Owen Peterson is the grumpy Willowbend firefighter I was only meant to sponge-bathe and forget, and now I am carrying his child.
The town has watched us fight and watched my hands linger, right up until we fall from my roof and he turns so I hit the ground soft.
He recovers in my bed while I am the nurse who should stay clinical, but a slowing washcloth and his hand around my wrist undo that promise.
One kiss behind the bandstand becomes a night neither of us ends, and by morning I am his, until two pink lines remind me that a fire already took his wife.
I leave before the truth can break him, with Owen forty miles behind me and already aware of what I am hiding.
