by Susan Sey
“You’d know,” Peter said and sent that sharky smile Eli’s way. “Heard you had words with Paul O’Malley the other day about just that.”
Eli’s hands wanted to fist up again but he breathed through the impulse. “Did you?”
“Sure did.” The smile took on an ugly edge of mockery. “I’m a bartender these days. I hear everything sooner or later, but when you throw it down fifteen feet from the bar I’m tending, I hear it sooner.”
Georgie rolled her eyes. “Everybody throws down with O’Malley sooner or later. Between him and Gerte? That family was born to beef.”
“O’Malley’s a cranky bastard, no question,” Jax said, eyeing Eli. “Knows every inch of the forest, though, from Duluth to Canada.”
“He might know it,” Eli said, “but he’s crap at managing it.”
“Which is basically what he told O’Malley,” Peter said, “only louder.” His smile spread. “Evidently our boy Eli here is strongly of the opinion that a good forest fire is exactly what we need up here in Devil’s Kettle. O’Malley, however, found himself disinclined to take advice on his forests from a reckless cowboy with a bad track record.” He shifted his gaze to Eli. “Kind of a loaded retort, we thought. Google to the rescue. Turns out that you do have kind of a spotty history when it comes to fire.”
“What does that mean?” Jax asked.
“Eli was a hotshot,” Peter answered. “And not just a grunt but a captain. An awfully young one, according to the news coverage.”
“News coverage?” Bianca asked, her eyebrows slowly rising.
“When you walk into a fire with a full crew of fit men and walk out alone, people want to know what the hell happened in between, especially if the guy calling the shots is your lone survivor.” Peter lifted a shoulder. “Just look up Cathedral Hill hotshot tragedy. It’s all there.”
The usual pain rushed up Eli’s throat, mingled with a regret so old and familiar it was almost comforting. But it didn’t close his throat. For once, it didn’t fill his head with the unbearable static of shame. Willa, with her stillness and her courage, had changed him. She’d drawn the poison out of him. Left the history and the regret but the toxic shame that drove him across miles was simply gone. His heart ached with the unbearable weight of gratitude for her.
“I heard about that fire,” Addy murmured, her eyes large and full of sympathy. “It was in the news. You were in the news.”
“It was a case study in my refresher course on wild land firefighting,” Jax said slowly. “That was you?”
“That was me.” Eli spread his hands and let them fall.
“So why isn’t the DNR calling you to check out this lightning strike? You’re a goddamn hotshot.”
“I was a godddamn hotshot.” Eli shrugged. “I quit.”
“Quit hotshotting?” Peter asked. “Or quit fires? Because I have to tell you, Eli, it’s starting to look suspicious, the way shit burns down around you.”
Matty, still on the carpet between his mother and Georgie, laughed sharply. “Fuck you, Peter.”
Bianca rapped him smartly on the head. “Language, young man.”
“I got this, Matty,” Georgie said. “Fuck you, Peter.”
“Thanks,” Matty said, rubbing his scalp.
“My pleasure,” Georgie said, her smile a glittering blade. “Don’t pull that garbage up in here, Peter. Everybody in this room knows who’s responsible for those fires.”
Peter held up his hands. “Guilty as charged.”
“Not charged,” Jax muttered, “and against my better judgment.”
“Hey, I made Addy whole on Davis Place,” Peter said. “Which is why I’m now just a bartender who hears shit.” He held up innocent hands. “I’m not saying I believe it, and I’m definitely not repeating it, but I thought you should know what’s being said.” He leveled his eyes on Eli’s, and for the first time, Eli wondered if he was seeing the guy. “Especially if you’re thinking of hanging around.” His gaze shifted to Willa for a split second before coming back to Eli.
“He’s not,” Willa said flatly. “He’s leaving.”
Like hell he was. “Not yet, I’m not.” He frowned at her. “I have one more removal to observe.”
“We had sex,” she told him. Brett dropped his head to his hands and sighed. “You’re no longer unbiased. I’ll request somebody else. You’re leaving.”
“What, and let Gerte convict me of arson in absentia? Yeah, I don’t think so. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes, you are. Because if that lightning strike turns into something real? If we end up with a forest fire? There goes Devil Days, and half the town’s financials along with it. They’ll be looking for somebody to lynch, and if Peter’s reading it right — and that’s kind of his specialty, reading people right — they’ll be looking straight at you.” She studied him carefully, her stillness back in full force, wrapped around her like an impenetrable fog. “So yeah, you’re leaving now.”
CHAPTER 29
ELI RODE SHOTGUN in Jax’s mini-pumper, and used his phone to navigate the narrow dirt logging roads toward the plume of smoke barely visible against the night sky. It was brilliantly clear since the storm, and the sky was awash in stars, except for one ominous column blotted out by smoke to the north.
“Take the next left,” Eli snapped and braced himself on the dash. “Here! Take the left, now!”
Jax jammed the brakes and hung a hard left. The mini-pumper began to climb and Eli leaned forward to squint out the windshield. “We’re gaining on it. Grab the next turnaround and park. We’ll have to hike the rest of the way.”
“Got it.” A few minutes of rumbling road later, Jax pulled into a glorified ditch. He opened the side panel of the pumper and pulled out an axe and a compass. He held them up, an eyebrow lifted in question.
“You know this area?” Eli asked.
“Not on foot in the dark.”
“I’ll take the compass.”
Jax handed it over, watched as Eli took a bearing on the column of smoke. “Willa’s not wrong, you know. You really should leave.”
“I know.” He dropped the compass’s lanyard over his head and started into the woods. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why not?” He could hear Jax behind him, the crunch of the other man’s boots, his breathing easy even as Eli set a punishing pace. “You don’t hotshot anymore, and if Devil Days goes south, your life won’t be worth living. There’s nothing a small town loves more than somebody to blame when shit goes sideways, especially a stranger.”
“I know.” He paused to confirm his bearing, and gauge the wind direction. Coming out of the east, which would push the fire straight west. If it didn’t shift, the fire would pass north of town, but not by much. He consulted his mental map, identified a peak with a nice view a couple miles away that would probably give him a decent look at the fire. He shifted course and aimed for it. “I’m not leaving.”
“Not yet?” Jax asked. “Or not at all?”
“I don’t know.” Dread climbed up his throat. He could smell it now, the acrid tang of pine pitch boiling. He’d done everything in his power to avoid that scent these past few years, but it was as familiar as a lullaby to the firefighter he’d once been. His shoulder itched for the weight of that axe he’d given up to Jax, or better yet a Pulaski, that handy axe/shovel combo that was the hotshot’s Swiss Army knife. “That would depend on Willa.”
“Would it now?”
He angled his body for the uphill climb, ate up the distance with maximum efficiency, exactly as he’d been trained to do. Jax’s breathing behind him was a little harsher now, but still coming easily enough. The guy was in shape, Eli would give him that. In return, Jax gave Eli maybe a half mile of hiking before he pushed.
“In what way?”
“In what way what?”
“In what way does your decision to stay or go depend on our Willa?”
“Our Willa? Oh, fuck that.” He stopped abruptly, rage seizing him by the
nape and shoving him into Jax’s face. He drove a finger into the guy’s chest, savored the round-eyed surprise on his face as he fell back a step. “She’s not yours. If she were yours, you’d have protected her. You’d have closed ranks around her like you did around your fucking brother.”
“Which one?” Jax asked, his mouth a grim line in the darkness. “The one we bought from her, or the one who abused her?”
Eli’s fist clenched and Jesus, he wanted to drive it right through the guy’s smug face. Except his face wasn’t smug, was it? It was agonized, ashamed. The guy was swimming in naked regret and true sorrow. And once again, Eli found himself with a stomach full of violence and nowhere to put it. “I was thinking of the one you bought from her, but now that you mention it, how about the one who abused her?”
Jax blew out a breath, scrubbed a hand down his face. “Diego was a genius,” he said simply. Eli’s fists curled up again and Jax stepped back quickly, his own hands coming up in defense. “No, listen. I’m not excusing him. I’m just explaining how it was. Because it wasn’t just art he was good at. It was manipulation, it was lying. It was charming the shit out of people to the point that, even when they realized what he’d done, what he’d stolen or broken or disrespected, they were willing to write it off as the price you paid for proximity to greatness.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how he did it. It was some powerful voodoo, and it drove me nuts when I was younger. But it’s worse now. And you know why?”
He stepped closer, right into the punch zone should Eli still feel inclined. Eli understood that this was a deliberate move, a purposeful vulnerability. “Because he almost destroyed Addy along with himself.” He huffed out a laugh, black and ugly. “So trust me, I’m not excusing him. Sometimes I think I’d bring him back to life just so I could kill him myself. Which is kind of funny, now that I think about it.” He studied Eli closely. “I never truly hated anybody until I fell in love. Did you?”
“Did I what?” Bafflement swirled into the rage, left Eli disoriented. “Hate anybody or—” Oh, fuck. Fall in love. “You think I’m in love with Willa.”
Jax laughed, not unkindly. “Buddy?” He clapped a hand onto Eli’s stunned shoulder. “You’re worse off than any poor bastard I’ve ever seen, save myself when I realized Addy was Diego’s.” He shook his head. “Yeah, that was a bad moment. Fucking Diego.”
“Fucking Diego,” Eli agreed automatically, still reeling. “I’m in love with Willa?”
“Did I break the news?” Jax clucked sympathetically. “Sorry, dude. I thought you knew.”
“I thought…” He broke off, shook his head. “Nope. I didn’t know shit.”
“Well, now you know. Congratulations.”
“Thanks?”
“My pleasure, sincerely. But what I was asking was whether you’d ever really hated anybody before.”
He laughed bitterly. “Besides myself?”
“Yeah.”
Eli turned and resumed hiking, picked up the mile-eating pace he’d set. “No.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Jax fell in behind him. “How does it compare?”
“What, the way I hated myself versus the way I hate Diego?”
“Or the way you hate me or my mom or the rest of the town that failed Willa so badly. But yeah. How does it stack up?”
Eli considered that. “It’s different,” he said, his brain churning in time to the beat of his boots on the trail.
“How so?”
“I hated myself because I made a mistake. It was a terrible one and it cost men their lives, but I didn’t make it alone. It was my idea, sure and maybe I was being a cowboy, or maybe I was just young and bulletproof, or maybe I was chasing glory but…” He stopped, really thought it through for the first time in years. “But I didn’t manipulate anybody. If I was a cowboy, we all were.”
“Occupational hazard,” Jax offered.
“Yeah, maybe. I gambled with lives that weren’t mine to gamble with but every single one of the guys on my crew knew the plan and they all anted up. If I’d sent somebody else to take watch, he’d have been the one to walk away. It never crossed my mind that I was taking the safe way out. If anything, I thought I was putting myself closer to the fire.”
“Whereas Diego fully intended to take something that wasn’t his,” Jax said softly. “He saw something pretty, something shiny, and he wanted it. I’d forgotten how shiny Willa could be until I saw her tonight with her hair all wild and her eyes out from under that damn cap. Diego wasn’t one to deny himself anything, and he wouldn’t have thought twice about taking whatever he could talk out of Willa.”
Rage flared anew inside him, lit up his brain like the Fourth of July. “Just because she didn’t say no—”
“—doesn’t make it right,” Jax finished. “Of course it doesn’t. It makes it worse. It’s just evidence of how badly he fucked with her mind and preyed on her vulnerabilities.”
“Amen,” Eli muttered.
“And the rest of us being so willing to believe the worst of her, and of her family? We’re in the same boat as you. We never intended harm but we sure as hell didn’t make the right call. And we’ll have to live with that call, same as you live with yours.”
Eli looked up, saw the dark shoulder of the knoll just ahead of them. The forest gave way to exposed basalt near the peak, and it was going to be a scramble. He paused, shot a look back at Jax, at a member of the family that had systematically ostracized Willa for nearly half of her life. And saw a man struggling to rise up under a crushing burden of guilt and shame, a man who clearly wasn’t used to either one. A man who knew exactly what it was to love a woman who’d been damaged, selfishly and repeatedly. Who knew that he’d either been unable to protect her, or simply hadn’t.
“What’s your point, Jackson?”
“Just figured you should know that not a soul in this town has any moral high ground on you. We’re not going to condemn you for one bad decision.” Jax smiled, a flash of charisma in the darkness. “Not saying people won’t react emotionally should this fire we’re chasing impact Devil Days or — God forbid — the town itself. But if you’re going to be staying around for a while, if you’re going to convince Willa to think about gambling long-term on you—”
“I am.” It wasn’t even a decision. It was a certainty that rose up from some dark, primal place deep inside, and it felt right in a way that Eli had almost forgotten existed.
“—then you need to convince her you’re a good bet.”
“And if I’m not?”
“You’re as good a bet as any of us. Better, probably, because you take your failures so damn hard.” Jax pointed his chin at the craggy peak ahead of them. “Let’s not fail today, though, okay?”
“If I’ve learned one thing about fire, it’s that failing isn’t always up to us. It’s not even mostly up to us.”
Jax slapped him on the shoulder, a manly thwack that brought Eli back to the days when he’d had a team, a crew. Brothers. “Goddamn,” he said, “I knew I liked you. Let’s get after that bitch.”
Eli cleared the ridiculous tightness from his throat. “Yeah, all right.”
Fifteen minutes of slippery scrambling later, he and Jax stood panting on a naked dome of basalt, gazing down into a small valley alive with flames. A nasty, fitful wind snatched at it, scooped up a handful of flames and tossed them gleefully forward, lighting scout fires that sprinted toward the next crest like it was the finish line and they were running for gold.
“Jesus,” Jax breathed.
“I don’t think he’s going to be helpful here,” Eli returned grimly. “We need Boise.”
Addison said, “He’s not leaving, you know.”
Willa looked across the cab of her truck at Addy, who’d elected to ride into town with her since Jax had abandoned her for a wildfire. And taken Eli with him. She didn’t bother to misunderstand.
“Yes, he is.” She eased her truck into her favorite spot underneath Soren’s giant fish and
killed the engine. “I know what you’re thinking—”
“That he’s stupid in love with you? That you’re stupid in love with him?”
She closed her eyes, and gripped the wheel hard. “—and you’re wrong.”
“I’m not.” Addy folded her arms and scowled. Willa could feel it filling up the cab, all that righteous indignation. “You’re wrong.”
“About what?”
“He’s not leaving you, Willa.”
Of course he was. Everybody left Willa eventually. “It’s not like that, Addy.” She opened her eyes, forced out the breath she’d been holding, the one that wanted to wrap itself around her throat and rip free the tears that had been sitting there for hours, for years. She thought she’d cried them all out at the thinnie but what do you know? She had more, and all it took was the thought of Eli leaving to bring them to the surface.
She pasted on a smile that she hoped looked indulgent. “It’s nice that you want that for me. You’re a real friend.” The only one she’d probably ever had. And goddamn, here came the tears again. She swallowed them down. “But Eli and I aren’t like that. Neither of us wants that. I went into this with my eyes wide open, okay? He’s not staying here, or anywhere. That’s not his path. And I don’t want anybody permanent. That’s not my path. There was some incredible chemistry, and we acted on it. But it was with the specific understanding that we were temporary.”
“Screw temporary.” Addy threw off her seatbelt and twisted to face Willa. Her angular little face blazed with determination. “He put Peter on the floor tonight, and I have it on good authority that that’s not easy to do.”
“I’m sure it’s not,” Willa murmured, astonishment still echoing inside her at the memory. Nobody in her life had ever stood up for her, let alone thrown such a vicious punch on her behalf. And Peter hadn’t even threatened her. He’d just made the sort of snide remark people had been making about her — or her mother — for years. “But emotions were running high and it’s my understanding that men enjoy punching one another occasionally.”
