The Book of Daniel by Z. A. Maxfield Read Free Book Online

The rest of the house went up in just minutes. Four boys. Two brothers and two neighborhood kids. The house was fully involved when we got there. JT transported one of them.”
    Oh … that meant…
    “Some days I can’t do my job worth a fucking damn.” He sat up and discreetly wiped his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
    I had to open my mouth to breathe without making a noise, but maybe even that was a kind of embarrassed sob.
    “Daniel?” he glanced up at me. How wrong was that? To be so glad to hear him say my name when his heart was breaking.
    “Yeah?”
    “Do you think kids die for a reason? Like…does God really need them for something?”
    I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
    “What reason could there be for three kids losing their lives like that? It can’t be a lesson. That’s too cruel. But it can’t be random.”
    “Ah, Cam . Please don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.”
    Why was I even there? What could I say to help Cam, with whom I normally lived in a state of friendly détente and unrequited lust? I had followed my feet and my instincts, but now he needed something, and I was absolutely out of my depth.
    I leaned over and wrapped my arms around his neck, and it was like grabbing on to a bull. Muscles rippled as his arms slipped under mine and banded tight around me, crushing me. He held on to me as though I was the only solid thing left on earth. He pressed his face into my neck, and I felt the wetness of tears there.
    “It’s going to be all right,” I said stupidly.
    He shook his head. He was openly crying, and I was acutely aware that there were probably ten people, most of whom were only meters away, who understood what he was going through better than I ever could. I felt his grief like a hot wind all along the place I stuff my inconvenient emotions, and it blew away anything trivial I had ever stored there.
    “I’m so sorry, Cam. You did your best, right? You guys…you always do your best. And you have to face that you can’t…that sometimes there are no miracles. Sometimes the fight is over before you get there.”
    Cam’s big head nodded against my skin, and I wanted more. I wanted to pull his body into mine, maybe even kiss away his pain. I’d have done anything to make it better, but he asked nothing further of me than to be held.
    “I’m sorry.” My own eyes burned. “It takes guys like you to bear that, and I know it’s hard. But only you can. None of the rest of us could shoulder a burden like that.”
    I heard footsteps approach the door behind me, but I didn’t turn. After a second, whoever it was walked away.
    * * *
    I slept poorly the night of the fire. At about five a.m. I gave up and started coffee because there was no hope that I would go back to sleep. If I did by that time I’d just waste the day, and I had things to do.
    I went outside for the paper before the sun had even cracked the horizon and sat down with coffee and a leftover roll from the bag Jake had given me the night before.
    The fire story had made the front page of the newspaper. There were pictures of the brothers who died, interviews with the parents. They reported the current condition of the boy JT had transported, who held on to life by an ever-thinning thread. Someone had snapped a picture of Cam and the rest of the crew as they packed up their equipment after putting out the fire.
    Cam stood in the foreground, grimy and wet with sweat as he pulled off his helmet. The photographer caught him looking back at the house with naked regret.
    Seeing that picture brought home to me how painful Cam’s job could be and what an extraordinary thing it was that any firefighter could roll out on each new call with fresh determination in his heart. It was no wonder they had all come home silent and exhausted.
    I’d interrupted Cam in his private grief and seen the man he hid from the world. And I’d discovered I had much more than a passing attraction to him. I wanted to take away his pain,