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“Good work out there today, Feeney.” Eric Flannery is one of the older guys on the squad, a lifer whose father—and his father’s father before him—was a smoke jumper too. He says it’s in his blood, and if a man is to perish in the line of duty, this is the way the Flannerys wanna go.
He claps my shoulder as we pass, and turns to walk backward when I don’t stop to chat. “Season’s just about over. What are you gonna do till we’re back?”
“Sleep. Maybe.” I glance over my shoulder and grin when his chest bounces with soft laughter. “I might consider heading over to the southern hemisphere and working their summer, too. That’ll keep me busy.”
“Nah. A man needs rest.” He winks and spins on his heels to jog toward the food hall.
Now that the sun is coming up, and those of our team who napped are waking, the smell of scrambled eggs and bacon wafts in the air. But I keep walking. My hands stuffed in my pockets, and my shoulders bowed so I take up as little space as possible.
I’m not as social these days as I used to be. Not as free with my friendship.
One man on my crew would have me dead, and the rest… have been together since the dawn of time. They’re a team who’ve practically grown up together, and I’m just a late addition whose presence is depressing as fuck.
For there to be room for me on the squad means one of their own died.
Yeah. Such a cheery reality.
I pull a deep breath into my lungs until my chest expands and my shoulders push back, then I exhale again and pat my pockets when my phone trills with an incoming call.
Tugging the device free, and juggling it when it nearly falls to the ground, I spy my sister’s name on the screen and narrow my eyes. Though my heart jumps with exhilaration. And nerves. And so much fucking shame, it makes me sick.
I’ve ignored the last three or four times she’s called, and I know it’ll break her heart if I send her to voicemail again, so I slide my thumb across the screen and bring the device to my ear. “Nic. Hey.”
She breathes a noisy sigh of relief that only tugs at my stomach. “Axel! I’ve missed the crap out of you. Why haven’t you called me back yet?”
“I’ve been busy. I’m sorry.” A partial lie is better than an all-out bullshit story. “I just got back from another call, actually.”
I come to a stop at the edge of our physical fitness testing area and study the course. The walls we must scale, and the bars we climb. The muddy puddles we wade across, and the tunnels we crawl through.
Being a smoke jumper is more physically demanding than my old job, because we’re stuck in the middle of a blazing forest with nothing but our own wits and bodies. The closest hospital could be hundreds of miles and a plane ride away.
We’re required to be in peak physical shape. It’s a good thing they don’t ask the same of our heads and hearts.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Nicole moves around on tile so I see her in my mind. Always working. Always hustling. “Just got to the shop for the day. We have a lot of work to do, so I had to get here as early as possible. What time is it there?”
I glance down at my watch, only to drop my hand again and chuckle. She wants to know if we’re in the same time zone. Which could help her narrow down which state I’m in. Which, eventually, will help her fulfill her obsessive need to control and take care of her baby brother.
“Nice try, Feeney. How’s my baby girl doing?”
“Mybaby girl,” she pouts. “And you’d know if you picked up the phone every now and again. June tried to reach you last night, Axel. You ignored her.”
“I was out on a call.” Not a lie this time. “I’m sorry, Nic. Is she mad at me?”
“She’s got a bully at school,” Nicole says. “She wanted to talk to you about it.”
“A bully?” I move onto the drilling field and scowl. “Who the fuck is bullying her? What have you done about it, Nic? Are youlettingit happen?”
“You’re an asshole,” she growls. “Of course I’m not letting it happen. She didn’t tell me until yesterday, and as soon as she did, I went down to the school and tore shreds off the principal until he apologized. Then Preston and I went to Cole and Maya’s to discuss a way out of this mess. June’s not in Maya’s class anymore, but they’re in the same hall, and Maya is friendly enough with the other teachers to make this go away. Butyou!” she snarls. “You are who June wanted to talk to about it. Her big, strong Uncle Axe who can stand up to anyone. She was having a tough day, and you were her safe space, Axel. You ignored her!”
“I was working.” I bring my hand up to scrub my fingers through my hair. “I swear I was. You know I can’t take a call while I’m out there.”
“Which is something that would be forgiven, if only you didn’t ignore her every other time she called.”
“Nic—”
“You have some groveling to do once you get back,” she declares. “Not only with me and Hannah, but with June, too.”
