Page 104 of Until We Come Home

Barnes is waiting where the track meets the main road, standing beside an ambulance with his arms folded and his jaw set like stone. The second my boots hit the pavement, he walks up to me and stares into my face without a word.

Then he grabs the front of my fire shirt and hauls me into a brief, fierce hug that nearly knocks the breath out of me.

“Don’t you ever put me through that again,” he says into my ear.

“Wasn’t on my itinerary, Cap,” I say.

“I know.” He steps back, keeping his hands on my shoulders as he checks me over from my blackened helmet to my scorched boots. “I listened to the whole run on the radio. You made the right call on that draw, and the right call on the tank. Two decisions tonight that saved both your lives.” A rare look of pride breaks through his scowl. “Look at you, actually following protocol.”

“I figured you might fire me if I didn’t,” I say with a tired laugh, and he cuffs me on the back of the head.

“You did good, kid,” he says, nodding once. “Really.”

My throat goes tight. Coming from Barnes, it means more than he’ll ever know. Behind us, the paramedics are wheeling Ollie toward the ambulance. I make my way over, and the medics sit me on the back bumper to check me out before they’ll let me anywhere near the line again.

Minor burns on my knuckles where the heat seared through my gloves, a red mark along my neck, and plenty of smoke in my lungs. They patch me up, slathering my hands in burn cream and wrapping them tight in gauze.

Right as the paramedics go to pull the ambulance doors closed, Ollie’s hand shoots out and snags my sleeve.

“Thank you, Mateo,” he croaks.

“Don’t mention it,” I say. “And listen—now that you’ve survived a near-death experience on the ridge, maybe you’ll finally work up the nerve to ask Lainey on that date.”

A raspy laugh escapes him, and he nods, wincing. “Hell, you might be onto something there.”

“Good. Tell Lainey I said hi,” I tell him, and he laughs.

I squeeze his shoulder once more, the doors close, and the ambulance turns onto the road, taking him down toward the hospital.

There’s still work to do, and Ridgeview still has homes to protect. I work the rest of the night with my crew, holding the perimeter along the neighborhood edge, putting out spot fires, soaking roofs, my bandaged hands aching inside a fresh pair of gloves James dug up for me. Rebecca checks in every twenty minutes, Callum works at my side, and Barnes’s voice comes over the radio calling my name more often than strictly necessary.

A little after three in the morning, the wind finally dies down.

You can feel the moment it happens, the way a fever breaks. The gale that’s been driving down off the ridge all night weakens to a breeze, then to nothing. Shortly after five, the air turns heavy and damp as the marine layer pushes in off the water, rolling up the valley and blanketing the hills in fog. The fire on the upper slopes slumps, the flames dying back into smoldering patches that hiss as the moisture hits them.

By the time the sky turns gray over the ridge, the radio is full of good news. The lines held. Ridgeview is standing. The fire didn’t breach the town limits anywhere. It isn’t dead, not yet, but it’s contained, and the worst is over.

I sit on the engine bumper and pull my phone out for the first time in hours. The glass is cracked straight across the middle. Signal flashes once, dies, then comes back with one bar. A long list of missed notifications pops up, messages I couldn’t receive up on the mountain. Somewhere down in the valley, Mia has been up all night watching the news.

I look out over the town in the early light, the faint smoke drifting above the roofs, the streetlights still burning along the water.

All I want in this world is to get down this hill and hold her in my arms.

CHAPTER 33

Mia

I haven’t slept. I’m pretty sure my eyes stayed open the entire night, floating in a half-awake fog on Theo’s living room sofa while Laila’s heavy head rested on my feet. In the background, the muted television kept running the same aerial shots on a loop.

The Level 2 evacuation order was rescinded a little before four, once the wind finally died. A massive relief, though it did little to quiet the dread we all felt for Mateo. Everyone else eventually retreated to the bedrooms, Calvin and Maren holding out the longest, until Henry woke up crying and needed to be coaxed back to sleep.

I stayed right where I was. I couldn’t stop replaying the words the anchor dropped right before cutting to commercial: two firefighters cut off on the north side of the burn. No names. No details. Just those words, and then the broadcast glided back to the weather.

Somewhere around three in the morning, sitting alone in the glow of the TV, something in me settled. Maybe it was the hour, or the panic of knowing how easily I could lose Mateo before our life together had really started. Either way, it cut straight through all the noise.

I stared at my phone, remembering how close I came to telling him on the porch before he left that I wanted to stay at Meridian, that I’d made my decision. I never got the words out. Tears welled up, and I wiped them away.

I wasn’t going to cry as if he was gone. I wasn’t. He was out there fighting, I knew it, and I’d tell him everything the second he got back.