Page 51 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

Nobody misses the fireworks. There's music, food, and people I care about gathered in one place, and that's plenty.

I check my phone again. Still nothing. It's edging toward forty-eight hours now.

Tessa finds me a few minutes later. “Still nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Reid either?”

I shake my head.

“If there was something wrong Russ would have heard by now,” she says.

“I know.”

She doesn't say anything else. She just stays beside me. A few minutes later Dani says something about finding better seats, and the moment passes.

I don't stop having fun. I go back to my friends, I laugh at Nolan swearing off pie forever while eyeing a funnel cake stand. I listen to the music. There are stretches of the evening where I don’t think about checking my phone.

We head back to Timber Creek as the light finally starts to fade, the noise of Silver Creek falling away behind us, the crew house quiet and familiar when we pull in.

Russ is on the porch when we get there.

I know before he says anything that it's not bad news. Something in the way he's standing, relaxed, tells me before he says a word.

“Got an update from Elk Ridge,” he says. “Took a while working through channels, but Beck and Reid got reassigned to a different section of Granite Creek. Deeper into the backcountry. Cell coverage out there's basically nonexistent.”

“Are they okay?”

“They're okay, Ivy.”

Something in me lets go that I’d been holding onto for two days. My shoulders drop. I breathe differently, all at once, like I've been taking shallow breaths since Thursday without noticing.

I thank Russ. I'm relieved, deeply, the same relief I've felt a dozen times over the years. But when Russ said they're okay, the first face I saw was Beck's.

Later, once the house has quieted down for the night, I go out to the porch. The same spot where we stood almost a week ago, except tonight the air is warm and still, stars coming out clean and bright over the tree line, nothing like the storm had been at all.

I let myself finally think about the last two days. Every time I checked my phone. Every reasonable explanation I gave myself and half believed. Every time I wondered whether he was eating enough, sleeping enough. Whether he’s safe. Then I think about the rest of the day and how often Beck surfaced in my thoughts. All day, every time something good happened, there was one person I wanted beside me.

Beck.

He's coming back from Elk Ridge. That much I know. But Blackpine's temporary assignment ends eventually. He'll go back to his regular unit. Fire season ends. And then winter will come, and he'll go wherever ski patrol takes him. I'll finish my thesis and figure out my own next step. Neither of us has any idea yet where either of those paths lead.

I can't make him choose to stay. I wouldn't want to, even if I could. That needs to be his decision, not something I talk him into.

But tonight, I don't chase those thoughts any further than I have to. Instead, I hold onto what I know.

I’m falling in love with Beck.

eighteen

Beck

My phone buzzes twice, then keeps buzzing, notifications stacking up faster than I can read them as we roll back into range for the first time in three days.

Missed calls. A handful of texts from numbers I don't immediately place. I scroll past all of it looking for one name.

Ivy.