Free Need You for Mine (Heroes of St. Helena) by Marina Adair Page A

stupid choices made by a stupid kid, but becoming a lieutenant is serious and competitive. And you know damn well Lowen has it out for you. So if lieutenant is still what you want—”
    “It is.” More than anything, Adam wanted this promotion. He wanted to become the kind of man who didn’t make snap decisions, but had the control to think things through and explore every possible outcome before acting.
    “Good, then don’t give him another reason to pass. Just like California’s fire season starts in January and lasts through December, you might work four on and three off, but if the day ends in Y, Lowen is watching you. And he is looking for a leader, not the guy who jumps without looking and gets caught with his pants down in the equipment closet.”
    “ My pants weren’t down.”
    Roman lifted a brow and, okay, so hers were. “You took the lieutenant’s exam two years ago, Baudouin. You got one of the highest scores in the county, and yet you’re still in the same place. Do you ever wonder why that is?”
    Every damn day.
    Adam had done everything right. Took all the classes, aced the exam, worked more special ops teams than even his superiors, and yet he’d watched other guys climb the ranks while he remained a senior engineer. “Not my time yet, I guess.”
    “Not your time?” Roman’s voice went serious. Dead serious. “Or there hasn’t been enough time since Trent?”
    It was like a vise clamped on and tightened around his chest at the sound of his friend’s name. It was accompanied by the all too familiar burn of guilt. “Trent has nothing to do with me getting promoted or not.”
    “Really?” Roman sat back. “Because every time you get close to a promotion you do something stupid, almost like you’re challenging the universe to see if it’s okay to get on with your life.”
    “You don’t move on from something like that.”
    Roman blew out a breath. “No, you don’t. But you also can’t let his death stop you from living yours. You’re one of the best, Adam. You make solid choices when it counts and crap ones when you’re off the clock, like you’re giving the department just enough reason to hesitate.”
    Was that what he was doing? Adam hoped to hell not. He’d busted his ass to become a better firefighter, to assess a situation in seconds with the highest probability of success—to be the kind of firefighter Trent would have been. Then Adam thought about all the stupid pranks he’d pulled, the way he’d lived his life, and knew he wasn’t anywhere near the man Trent would have become. “Maybe they have reason to hesitate.”
    “You act like I wasn’t there,” Roman said quietly. “Like I wouldn’t have made the same exact call.”
    “But you didn’t.” Adam had. And even after a decade of playing it over in his mind, reevaluating every possible outcome, forward and backward until they were tattooed to the inside of his eyelids, he still couldn’t say with certainty what the hell had gone wrong. One minute they were in control of the fire, the next the wind turned and the blaze swallowed them whole.
    “Had I been working on logic instead of raw adrenaline, I would have pulled back to the line the second the smoke shifted.”
    “We were young, all gung ho and hopped up on FNG invincibility, pretending we weren’t scared as shit. And we all made that decision, Adam. So you don’t have exclusive rights to carry the guilt.”
    “I was the senior guy there,” Adam bit off.
    “By nine months.”
    Adam gritted his teeth to keep from arguing. Nine months, nine years—it didn’t matter. When communication was cut with incident command, the choice to pull back or not fell to Adam. He’d made the wrong one.
    In their line of work, courage was as necessary as water. But a good firefighter had a healthy dose of fear when it came to fire. Fear caused them to slow down, think through the situation, and give them time to let their training kick in.
    Training that would