level the specifics didn’t matter. She knew me. She trusted me. I had proved myself over and over to be a moral person, and a brave one, and a selfless one. In that moment, based on my expression, she knew.

She knew in that way that other women just know.

I wasn’t joking around, and I wasn’t being flip, and I hadn’t lost my mind, and—most important—I had my reasons. She didn’t need more details, and she wasn’t going to push for them. If I said he was bad, then he was bad. Case closed.

She sighed and dropped her shoulders.

“They’re willing to overlook it.”

I blinked.

“They can’t put you on the PR team, of course, because it would be a media fiasco. But they’re still willing to promote you to lieutenant and chalk it up to an ‘interpersonal conflict.’ You’re certainly not the first firefighter to ever get in a fistfight.” I saw the corner of her mouth trying to avoid a smile. “Though you might be the first lady firefighter to ever pummel a smug politician to the ground.”

I looked down at my hand.

She said, “I hear he got a concussion.”

I gave a tiny shrug. “He deserved it.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of what she was saying. I had felt certain last night, back alone in my apartment, that I was facing a suspension, at the very least.

Not a promotion.

“We could,” she went on, “just let this all blow over, give it a year or so, and then quietly promote you. How does that sound?”

I met her eyes. Safe to say, this was not the conversation I’d expected. “It sounds too good to be true,” I said.

“The point is not to let one bad night define the rest of your career,” she said, then added, “or your life.”

I nodded, noting the irony.

“They just need you to do one quick thing,” she said then, closing up her folder like we were almost done here.

“What’s that?”

“Apologize.”

I blinked at her. “To who? To the chief?”

She frowned, like, Hello? “To the city councilman.”

My head started shaking before my mind had formed the words. “I can’t do that.”

She gave a little sigh, like now I was being difficult. Which I suppose I was. “A formal apology. You don’t have to mean it. Just get it on the record.”

“I’m not going to apologize,” I said, just to be clear. Again.

“He and his friends on the council, they control our budget.” She gave a head shake. Then she added, “He could press charges for assault.”

But I didn’t think he would. We had too much history, and he had just as much to lose as I did. “He won’t press charges,” I said.

“You don’t know that,” she said. “And more importantly, the chief doesn’t know that. He wants full assurance that this is all over. That’s his deal: Apologize, and we all move on.”

“I can’t apologize,” I said. “And I won’t.”

She assessed me then. Was I really going to go there? Was I really going to dig in and not budge?

Apparently, yes.

“If you don’t apologize, I have to terminate your contract,” she said. “Chief’s orders.”

Terminate my contract. That was my choice. Apologize, and I got promoted; refuse to apologize, and I got fired.

“I won’t apologize.”

She leaned in a little closer and shook her head. “Just do it. Get it over with. Let’s move on. You’re a phenomenal firefighter. You deserve to do what you love. You need us and we need you. Don’t let this derail you.”

“I can’t,” I said. Anything else, but not that.

I held still.

She leaned back. Then she let out the long sigh of a woman who’d seen, and survived, far too much to mess around. She peered at me over her reading glasses, like, Fine. “You’re sure that’s what you want to do?”

I nodded.

She looked back down at her file and retreated into formalities. “Then as of this moment, you are terminated for gross insubordination and conduct unbecoming.”

Terminated.

Oh my God. Terminated.

A fog of panic rose up through my body. Who was I if I wasn’t a firefighter? What did I do if I didn’t do this? This was the life I’d worked for, trained for, dreamed about. This was the only thing I wanted. This was my reason for going to the gym, for eating broccoli, for living. This was my whole identity.

Terminated.

But even facing that, I still wasn’t apologizing.

There was no other choice I could make, and here was my consequence.

Then I suddenly remembered one other possibility—and no matter how out-of-the-question awful it had seemed yesterday, today it was suddenly looking better.

“What if there’s another option?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“What if I transferred? To another department?”

She frowned.

“My mother is ill,” I said. “She’s been asking me to move to Massachusetts and help her out as a caregiver. Maybe I could move away and work at a different fire station. Make myself disappear.”

Maybe this could work. Anything was better than terminated. Plus, something else struck me: This wouldn’t be the last time I ran into Heath Thompson. The man was everywhere in this town these days.

Maybe it was time, after all, to get the hell out of here.

The captain frowned. “If this comes out, if it leaks to the press or he presses charges, you’ll be terminated anyway.”

“He won’t press charges.”

She stared at me while she ran through my remaining options in her head. I could see her weighing everything. She liked me, that much I knew. I wasn’t just a good firefighter, I was great. She didn’t want to see me terminated either. She started nodding, like this could work. Finally, she said, “I didn’t even know you had a mother.”