“You are.” He plants one big palm between my shoulder blades, steadying me like I might tip over. “Breathe.”
Easy for him to say. He looks like the fire made him more alive.
Two other firefighters hustle past us toward the building, hose line snaking behind them. Another guy is yelling, “Back side’s clear! Kill the power!”
Someone else is pulling out tools.
I just kneel there in the gravel like an idiot while my whole life burns down twenty feet away.
“I could’ve stopped it,” I croak, staring. “I unplugged the kiln, I swear I did?—”
“Electrical panels are old in these historic buildings,” he says, eyes on the flames. “We’ll know more after. But this isn’t on you.”
My head snaps toward him. “You don’t know that.”
“Yeah,” he says, turning his face toward mine. His jaw is dusted with ash. There’s a smear of soot along his cheekbone. He is infuriatingly handsome in that kind of weathered, stoic, my-hands-could-build-a-cabin kind of way. “I do.”
“You’re just saying that because?—”
“Because I’ve seen actual negligence,” he cuts in, voice low. “This isn’t it. You did what you could. Sometimes shit fails.”
My vision wobbles again. I hate it. I hate crying in front of people, especially hot people, especially hot people who just carried me like I weigh nothing.
I suck in a shaky breath. The coat slips. I shove it off.
“I don’t need saving,” I snap, wiping my face with the back of my hand. “I needed to get my work.”
His brows pull together. “You needed to stay alive.”
“I would’ve been in and out in two seconds?—”
He barks out a humorless laugh. “You’d be dead in five.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Ember.” He leans in, eyes sharp. “Flashovers don’t care about your timeline.”
I bristle. “Don’t firefighter-explain at me–and how do you know my name?”
“Because it’s a small town. And I will explain until my last breath if you keep trying to run into burning buildings.”
“I was not?—”
“You were.”
We glare at each other, the world around us chaos—lights spinning, radios crackling, the sharp hiss of water hitting flame—but it all fades into static compared to the weight of his stare pinning me to the earth.
“You’re bossy,” I mutter finally.
“You’re reckless,” he fires back.
“Maybe I like risk.”
“Maybe I don’t like scraping artists off the floor.”
My mouth pops open. “Artists?”
His gaze flicks over me. I realize I still have paint on my forearms—from earlier, when I was glazing that stupid snowman platter for Mrs. Hollis.
