firefighter Romantic Comedy

This season, love deserves a comeback story.

Dr. Lila Callaway excels at putting broken things back together. But she could never mend her heart after Asher Wayne, the boy who promised her forever, chose football over their relationship. Years later, she runs the physical therapy department at Blue Crescent Medical Center, keeping her life orderly, safe, and free of infuriatingly charming athletes.

Until a severe ankle injury sidelines the NFL superstar. He belongs in world-class facilities, not a small-town clinic. But Ash will only let Lila oversee his rehabilitation, pushing all her buttons and looking far too handsome during their grueling daily sessions.

Lila establishes strict boundaries: no personal questions, no reminiscing, and absolutely no acknowledging the explosive chemistry still burning between them. Ash agrees to her terms, yet every intense exercise and lingering glance chips away at her ironclad defenses. He claims he returned for his recovery, but his relentless focus remains on her, making his temporary homecoming feel like a play for keeps.

Thirteen years apart, ten weeks of forced proximity, will it be enough for a second chance at first love?

eBook:

SUBSCRIPTIONS

LIBRARIES

AudioBook:

SUPPORT LOCAL BOOKSTORES
Libro.fm makes it possible for you to buy audiobooks through your local bookstore. Choose the bookstore you’d like to support, and they will get a portion of every purchase you make.

Chapter 1

Lila

I show up to my thirteenth high school reunion only because Asher Wayne won’t.

Thirteen is not a typical year to celebrate, but the committee couldn’t make ten work and apparently couldn’t wait for fifteen. So here we are, a bunch of thirty-one-year-olds bottlenecked at a check-in table outside the school doors, waiting under cheap blue-silver streamers and bracing for heavy nostalgia and a cash bar.

I don’t mind the simple setup; I haven’t been holding my breath for this get-together.

Before I RSVPed yes, I allowed myself a rare—and justified—Google search. The internet assured me that by mid-May, OTAs would’ve already started. Organized team activities are optional for NFL players, but I have known Asher Wayne since grade school, and there isn’t a version of him that would skip voluntary football. Not as a teenager, and not as a thirty-one-year-old wide receiver for the Kansas City Chiefs.

This certainty is why I’m writing my name on an adhesive tag and sticking it to my chest. As if anyone would have trouble recognizing each other.

This is Blue Crescent Harbor. I bump into my former classmates at the grocery store. I treat their fathers’ rotator cuffs and their mothers’ hip replacements. The girl who sat next to me in AP Calculus brought her toddler to the pediatric wing last week with a Lego wedged up his nose. I don’t work in the ER, but I still spent twenty minutes feeding him cafeteria ice cream while she filled out the paperwork. We’re not strangers reintroducing ourselves over cocktails. Tonight is like any other Saturday night in town, but with worse music and high school melancholy mixed in.

I came straight from the hospital. My hair is still damp from the staff showers. I lost my hair tie, so it’s twisted up in a knot speared with a pencil. And I’m wearing a zero-effort magenta wrap dress I shoved into my bag this morning after sixty seconds of consideration.

My best friend, Liam, just texted he’s late. He must be tied up at work running his family’s empire, or to the bed by his wife. For his sake, I hope it’s the latter.

Preston, my twin, is also late. Our father held him back at the hospital—to no one’s shock. After completing his residency in Boston, my brother returned home so Dad could groom him to take over as director of Blue Crescent Medical Center. A succession plan I was supposed to be part of until I decided I preferred physical therapy to being a “real doctor”.

Preston texts the group chat that he’s leaving now.

I pocket my phone and push through the main entrance of Blue Crescent High.

The hallway hasn’t changed. Same PA speakers mounted in the corners, rubber flooring with countless scuff marks, cinderblock walls, and blue and silver lockers—our school colors—lining the walls. The only novelty is the filtered bottle-filling stations that replaced the old metal fountains.

I keep my eyes trained forward as I speed-walk past the trophy cabinet on my left. Past the blown-up photograph of an eighteen-year-old Asher in his Bobcats jersey. Number seven, lifting the state championship trophy above his head, grinning in the way that used to liquefy my belly. That wide, reckless, certain smile of a boy who never doubted the world would hand him everything he wanted.

His hair was shorter than it is now—darn Google for putting images at the top of search results—and he didn’t have sexy stubble back then.

I walk faster.

The heavy gymnasium doors are propped open with wooden wedges, pop music blasting out from inside.

The venue has been transformed with all the magic a bake-sale budget can buy. String lights drape from the basketball hoops in uneven loops. Round tables with blue tablecloths are scattered over the court. And silver and blue balloons are clustered in asymmetrical bunches near the entrance and the refreshment table.

A DJ has set up his booth on the bleachers, playing music from our graduation year and cranking up the nostalgia to max effect. To everyone else, it must sound like a fun throwback; to me, it’s the playlist of the summer I got my heart broken.

It’s fine. That was a long time ago. I’m over it. I’m over him.

“Lila!” An old classmate spots me and waves me into her circle of new moms. “Oh my gosh, you look amazing. How are you?”

“Good. Great.” I smile. “How are you guys? How are the kids?”

It’s the mandatory question to ask moms. It is also the last question I should’ve asked without a drink in my hand.

They launch into a fifteen-minute deep dive on sleep regression, the merits of different swaddle techniques, and a graphic description of changed nipple anatomy. I nod, make sympathetic faces, and glance, with increasing desperation, at the drinks table.

When they move on to discuss the texture of feces, I excuse myself and head over to the refreshments stand: folding tables pushed together near the bleachers, on the opposite side of the DJ. The punch is the same dark red of high school dances. But these many years later, it’d better be spiked. It’s legal now.

Ella Whigham is stationed behind the table, presiding over the refreshments with the solemn authority she used to bring to student government. Former student council president. Current vice mayor. She never stopped running for office.

“Lila Callaway.” She smiles, taking my five dollars and ladling punch into a plastic cup. “Can you believe it’s been thirteen years?”

Unfortunately, yes. I’m very aware my emotional baggage is old enough for middle school.

“Wild, huh?” I take the drink. “How’s City Hall?”

She launches into a tirade about the opposition’s evil ploy to defund the downtown flower beds. Ella is still ranting when a deep laugh rises above the music.

His laugh.

It comes from somewhere behind me, across the gymnasium, and it moves through me at a frequency my body still has the receptors for—even after being dormant for over a decade. I’d recognize that sound from the bottom of the ocean or in a crowd of ten thousand.

Low and unguarded, it’s the specific laugh that means something has gotten to him, not the fake one he uses when a reporter makes a joke that isn’t funny at post-game interviews. Not that I watch his interviews.

Cold sweat floods my body. It starts at the base of my skull and pours down my spine as if someone cracked an egg against the back of my neck. My fingers go numb around the plastic cup.

Ella says something, but I don’t process it. The words arrive and dissolve, meaningless in a language I used to speak but have forgotten.

I half-turn, pretending I’m surveying the room with casual, detached interest.

Please let this be a psychotic episode. Please let me be hallucinating.

I’ll gladly submit to a psychiatric hold if it means that sound isn’t real.

But no.

Ash is standing at the back of the gym, surrounded by a tight ring of classmates. Adults-turned-groupies hungry for a Pro Bowl story they can repeat at the office. Despite the crowd, his head pops a foot above the others. I can’t see his full frame. But he’s taller than I remember, and broader. The lean frame and limbs he hadn’t fully grown into as a teenager have been replaced by a man’s build. His black hair falls to his cheekbones, still thick and lush. And I get that he needs to maintain an athletic body for his job, but couldn’t he at least have had the decency to go bald? Is a receding hairline too much to ask?

He’s still so unbearably beautiful.

A tightening wrenches through my chest. Not exactly pain, but… recognition? An emotion that goes deeper than memory, as though some part of me that operates below consciousness has been keeping a seat warm for all these years and is now, to my absolute fury, standing up to wave him over.

I go hot. Then cold. I’m sitting in the open, with no makeup on, clad in a dress that spent the day getting wrinkles inside my bag. My hairstyling is a pencil for crying out loud. And every exit requires me to cross his sightline.

I turn my back to him and stare into the red liquid in my hands.

He’s supposed to be in Kansas City. He wasn’t on the attendance list.

I crab-step sideways, casually rounding the drinks table and crouching behind it.

Ella blinks down at me with concern. She’s about to ask a question I don’t want to answer.

“Lila?” She leans over. “Are you okay?”

“I’m great,” I say in a monster voice that screams: immediate institutionalization. “I’m fine. Can you just… mmm… act like I’m not here?”

“Should I be worried?”

“Nah, all’s good.”

Ella, to her eternal credit, straightens up and goes back to ladling punch, moving the potato chip bowl to cover my head.

I pull out my phone and open the group chat with Liam and my brother.

Lila

I’m hiding behind the drinks table and need immediate extraction

The three dots appear under Preston’s name.

Preston

Question mark

I smile despite the situation. My brother must be driving and dictating his reply.

Liam’s response comes two seconds later.

Liam

Just got here. I’ve seen him. Coming to you

Preston

Seen who question mark

No one answers him.

I crouch lower and wait. The DJ transitions into another song I haven’t heard since I was eighteen. I count my breaths the way I teach my patients to do when the pain gets too much.

Then a pair of expensive sneakers appears next to me.

Liam crouches to my level, producing an instant calming effect. His gray eyes are steady, not a trace of pity on his face. He’s wearing a leather jacket over a white T-shirt. He must’ve come on his motorcycle.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi.”

“Nice spot. Very dignified.”

“Get me out of here.”

He helps me up, positioning himself between me and the rest of the gymnasium like a human shield—broad and tall enough to block me from view if I stay close. Which I do.

“Relax,” he murmurs, steering me toward the side exit with his hands on my shoulders. “I swung by the old cheerleading crew on my way over and mentioned Asher Wayne was in the building. They should be swarming him right about…”

On cue, a chorus of giggles erupts from the far side of the gym. High-pitched and elated.

“Let’s go,” Liam says. “Now.”

We walk. Me in front, my best friend closely behind. We slip out of a side exit into the spritzy May night. I don’t look back. I register Liam closing the metal doors, but keep walking. The asphalt is still warm from the day, and the lake is somewhere beyond the trees, invisible but present, the way it always is in Blue Crescent Harbor.

I don’t stop until I’m in the parking lot next to my car. I turn around. Liam opens his arms, and I walk into them.

He doesn’t say anything. My best friend just holds me, chin resting on top of my head, while I press my face into his chest and breathe in leather and cologne. He has known me long enough to understand that a hug will do more than words right now.

After a minute, I pull back.

“What the fuck is he doing home?”

Liam shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“He should be in Kansas City. OTAs started. I checked.”

“I know you did.”

“He wasn’t on the list of attendees.”

“Maybe it was a last-minute decision.”

We stand under a flickering lamplight. Crickets sing from the dark strip of grass lining the parking lot. The muffled thump of the DJ’s bass bleeds through the gymnasium walls.

“Do you want to come back to my place and have a movie night?” Liam asks. “Peyton would be thrilled.”

I love his wife. But I never gave her the full Asher Wayne rundown. And even though I know she wouldn’t prod me, her curiosity would sit with us on the couch for the entire evening.

“No.” I shake my head. “I need to be alone.”

Liam’s eyes search my face. “You okay to drive?”

“Yeah, I didn’t even get to drink my punch before I saw him.”

“Probably for the best. But alcohol aside, are you good to drive home?”

“Yes, I am.”

He nods. Doesn’t push. He is the perfect best friend.

“What do you need from me?” he asks.

“Could you lend me your hit man?” I’m only half joking.

He rolls his eyes. “You spend too much time with my wife. My assistant is not a hit man.”

“Pity.” The fleeting humor dissolves into the humid night air, and I squeeze my car keys so hard the metal bites into my palm. I need the pain to ground me. “Please go back in there and find out why he’s back.”

Chapter 2

Ash

Crutches, a CAM boot, and a gymnasium packed with adults reliving their glory days are a terrible combination. I have zero maneuverability, and my left ankle throbs whenever someone bumps into me, which is constantly.

I’m wedged inside a circle of old teammates and classmates who have decided that standing next to a professional athlete will make them win the reunion lottery. Every time I shift my weight or angle toward an opening, a new person claps me on the shoulder and says, “Dude, remember when—”

Yeah, I remember, all of it. Now please do me a favor and leave me the fuck alone.

Coming tonight was a mistake.

My surgeon forbade me from spending time on my feet. His exact words were: “The ankle needs rest. Stay off the crutches as much as possible.” My agent told me not to come. My mother, who would fly to the moon for me if I asked, and still drove me to school, asked me, “Honey, are you sure it’s a good idea?”

I could’ve waited another day and a half to see her. That would’ve been the sane approach.

Only I couldn’t. Not now that I’m so close. I’ve been away for too long, been too terrified to show my face after what I did. But now that I’ve decided to come back, every second of delay is eating me up, even if I’ve no clue how she’ll react to seeing me.

Not with the face-splitting grin that used to be mine. I expect a slap. A drink to the face. A kick to the good ankle? I’ll take the bodily harm. Just please let her not look through me with nothing in her gaze. Let there be fire. Let her be mad.

Indifference would kill me.

I crane my neck, peering over the top of Kevin Gummer’s thinning hair, scanning the gymnasium for a mane of copper hair. A color I’ve spent over a decade pretending I don’t search for in every crowd, every stadium, every city I’ve lived in.

She’s supposed to be coming. I checked the RSVP list—where I left my name blank on purpose, not to scare her off.

“Wayne! You listening?”

I blink and refocus on the guy in front of me. Mason Rivers. Bass guitar for Whiskey Wilers, formerly the kid who sat behind me in American History and drummed on his desk until Mrs. Garfield threatened him with detention. He looks good. The brooding, road-weary musician aesthetic is working for him.

“Sorry,” I say. “What?”

“I said this reunion is basically a group chat that’s been served alcohol.” Mason gestures at Conrad Tisch, who is doing his best impression of the dancing man emoji.

I laugh. Mason grins. Someone else in the circle launches into a story about the time we TP’d the rival team’s locker room before the homecoming game junior year.

I half-listen. Offer a “Yeah, man, that was wild” that satisfies the crowd. But my eyes keep drifting over their heads, scanning the gym in a pattern I’ve repeated a dozen times since I hobbled through the doors.

Where are you?

I’m dying to see her even if I did my best to avoid her since I broke her heart. Never coming home in the off-season or for the holidays, flying my parents to whatever city I was living in. I told myself it was for them. A treat. Mom had always wanted to travel, and we couldn’t afford more than a road trip in our old, battered truck before I was drafted.

But the truth is I was too afraid to return home where every square foot of this town is mapped in my brain with a memory of her—of us. I couldn’t face the geography of what I lost.

It took a stupid injury at OTAs to realize my priorities were absolute garbage and snap me out of a thirteen-year streak of profound inanity. Lying on that field, staring up at the blinding sun that bleached the sky to a dead white, the only thought in my head was her. Not my career and the contract that might not be renewed. Or the surgery I knew, on pure instinct, I was going to need. It wasn’t even the pain. When the medics dragged me out on a stretcher, the team doctor asked me what the fuck I had to smile about; a sprain like that would take weeks of rehab to recover. I didn’t care. I was coming home. To her.

I scan the gym again. Red hair, red hair, give me red hair.

There. A flash of red by the drinks table.

My pulse spikes so hard my vision tunnels. It must be her. I try to push forward, but the circle of bodies has closed around me, and the rubber tips of the crutches skid on the polished gym floor when I attempt to wedge through.

“Whoa, careful, man,” Mason says, grabbing my arm to steady me.

“I’m good, thanks—excuse me—”

I glance up again.

The red is gone.

Ella Whigham is behind the table alone. I gape at the empty space where I’m positive Lila was standing five seconds ago, and the sick drop in my gut is worse than getting a perfect pass into the end zone and letting it slip through my fingers.

Either I saw her and she vanished, or I’m manifesting what I want to see.

It’s still worth checking.

“Hey,” I say to the circle. “Guys, it’s been great catching up, but I need to sit, give the leg a rest.”

The effect is immediate. They part for me with concerned faces, sympathetic nods, and a few say “take it easy, man”.

The gym stretches ahead of me, glossy and familiar—I’ve run drills on this shiny floor, slow-danced under these same party lights with my arms around her waist and her head on my shoulder.

I swing forward, and for about five steps, the path is clear. Then four women materialize before me as an impenetrable defensive line. They used to be cheerleaders. One of them has her phone out, already angling for a selfie. Another claps her hands and lifts her arms in a high V, squealing, “Go Bobcats!”

To my escalating horror, they appear ready to launch into a full chanted routine.

I speak up before they can. “Hey, ladies.” I grin, pouring every ounce of charm I’ve got into the smile. “Great to see you. You all look amazing.” I shift the crutch under my right arm and jerk my chin toward the tables. “But I need to sit down. My foot is killing me.”

“Oh no, what happened?” The one with the phone lowers it, eyes dropping to my CAM boot.

“A minor injury at training, nothing serious.” I give them the line my agent instructed me to give anyone who asks about my prognosis.

“Can we get a quick picture first?”

Three photos, two cheer poses, and one uncomfortable group side hug later, I extract myself and swing toward the drinks stand.

But Lila is not there.

I turn. Do a full, slow sweep of the gym: tables, clusters of people, the bleachers, the entrance, the DJ booth, the hallway beyond the open doors. I check for a a red bun. But nothing.

She’s not here. Or she was here, and she left.

I make good on my excuse and collapse into a folding chair at the nearest empty table. The crutches clatter as I drop them to the floor. I press my palms over my eyes, feeling like I’m several years too late to the party.

I should’ve come back on day one. Driven to Blue Crescent Harbor the morning after I left, knocked on her door, gotten on my knees, and begged her to forgive me. To take me back. To let me explain that leaving was the stupidest decision I’ve ever made. Instead I kept running, pretending the distance was for her when really it was to protect me from my guilt.

And every good thing that came after it—the scholarship, the draft, the contract, the Super Bowls—has been built on the foundation of that single, catastrophic mistake.

Funny how your body can force a reckoning your mind won’t allow. Guess there’ll be no running on this ankle.

I drop my hands from my face and stare at the gymnasium ceiling, into a past life I wish I could change.

Five minutes pass. The DJ plays another song I’d pay good money to never hear again. I’m contemplating the logistics of leaving. I told my mom she didn’t need to pick me up, that I’d catch a ride with someone. But the idea of asking one of these not-quite-strangers for a lift home is bleak. I’m still debating the least painful exit strategy when a tall figure cuts through the crowd on a direct line toward my table.

Liam Rockwood.

He walks with the same self-assurance he had in high school, unhurried, leather jacket open over a white T-shirt, gray eyes locked on me—not exactly warm and fuzzy.

Fair.

If Lila were my best friend, I’d stare down her shitty ex-boyfriend too.

Still, my heart kicks. If Lila is anywhere at this reunion, she’s with him. They’ve been best friends since before I was in the picture and long after I removed myself from it.

I stretch taller to peek past him and catch a flash of red behind his shoulder. My heart nearly gives out. I plant my bad ankle on the floor, forgetting my injury, the crutches… I’m ready to stand, logic buried under the silly conviction that it’s her, she’s here, she didn’t leave—

But then the shape behind Liam moves sideways, and it’s not Lila.

It’s Preston Callaway.

The wrong twin.

Preston catches up to Liam in two long strides and tackles him from behind, slinging an arm around his neck with the casual violence of an old friendship. Copper-red hair, aquamarine eyes, freckles. Every Callaway trait is there, just arranged on the wrong face.

“What’s the drama?” Preston’s voice carries over the dreadful playlist.

Liam jerks his chin toward me. A minimal gesture. Economical in the way everything about Liam is controlled. Preston follows the direction, and his eyes land on me.

Surprise blooms across his face, chased by the same not quite hearts-and-sunshine energy as Liam.

“Ah,” Preston says, scowling. “That’s who.”

They walk toward me together, coming in hot. I’m six-two. I’ve stood across the line from defensive ends who outweigh me by sixty pounds and whose sole purpose on this earth is to put me down. I don’t intimidate easily.

But right now I’m sitting in a folding chair with a busted ankle while Lila’s best friend and twin brother are advancing on me like a pair of bouncers approaching a problem patron. Normally, I’d stand. Meet them eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder. But getting upright involves grabbing the crutches and trying to hoist myself up without putting weight on the left leg. By the time I’ve managed all that, they’ll already be standing over me, and the whole spectacle will look even more pathetic than staying seated.

So I stay put, and face them from below, chin tipped up, as they stop at my table and tower over me.

Liam speaks first. “Asher.”

Yeah, the dude is not shitting rainbows over seeing me. His gray eyes drop to the crutches, and his jaw flexes.

“Liam,” I say. Then I shift my gaze to Preston. “Hey, man.”

Preston’s “hey” has the warmth of a walk-in freezer. His arms are crossed. He, too, is staring at the crutches, probably reaching conclusions faster than Liam since he’s a doctor.

Technically, the situation doesn’t bode well for me. But I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy. These are the two people who know Lila best. Her inner circle. Would they be planted in front of me in matching hostile poses if our breakup had meant nothing to her? If she’d moved on ages ago?

Hope kicks in my chest. I’m aware how vile it is of me to wish for her not to be over our relationship the same way I’m not. But I can’t help it. The worst-case scenario would be for Lila to have grown indifferent to me.

I peek past their shoulders, wondering if they’re just scouts and she’s hiding somewhere behind them.

“She’s not here.” Liam nips that hope in the bud.

She’s not now, but she was earlier. I read the subtext in that warning.

And once again, I bewilder two grown-ass men by reacting to bad news with a stupid grin.

Because Lila was here. I know she was. I saw her by the drinks stand, and she left. Presumably because of me. And people who are indifferent to their exes don’t flee their high school reunion; they stop and say hi like mature, unaffected adults.

I lean back in my chair and keep grinning. Liam and Preston can loom over me like a firing squad all they want. It doesn’t change the math. A woman who doesn’t care about you stays for the memory-lane punch and the small talk. A woman who runs is a woman I can chase.