Page 45 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

“Yeah. Both can be true.”

It's a strange thing to realize so plainly, something I've never quite had language for before, because most of my life those two things haven't co-existed. Wanting the job and wanting to stay somewhere have never once competed with each other. Until now.

“I'll call when I can,” I tell her.

“I know.”

“And if you don't hear from me—”

“I know that too.” A small, tired smile. “Remember? Expert.”

There's nothing else I can promise her. Not a perfect signal, not a return date, not a guarantee nothing will go wrong out there. Wildfire doesn't make guarantees to anybody. So I don't try to manufacture one. I reach up instead, my hand finding the side of her face, and I kiss her.

It's different from Silver Bell. That kiss was discovery, uncertain but also electric and new. This one is something else entirely, slower, steadier, full of everything neither of us has said out loud yet.

She tilts her head back into it. That's all it takes. I place my hands on her hips and lift her onto the porch railing, close enough that we're level with each other, her knees bracketing my hips, the rain still coming down steady beyond the roofline behind her. I wrap my arms around her, so she can’t tip backward off the rail. Her hands start at my shoulders and slide up, wrapping around my neck, holding on like she needs something solid too.

When I start to pull back, she doesn't let me. Not yet. She chases the kiss, and I don't have it in me to be the one who ends it. When we finally break apart, she doesn't let go, and neither do I. I pull her in against me even closer until there's no space left between us. She turns her face into my neck, and we just stay like this for a while, her breathing a little unsteady against my skin, neither of us in any hurry to be the one who moves away first.

“I'm going to miss you,” she says quietly.

“I’ll miss you too. Take care of Mabel for me.”

“She's not even your cat.”

“Try having that conversation with her.”

Ivy huffs a laugh, which is what I was hoping for.

We continue to hold each other close under the porch roof while the rain keeps coming down around us. Inside, I can hear the muffled sound of the others, laughter and an argument about whose turn it is to wash the pile of dishes sitting in the sink from lunch. Out here, it's just the two of us and the storm.

Normally, when a new assignment arrives, my head goes straight to it. New location. New fire. New crew. What's the terrain, what's the weather doing, what do they need. That's been the shape of my whole adult life. Somewhere new is always next.

Tonight my head keeps turning the other way. Back toward this porch. This crew house. Sunday dinners that go too long and card games that get too loud. And especially this woman wrapped in my arms.

I haven't even packed my bag yet, and already I'm thinking about coming back.

fifteen

Ivy

The storm from last night cleared out, leaving the sky a bright blue overhead. The trail looks like it fought a war and lost.

The storm water cut a channel straight through what used to be solid tread, dragging gravel and mud with it. Every drainage feature we built earlier this summer is either clogged or overwhelmed. Branches litter the corridor. One section near the switchback has washed out enough that Russ flags it for closer inspection before anyone puts full weight on it.

“We built this,” Nolan says, staring at the damage like it's personally betrayed him.

“We built it for normal rain,” I say. “That wasn't normal rain.”

His boot sinks into a patch of mud almost up to his ankle, and he has to brace against a tree to pull it free with an unpleasant sucking sound. “I'm pretty sure the trail just tried to keep my boot.”

“Don't let it win,” Tessa says. “We've got work to do.”

We spend the morning clearing debris, rebuilding drainage, digging out channels the storm carved where they aren't supposed to be. It's satisfying work in its own muddy, exhausting way, fixing something that's broken.

“Granite Creek would probably pay us to ship them half of this,” Trevor says at one point, nodding at the standing water pooled along one low stretch. It's just an observation, the kind of thing you say when you're up to your knees in a problem caused by too much of something another crew desperately needs.

But it puts Beck in my head. Somewhere west of here, a few hours away, working a fire that would probably love a fraction of the rain currently ruining our trail.