Second Alarm, Second Chance

MMM Firefighter Romance · by Jace Wilder

Available at all major retailers

Pairing: MMM (Why Choose)

Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno

Tropes: Second Chances, Forced Proximity, Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Touch Starved, Praise Kink, Why Choose, Found Family, Blue-Collar Romance

Three men. One second chance. A love built in the wreckage.

Two years ago, Ace Warren crawled out of a collapsed building and never came back. Not to the station. Not to the crew. Not to the two men who couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Drew Vance still remembers the weight of Ace’s body in his arms—the blood, the smoke, the way Ace whispered don’t tell them I’m scared before he passed out. Drew’s the EMT who saved his life. He’s also the man who’s been quietly wrecked by losing him ever since.

Mason Liu never said goodbye. He was Ace’s lieutenant, his best friend, the one who covered for him, fought for him, and sat in Ace’s empty apartment the night he disappeared. Two years of silence hasn’t made Mason stop looking.

When a four-alarm fire in a neighboring county pulls all three of them into the same disaster zone, the walls Ace built come down harder than any structure he’s ever entered. Drew won’t let him run again. Mason won’t let him pretend he’s fine. And Ace is starting to realize the only thing more terrifying than the fire that almost killed him is letting two men love him through what came after.

You’ll love this book if you enjoy:

✅ MMM / Why Choose firefighter romance
✅ Second chances with slow-burn heat that EXPLODES
✅ “I’ve got you” energy and hurt/comfort
✅ Touch-starved hero who learns to be held
✅ Praise kink, caretaking, and dominant-but-tender
✅ Six explicit scenes across every pairing combination
✅ Found family fire station crew
✅ HEA guaranteed

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⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains graphic explicit sexual content (MMM scenes), strong language, depictions of PTSD and trauma recovery, panic attacks, references to a death during a fire, and scenes involving emergency situations. Intended for readers 18+.

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Chapter One: Condemned

The house wanted to kill someone. Ace could feel it in the framing.

He pressed his palm flat against the load-bearing wall on the south side and held it there, waiting for the telltale vibration that meant the foundation had shifted enough to compromise the studs. Nothing yet. But the crack running diagonal from the window header told him everything he needed to know. This place was six months from catastrophic failure, maybe less if they got a wet spring.

He pulled his hand back, wiped it on his jeans, and wrote condemned on his clipboard.

It was a Tuesday. Tuesdays were residential inspections—single-family homes, duplexes, the occasional rental unit with a landlord who’d been dodging code enforcement for years. Ace liked Tuesdays. The houses didn’t talk back.

Outside, the October air hit him like a slap. Central New York in the fall—all grey sky and wet leaves. Ace zipped his jacket to the collar and walked to his truck, a ten-year-old F-150 with a cracked windshield he kept meaning to fix.

His phone buzzed. Three missed calls from Frank Delaney, his supervisor. One text: Call me. Not optional.

“We’ve got a mutual aid request from the county. Four-alarm fire last night—strip mall on Route 31. They need every available inspector for post-suppression structural assessment.”

Ace’s hand tightened on the phone. “Send Petrocelli.”

“Petrocelli’s out. Knee surgery. Brandt’s on vacation. You’re on the list. Report to the incident command post tomorrow morning, 0700.”

“Fine,” he said. He hung up before Frank could push it.

His apartment was a one-bedroom over a hardware store on Main Street in a town small enough that nobody knew him and nobody cared. In the closet, behind a row of flannels, there was a set of turnout gear. He hadn’t touched it in two years.

He knew, because some nights he stood in front of the closet and stared at the bag like it was a body he’d buried and couldn’t stop visiting.

The dreams came at 1:47. The same ones. Always the same ones. He’s on the second floor. The mother is in the hallway. She says, Please. He reaches for her hand. The floor gives way.

He woke up at 1:52. Five minutes. The dreams never lasted long. They didn’t need to.

He didn’t go back to bed. He laced up his running shoes and went out into the 2 a.m. dark, and he ran.

The drive to Route 31 took forty minutes. The strip mall was a wreck. He stood at the edge of the lot and breathed. His hands were shaking.

He started toward the duplex. Didn’t look at the trucks. Didn’t look at the crews. Didn’t look until he saw the number on the engine.

Station 12. Mason’s station.

And then a voice behind him said, “Warren.”

Not a question. A statement. A roll call. A thing you said when you were confirming that the person in front of you was real and not a ghost.

“Two years,” Mason said.

“Yeah.”

“You look like shit.”

“You look the same.”

Mason reached into the pocket of his bunker coat and pulled out a business card. “Call me,” he said.

Ace took the card. Mason turned and walked back toward the engine. Mason didn’t look back. Mason never looked back. It wasn’t that he didn’t care—it was that he trusted you to follow.

Ace had stopped following two years ago.

He put the card in his jacket pocket. Turned back to the duplex. Pressed his palm against the load-bearing wall and held it there.

The building was still warm.

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Three-Man Tent — A scene TOO HOT for retailers

Mason, Drew, and Ace’s first vacation together. A cabin in the Adirondacks. A king-size bed. A fireplace. No stations, no radios, no calls. Just the three of them and all the time in the world.

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