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I pull away from Curt, and he looks at me with a mixture of grief and hurt. I hand him the note I've written, and he reads it silently. I can see the hurt in his eyes disappear as he finishes, leaving behind only grief, and I know that I'm doing the right thing.
When he looks at me, I can see that he understands this is the end, but he can’t stop himself from trying to convince me to stay.
"Please don't go," he pleads with me. "We can work this out. I love you, and I know you love me, too. I know that there will be a lot of changes to make, but we can find a way to make them. Please stay with me."
I wish to God I could change my mind now, that I could convince myself to stay and be here, with him, forever.
But I can’t. "I'm sorry, Curt," I say softly. "But I have to go. For both of our sakes."
He lowers his eyes briefly, and when he lifts them again, the grief is still there, but the understanding is now stronger than the grief. He takes my hands in his and squeezes softly. “I know,” he says. “Think of me as you wander.”
I can’t stop myself then. I throw myself into his arms and burst into tears. He holds me for what seems like an eternity as I weep, the pain of our parting driving away everything in its sharp, debilitating power.
But nothing, not even eternity, lasts forever, and too soon, we separate. He smiles at me one last time. I lift a hand in farewell.
And then the most beautiful time of my life is come to an end.
Chapter Nine
Curt
I take naturally to being a firefighter. It is, for a tiger shifter, one of the perfect careers. Tigers crave structure, order, and rhythm, but we also crave challenges, struggles, even life-threatening struggles. We are, at our core, predators, and the means we have a drive to overcome, to throw down a foe, to catch prey, to be the masters of our domain, and to defeat all obstacles in our way.
So we prefer careers that carry a great degree of stress and typically a great degree of risk. We are often found in uniformed services, whether that be the military or law enforcement, or firefighting. Occasionally, we enjoy individual sports, usually combat sports like boxing or mixed martial arts. Rarely, we enjoy team sports, but as tigers are typically solitary, team sports appeal more to wolf shifters and other competitive, communal animals like bulls or horses.
The point is, firefighting is perfect for me. There is a great deal of structure and order in our training and in our day-to-day, and there are occasional life-threatening challenges like the fire we’re responding to today.
This fire isn’t located in our city. It’s actually located in a small town about an hour away. Our company and three others from the region have been called in to help Company 86. Evidently, this fire is a bad one.
It starts in an abandoned oilfield just outside of the town. The wells weren’t sealed properly, and a group of traveling tourists built a bonfire in a public field nearby. For whatever reason, the breeze was strong enough to carry the embers of that fire nine hundred yards southwest but not strong enough to put them out before they found their way through an opening in one of the caps in one of the wells.
The resulting explosion created a sinkhole a quarter-mile wide. Unfortunately, it also created an eruption of ash and soot and embers that set fire to a half-dozen buildings in town and a small stand of trees just outside. And in full accordance with Murphy’s law, the wind picked up with a vengeance immediately after the explosion. So now we’re dealing with a rapidly spreading forest fire and a residential fire that threatens the entire population of that town.
I can see the plumes of smoke when we’re ten minutes out. It looks like a battlefield. There’s a warm glow to the northwest where the forest fire burns. There’s a gray haze directly ahead from the smoke of the burning buildings of the town. To the southwest, it looks as though the sun is about to rise. Even from this distance, I imagine I can feel the heat of the oil fire, a fire that will likely burn for hundreds of years.
The oil fire can’t be put out. It will have to be capped and starved of oxygen, although I’m not sure if that’s even possible. The starving part, I mean. It can be capped and made harmless to people, and we’ll certainly do that.
My mind drifts to my memory of Denise, as it does so often. It’s now been three months since she left, longer than the brief time we were together, but still, she occupies my life more than anything else. I smile wistfully and think of how she used to greet me after a call, the passionate, fearless way she’d kiss me, the intensity of her body as she drew me into her.
But that is gone now. Dwelling on her is pointless. I try to tell myself this, but her memory lingers as Drake pulls the truck to a stop in front of a burning oil well.
As soon as we arrived, I knew this fire is going to be one of the biggest challenges I've ever faced. My heart is racing, my palms are sweating, and I can't help but feel a sense of excitement that I know I shouldn't feel because it could interfere with my judgment and cause me to make incorrect decisions. But this is what I'm trained for. This is what I was born to do. I quickly manage my excitement so I can approach this fire as a puzzle to solve, not as an adventure to experience.
As our team jumps out of the truck, we can feel the heat on our faces. We're immediately surrounded by flames, and I can see the terror in the eyes of the locals who have gathered to watch. They're holding hands and hugging each other tightly, as if they're trying to find comfort in each other's fear.
I have no one to find comfort with.
I push that thought away and focus on the task at hand.
We divide into groups and start tackling each fire one by one. The oil fire is our biggest concern, and we know we have to cap it before it spreads any further. But it's not going to be an easy task. The flames tower over a hundred feet in the air, and the heat is almost unbearable. I can feel sweat pouring down my face and neck, and I'm grateful for the protective gear that shields me from the worst of it.
But we don't have time to think about the heat. We have work to do. With a sense of determination, we started working together to cap the wells. It's not a quick process, but eventually, we manage to seal them one by one. The relief is palpable, and we all take a moment to catch our breath.
But there's still work to be done. The forest fire has been spreading while we've been dealing with the oil, and while it appears the other fire companies have managed to put out the residential fire, the forest fire is getting dangerously close to the town. We need to move quickly or the fire will soon set the town on fire again.
We reach the town, but too late. The forest fire has already spread to several buildings on the outskirts of town. We meet with the other companies, as exhausted as we are from the night’s work but as determined as we are that the people of this town shouldn’t lose everything they own.
We divide the work evenly among the group. Company 86 handles the supermarket. Company 19 combats the flames spreading in a small residential subdivision. Companies 191 and 413 work to contain the forest fire. We are assigned to the large hotel that is currently aflame.
