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I woke with a jolt. For a moment, I was disoriented, and I could almost smell the scent of smoke, the rushing cacophony of a fire burning hotter and faster than expected. My heart was kicking so hard in my chest I could hardly breathe. I forced myself to lie still for a moment.

Opening my eyes, I looked up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Funny how they were comforting. I curled the sheet into my hand, taking in the feel of the fabric. I took a slow breath.

Chloe was right beside me, warm and soft. We were partially touching, but she was sprawled. She tended to sleep like that. We would start spooned, but she would move. Right now, her knee was loosely hooked on the edge of mine and my hand was resting against her hip. Her skin was warm, and I savored the feel of it.

I took another slow breath. I mentally reminded myself I was not smelling smoke. It was just air and a hint of the shampoo that Chloe used.

I imagined the sharp flavor of a fresh raspberry. I listened to Chloe’s breathing, and following that, the sound of the wind blowing outside. My therapist had told me to use my senses to bring myself into the moment, and it often helped. She’d reminded me again and again that my nervous system would need as many as fifteen slow, deep breaths or more, to reorient, to convince my body I was safe and okay.

This was my first nightmare in a while. There was a pattern to them. Waking as if a fire were happening right here and right now. It was still a little baffling to me that fires in the wilderness didn’t frighten me. It was the sense of a fire here, at Heartfire Falls, the place I loved, the place that was home to me. But also, the place where we lost Bree.

I thought it helped that the building where it all happened was gone, burned up in the very fire that shattered my heart and took so much from all of us. I smoothed my hand over the curve of Chloe’s hip, a bittersweet smile curling my lips. I loved waking up with her. For a long time, I hadn’t thought I would ever want to sleep beside anyone, because sleep had been ruined by that night.

Wildfires were part of life in the dry summers of Alaska and the West in general, getting worse every year. We’d had gone to bed knowing there was fire in the distance, but the threat wasn’t close. We would’ve left that night had we known how fast it would move. But the wind changed drastically. It blew through too fast for anyone to know it was coming. Even though that often happened with wildfires it caught us off guard and left loss in its charred wake.

Afterwards, we’d waited to rebuild. Maybe because we were all in shock, but also because we had to gather ourselves. Haven, being a lawyer and great with paperwork, had done all the work to pull it together, to fight for the property insurance claim. But it was a grind to get there. Much of the rebuilding hadn’t involved me, because I had needed to get away and went as soon as I could.

Intellectually, I knew it wasn’t my fault that Bree died. But there was a corner of my heart that constantly replayed that night, afraid there was something I could’ve done differently, that I hadn’t been fast enough. We’d all woken in a jumble, hurrying outside in the darkness, and it had taken us too long to realize Bree wasn’t with us. I’d raced back in. Her old bedroom had been on the opposite side of the building from the rest of ours.

I let out a jagged sigh in the darkness, my eyes stinging with tears. I was restless enough that I needed fresh air. It soothed my nervous system to be outside. I needed the grounding sense of the actual ground under my feet, nothing between me and the stars above, breathing in the sharp crisp air with the scent of evergreen always drifting through. It had been more than a decade since the fire. So much had burned, but so much had already grown back. Despite the destruction, some stands of trees had survived, which amazed me still.

I slipped back into bed maybe an hour later, and Chloe was still asleep. Or so I thought.

“Are you okay?” Her voice startled me in the darkness.

“Yeah.”

“How long have you been awake?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Just a little while. You were gone, and I went down the hallway to find you, but you weren’t there.”

“I just needed some fresh air,” I said.

She knew I had nightmares, while she had her own reasons for waking in the darkness.

“I saw you outside when I looked out the kitchen window.” Her voice was soft.

“Oh.”

“I’m here, if you need me.” Her tone was almost pensive, and I sensed something had been on her mind lately.

In this moment, I just wanted to soak in her presence. So I curled around her and breathed her in, cataloging the feel of her with all my senses. The way the moonlight fell through the windows and illuminated the line of her shoulder. The way she smelled, soft, with that hint of floral from her soap and shampoo. Her silky soft skin. When I dusted a kiss on the side of her neck, the way she tasted, always a little tangy and sweet. The sound of her sigh. A little while later, the sound of her coming apart as I savored the feel of her channel clenching around me.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Lincoln

Pep talks

“You okay, man?” Grady asked.

I glanced over my shoulder to find him walking into the gear room where I was organizing. We stored a hodgepodge of gear organized on shelving along the walls with a massive chest freezer that we often used as a shelf on the opposite wall.

Grady leaned against that very freezer. I studied my youngest brother. Like all of us, he had dark hair and blue eyes, his maybe the bluest of all of ours. His gaze was too perceptive, and I resisted the urge to look away.

“What?” I finally said.

“How ya doing?”