Page 63 of Until We Come Home

“Mia!”

I spin around to see James coming down the corridor toward me.

“James!” I cry out, launching myself forward and throwing my arms around his neck. He pulls me into a one-armed hug and holds on before I step back to look at him.

He’s still in his wildland pants and boots and his navy station T-shirt, all of it gray with ash, one sleeve cut away where they got at his left arm, which is in a splint and a sling with a hospital bracelet around the wrist. He’s walking like his whole body hurts. There’s still ash in his fade, and a scrape along one dark cheekbone with a butterfly bandage over it.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m alright. Fractured the arm and took a hit of smoke, but I’m getting discharged,” he says, his voice raspy and raw. “Come on, let’s get out of the main walkway.”

He leads me over to a quiet alcove off the corridor and sinks into a chair with a heavy groan. I sit beside him, taking his good hand in mine.

“How’s Mateo?” I ask.

“He’s going to be fine, though he took the worst of it,” he says, wincing as he shifts his weight. “Concussion, a few cracked ribs, few burns, and a lot more smoke than me. The regional hospital over east was slammed with evacuees, and bad smoke inhalation can turn on you hours later, so they wanted us somewhere with a real burn unit and a lot of beds. Harborview’s the closest, so they flew us both here.”

I nod, not trusting my voice yet, and hold on to his hand. “What happened? How did you two end up out there alone?”

“We stayed behind to help a rancher load his horses into a trailer, and we were heading down the road when the fire jumped the containment line.”

I picture a terrifying wall of flame, and nausea rolls through me at the thought of them trapped in it. I grip his hand harder, as if I could still shield them from it.

“So we tried cutting down a side road,” he continues. “We were almost out when a massive burning pine came crashing down in front of us. I swerved to avoid it, but we went straight into the ditch. Broke my arm on the steering wheel, and both of us took a nasty blow to the head.”

“Oh my God,” I gasp, my breath catching in my throat. “Right in the thick of the flames?”

“About as bad as it gets,” he says. “The tree was blocking the road, and the rancher was stuck behind us with the trailer. I couldn’t do much with one arm, and the old man was already hacking so bad he could barely stand, so Mateo made us both stay in the trucks and cleared it himself. Hauling burning timber in that smoke, no mask, no air. That’s why he’s in so much worse shape than me. By the time the rancher could get through, Mateo was drifting in and out.”

“That’s terrifying,” I say.

“Yep,” he says. “Rebecca, Callum, and Ollie turned the rig around and drove straight back through all that heat to pull us out. But everybody made it. The horses are fine, and the rancher needed some medical care, but he’s going to be alright.”

“I can’t believe you all made it through that alive,” I say.

“We got lucky. It went bad fast.” He shifts in the chair, wincing. “And I’ll admit, I was pissed about staying behind. But if we’d let that rancher do it alone like he wanted, he’d have been on that road by himself when the tree came down, and there’s no way he was moving it with his lungs like that. He’d have died in that truck, horses and all. So it turns out Mateo was right. Don’t tell him I said that, though. He doesn’t need a bigger head.”

That gets a laugh out of me, watery as it is, and he gives me a tired smile.

“Go on, go see him,” he tells me. “I’m just waiting around here because they bagged up my stuff somewhere when they brought me in and nobody can tell me where, and my phone’s in it. I need to call my folks.”

“Do you want to use my phone?” I offer instantly.

“Nah, I’ll track down mine. Go,” he says, giving my hand one last squeeze.

He points me toward Mateo’s room, and my pace slows the closer I get, nerves taking over. I find the door, push it open, and stop at the threshold.

Mateo looks ridiculously out of place on the narrow hospital mattress, his long, broad frame taking up almost every inch of space. Dark wavy hair falls loose over his brow, a deep red scrape running along his cheekbone with a nasty bruise blooming near his jaw, a thick white bandage wrapped tight around his forearm, and the thin plastic lines of an oxygen cannula resting beneath his nose.

A heart monitor ticks away in the corner with a steady electronic rhythm, and I stand there for a moment counting the beats like a madwoman just to stay upright. My heart aches as I look at him, at his hand lying open on the blanket with the IV taped into the back of it.

I take a step forward and he shifts, those dark eyes cracking open and fixing on me as he starts to push up onto his elbows. I hold up a hand before he can move any further.

“Don’t move,” I murmur, closing the remaining space between us to catch his hand. I just need to feel the warm, solid reality of him, to prove to myself that he’s really here and breathing.

A slow, crooked smile pulls at his mouth, his eyes crinkling at the corners despite the exhaustion lining his face.

“Relax,” he says, rough from the smoke. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t think I could get out of this bed if the building was on fire.”