Cole hadn’t outright said we were done, and I clung to the hope that he felt the same thing I did: that we had something special. Something as confusing as it was combustible, but something worth fighting for. Something worth crushing a good man I’d known for over a decade.
What if Cole didn’t want me anymore though? What if it was all about the chase for him? What if he was done with me now that he’d conquered me? What if, what if, what if?
I was suffocating in a sea of what ifs.
In a sea of the unknown that would remain that way until I had answers. But since I was at a trailhead I’d hiked dozens of times from when I was bouncing around in a pack on my mom’s back, and Cole was . . . somewhere, the unknown wouldn’t be working itself out anytime soon.
So I slid out of the Jeep and did what I hoped would quiet my mind. It had always worked before and I hoped it would work for me now. After shouldering my pack and buckling the straps, I slid on my headlamp, tied on the hiking boots I kept stuffed in the back of the Jeep for emergency purposes, and set out on the trail. There were signs at the trailhead prohibiting campfires. It wasn’t unheard of, but the no burn restriction didn’t normally crop up until August. I couldn’t remember a time it had happened in early July.
Trudging through a dark forest wasn’t the first thing most people thought of when they thought of hiking, but it was hiking to me. True, most of my hikes had taken place during the daylights hours, but my most memorable ones had taken place at night.
I guess Mom had been into the whole night hiking scene, too. Dad had told me she used to say she felt more alive when she hiked at night, more in tune to herself and everything around her. That extra little sliver of fear derived from walking through a pitch black forest with nothing more than a stream of light coming off your head had a way of pumping the adrenaline to new heights. It had a way of making you forget everything but putting one foot in front of the other.
The night had been warm earlier, but as I got deeper into the woods, the chill in the air really started to bite. I had to stop to open my pack so I could slide into a fleece top. I even tugged on a light stocking cap just in case it got colder the farther I hiked in. The trail was windy, steep, and technical. It wasn’t your everyday “backyard hiker” variety trail, and that, combined with the darkness and the night sounds, emptied me of everything.
Thinking about Cole and Logan was impossible when an animal snorted off to my right or when my toe caught on a jagged rock sticking out of the middle of the trail. I was in survival mode and would be until I hit the campsite I’d stayed at just as many dozen times as I hiked this trail. It was another mile off and, at this rate, I’d be there in record time.
Twenty minutes later, my legs were exhausted, my mind almost as much, and my backpack felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Unbuckling it, I let it slide to the ground as I caught my breath. I took a few more sips from my water bottle, cleared a few twigs from the camp site, and dug deep into my pack until I felt the nylon bag containing my little pup tent.
It was another record breaking moment when I had the tent built, my sleeping pad blown up, and my sleeping bag tossed on top. After taking my hiking boots off at the tent door, I slid inside, zippered myself in, and checked my phone.
As expected, no reception.
The moment after I snapped my headlight off and zipped my sleeping bag up, I hit that drifting off to sleep stage. The hiking had done just the thing I’d hoped it would. It had both cleared and emptied my mind. Cole and Logan and the whole mess swimming between and around the two was still there . . . it was just more manageable now.
Maybe thirty seconds later, my mind gave up and followed my body into sleep. That night marked the end of a phase of my life and I knew whatever waited for me the next morning would mark the beginning of a new one.
Something was off.
That was the first thing I thought as I woke up the next morning. It was too hot. I was breaking out into a sweat at just past dawn in the middle of the Okanagon National Forest. Even in the middle of a hot summer day, I would have had to really be working to break out in a sweat thanks to the cover of the trees.
And it was too loud. Almost ear splittingly loud.
The sound was unfamiliar, but it didn’t take too long to guess what was responsible for creating the hissing, cracking thunder getting louder with every second.
That menacing sound, combined with the stifling heat in the middle of a dry summer, could only mean one thing.
Fire.
I threw my sleeping bag off and unzipped the tent as fast as my fingers could. As soon as I stuck my head out, I met a blast of heat that almost took my breath away. I knew I was in trouble, but when I turned my head and saw the wall of flames engulfing trees and grass and everything that stood in its path instantly, terror set it.
The fire was like I’d never seen before. The footage I’d seen on TV of forest fires didn’t do justice to what being on the ground, face to face with it, felt like. Cole flashed through my mind right then. That was what he did. He stared down fire without fear to life or limb.
At that moment, fear was the only thing I felt.
The fire was as tall as the trees, the flames licking the very top of the ponderosa pines that had been there for generations. One hundred year old trees went up in flames in less than ten seconds. And the noise. It was truly deafening.
When a tree that was just barely on the outskirts of my campsite exploded from the heat and flames, I broke out of my hypnosis. I lunged from the tent and grabbed my boots, but there wasn’t time. I didn’t have a second to waste, let alone a minute to tie into my hiking boots.
Leaving everything behind, I charged in the opposite direction of the fire, ignoring the stiffness in my legs from last night’s killer hike, ignoring the sticks and rocks assaulting my bare feet, and ignoring the way my lungs burned from the heat engulfing me.
The only thing I didn’t ignore was the fear. That I kept close in order to draw every last drop of adrenaline out of me. The fire kept me moving, but fear kept me flying.
After a couple of minutes, I’d put some space between the fire and me. Both the heat and sound had dimmed some, but not nearly as much as I hoped it would after running at breakneck speed. I had endurance, but how much? How long did I have before I ran out of energy and collapsed?
I could only hope that point was far enough away I could find safety before the fire found me.
Glancing over my shoulder to see just how far back the fire was, my foot fell into something as I continued my sprint. In a heartbeat’s time, I was sprawled out face first on the ground, my ankle twisted precariously in the gopher hole I hadn’t seen coming because I’d been too busy looking behind me.
Pain shot up my leg instantly. I’d sustained enough injuries in my eighteen years to know I’d either broken or sprained it. Right now, it didn’t matter which one because either would be enough to keep me from running. I’d be lucky if I could manage a fast walk.
At a fast walk, there was no way I could outrun the fire. It was moving much too fast.
I was going to die here today. I was about to go up in flames.
The summer’s figurative of this was about to take a very literal turn.
Grabbing my leg, I wrenched my foot free of the hole. I cried out so loudly I think I gave the fire a run for its money. I shoved myself off the ground and took a few steps. I hobbled a few steps. The pain firing up my leg was so intense I was tempted to keel over and let the fire have me. Surely the pain of burning wouldn’t be as bad as the way my nerves felt like they were filled with acid.
Oddly enough, when I glanced back at the fire again, I saw Cole’s face. I might not have known where his head was regarding the two of us, but I was confident enough to know he wouldn’t want me to die out here this way. He’d at least want me to put up a good fight.
So I gritted my teeth, and took another step, and then another. By the time I’d taken ten, I was panting and breaking out into ev
en more of a sweat from the pain. But I kept going, I kept fighting.
Shuffling past an enormous tree, my uninjured foot caught on a root. I didn’t fall this time, I managed to get my other foot around in time to break my fall, but bracing a fall on my injured ankle easily caused more pain and damage than careening face first to the ground.
I fell to my knees after that, crying tears I couldn’t have held back if I’d wanted to. The heat was growing so strong around me those tears evaporated before they rolled all the way down my face.
I was spent. I could barely kneel, let alone attempt to stand and keep crawling forward. This was the end, and although it wasn’t a time in my life I would have chosen it to end, I was in the forest I loved, and I’d met and fallen in love with a boy that took me by surprise in every kind of way—the good ways and the bad.
I loved him. I loved Cole. I don’t know why it took me so long to recognize it or admit it, but I suppose the point was that I had. Too bad I’d never be able to tell him.
The heat and noise from the fire had returned in all its overwhelmingness. The distance I’d put between me and it had been erased. I had a minute, maybe a bit more. That was all I had left of my life. A minute. A lot goes through your head when you realize you have a minute left. A lot that doesn’t seem to matter and a lot that does.
Dropping my head back, I stared up at the sky. The smoke was so thick the sky was almost swallowed whole by it, but a dot of blue sky still peeked through. I stared at that small dot and didn’t let it go. And then, that too was overtaken by something.
Something that wasn’t smoke . . .
Something that was growing bigger as it got closer. Something I couldn’t quite make out until the bottom of a pair of boots seemed to be staring me in the face. A pair of boots outlined by a ballooning piece of nylon.
He was an angel falling from the sky. He was my angel falling from the sky.
I experienced one moment of relief that Cole was here right before that faded into dread.
Cole was here.
With a forest fire practically licking at my neck hairs. Smokejumpers might fight forest fires, but they sure as heck didn’t stand dead in their path when that fire was mere yards away.
As it was, Cole’s parachute started burning around the edges. Snow flake sized pieces of parachute fluttered down on me right before Cole crashed to the ground. I made another move to stand, but I couldn’t. I had nothing left.
“Elle!” he shouted, sliding out of his parachute harness as the rest of the parachute caught fire.
The tree just feet behind me started to catch fire when Cole kneeled in front of me. “Wrap your arms around my neck and hold on tight!” He had to yell over the fire screaming around us. I did as ordered, wincing when he grabbed my legs and wrapped them around his torso so he was carrying me piggy-back style. “What are you doing, Cole?”
He looked back at me with a mild smirk. “Doing what I do best,” he said. “I’m saving the day, baby.” Then, sucking in a heavy breath, Cole charged ahead. When I say charged, he ran like no man or beast I’d seen before. He ran like a forest fire was, indeed, nipping at our heels.
“What did you hurt?” he hollered back, ducking beneath a tree branch.
“My ankle,” I replied, holding on to him tighter. He was moving faster with a one hundred plus pound weight on his back than I had.
“Broken?” he yelled.
“I don’t know.” I decided to go ahead and close my eyes because I was starting to get motion sick. The rough ride mixed with the heat and noise only exaggerated the motion sickness.
“How did you find me?” I peered back. Cole’d managed to put a respectable distance between the fire and us.
“Your dad!” he said, coming to a sudden stop. “Then a pair of binoculars came in handy once I was in the plane.” He didn’t need to scream anymore with the distance we’d put between the fire and us.
“Thank you,” I said, twisting my forehead into his sweaty, sooty neck. It was peaceful, this brief moment, this second stolen in time. For one beat of a heart, I experienced a peace I hadn’t felt before.
That peace evaporated when Cole’s body tensed as he studied the trees in front of us. Like he could see something in those trees I wasn’t able to.
“Cole?” I said hesitantly. “What is it?”
He sighed. “The fire’s in front of us, too,” he said, glaring into the trees in front of us. Now, if I looked really hard, I could see the bright orange and red glow morphing and shifting in the distance.
I stopped breathing.
“We’re trapped,” he said.
Trapped. A fire in front of us. A fire behind us. We were up against a rock and a hard place. We had nowhere to go, no way to escape the blaze.
I looked up, I looked down. I looked to the right, I looked to the left.
I looked to the left . . .
“Cole!” I shouted, feeling hope take hold. “The river’s not far from here. Maybe only a half mile.”
Cole glanced back at me before looking in the direction I was pointing. He looked at the forest like I just had when I was trying to see something he could see that I couldn’t. But I saw it. We were close to the river. So close I could almost feel it.
“The shoe tree!” I pointed a way’s down to the left. “I can see it. My parents and I used to stop and take pictures of it before we went down to the river. If we can get there, the river is only a few hundred yards from there.” I knew it was a good distance to cover considering the speed the fire was moving. I knew we’d need something of a miracle to do it, too, but I’d take running towards a river any day over waiting for the fire to reach us.
Cole didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t ask if I was sure or how I knew. All he did was nod, readjust his hold on me, and charge in the direction I’d pointed him.
“Damn,” Cole panted as we drew closer to the shoe tree, “that thing is downright freaky.”
I smiled as he gave an over-exaggerated shudder. The fire that had been behind us was now creeping so close to us my side felt like it was on fire and the fire that had been almost invisible in front of us was now a wall of flames on our other side. We were in the Red Sea of fire and could still manage to smile and talk like it was any old day.
“Turn right here!” I shouted as we passed the familiar tree.
Over the years, I’d seen the sandals, sneakers, boots, and flip flops expand up the trunk of the old maple tree, until almost every branch that could be reached from standing up on the cab of a truck was also covered. I’d grown up with the tree, taking pictures of it and with it. It had become as familiar as the rest of my life and it was going to burn. I’d never have the shoe tree down by the river to look forward to again.
As Cole thundered down the trail leading down to the river, he didn’t stumble once. He was so steady and sure footed over every obstacle of the technical trail you would have thought he was strolling around the park.
“How much farther, Elle?” He was back to screaming because the fire, once again at our backs, was closer than ever. I scooted my hair over my shoulder to keep it from catching on fire, that was how close the fire was getting.
“Not far! Maybe another hundred feet!” I could tell because the bushes and grass were getting thick and started to slow us down. That didn’t make for the best combination. The fire getting dangerously close to igniting our clothes and the brush we were charging through slowing us down. The sharp branches whipped across my face, drawing blood, but I couldn’t feel the pain. I couldn’t feel anything but Cole’s body and the heat of the fire.
“Hold on tight, baby!” he yelled back before charging faster down towards the river. It was like Cole had a whole other gear. We’d just gone from insane fast to stupid fast, but still, it wasn’t fast enough.
I could see the river, it was less than twenty feet away, but it might as well have been twenty miles because the flames ripped towards us. The brush on either side of us was consumed by a wave of f
ire and it was impossible to breathe. I don’t know how Cole was able to keep moving without oxygen, but he’d already proven he could when he parachuted into the heart of a fire to save me. He was more superhero than man.
I felt the back of my fleece coat ignite and was just folding myself over Cole, trying to shield him from the relentless flames, when he lunged into the air. In the course of trying to outrun a fire, Cole had veered away from the trail and we’d ended up on a ledge above the river. It was a small ledge, only a couple body lengths, but it felt like we fell through the air so long we could have just leapt from the heavens.
The flames eating at my jacket intensified as we sailed through the air and I held my breath. Just in time too, because a moment later, Cole and I crashed through the surface of the river. Cole had leapt far enough that we landed in water above our necks.
I unwound myself from him and could have died a happy woman right there. The cool water rushing over my skin felt like a healing balm. Cole’s hand grabbed mine, and he tugged me farther out into the river. I didn’t have to surface for a breath yet and I knew that if ever all those sinking rituals in the swimming hole would pay off, now would be it. We swam sideways into the current, kicking hard. Cole seemed to be heading somewhere and I just let him lead me.
When we reached a large boulder sticking out of the middle of the water, we both surfaced. Just enough to take a breath and take in the scene around us. With one hand, Cole grabbed onto a handhold cut into the rock. With his other hand, he kept firm hold of me, drawing me close until his arm wound the entire way around my waist.
“Are you all right?” he shouted.
I nodded and dunked my head back into the water for a second. It was scorching hot around us. I don’t know how Cole could continue to hold onto the rock. The heat alone radiating from it made me uncomfortable.
“Are you?” I asked, inspecting his face and arm since that was all I could see. I could only imagine how torn up my face was from the sprint through the brush, but Cole’s face had to be at least twice as bad. There were more red, open areas than tan skin.
Up in Flames Page 21
