Set the Night on Fire

by Jennifer Bernard

  “It looks like you’re pretty busy,” she said, proud of how calm she sounded.

  “Yeah, it’s been nuts. All the forecasts say the wildfire season’s going to kick in any day now. We want to be ready. We will be ready.”

  “That’s great. Jupiter Point is grateful. Merry showed me her article. It makes you guys look pretty good. Like saviors.”

  He laughed, the white of his grin flashing against the newly tanned skin of his face. All those outdoor runs, she imagined. Of course they had to make him even sexier. “She’s angling for a special assignment. She wants to be embedded with the crew on one of our trips.”

  “Wow, that’s brave.”

  “Yup. Well…” He glanced back at the other hotshots, who were now downing bottles of water and performing cool-down stretches. “I don’t know how much time I’m going to have. We have a lot of training exercises coming up, and as soon as the fire season gets underway, I’ll be gone a lot. But we should get together—”

  “I love you, Sean.”

  He went a little white under his tan.

  She snapped her mouth shut, stunned that those words had come out of her mouth. She hadn’t come here to say them. If she’d known they were going to burst out like that, she would have driven off Jupiter Point instead of coming here. But now, there they were, hanging between them like a fireball about to slam into their faces.

  “I…” He started to speak, but couldn’t get any words out.

  “That’s okay. Don’t worry. It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.” She fumbled behind her for the door handle of her car. Where was the damn thing? Had it decided to play hide-and-seek just to torture her? “I hope everything goes well with the rest of the…you know…fires…and…”

  Finally her fingers encountered smooth chrome. Light-headed with relief—or maybe from the stricken look on Sean’s face—she tugged the door open and slipped inside her car.

  She turned the key in the ignition. The engine sounded very far away. Everything felt strange and warped. She pushed the button to raise the window, putting a desperately needed barrier between her and Sean.

  Unable to fully meet his eyes, she cast him a lopsided smile. Waved her fingers in a cheery goodbye gesture she’d never used before in her life. And drove blindly from the parking lot.

  29

  Merry’s article came out near the end of the week and it made the hotshots look like heroes. Normally Sean would have celebrated with the rest of the crew. But he just couldn’t get excited about it. The only thing on his mind was Evie, the McGraw family, Brad’s offer, and the mess Jesse had left behind.

  When he walked into the reception area and found the headline, “Jupiter Point: New Home for Heroic Fire Suppression Crew” plastered on every available wall, he just gritted his teeth and ignored it.

  “It’s a damn good photo, don’t you think?” Josh stood admiring a blowup of the front page on the bathroom door. It included a shot of the old Colorado crew, as well as a close-up of Sean with the caption “Hometown Hero Returns to Lead Crew.”

  “It’s fine.” Sean shrugged. “Do you mind? I have to take a leak.”

  “Hometown heroes have to pee too, I guess.”

  Sean flashed his middle finger, then shoved past him.

  “Hometown heroes have a temper.” Josh grinned. “Hometown heroes need to get laid.”

  Sean slammed the door in his face. Josh had it all wrong. It wasn’t about the sudden evaporation of his sex life. Not even close. It was about the soft, sure look in Evie’s eyes when she’d said, “I love you.”

  And the terror that had gripped him right afterward.

  She had no idea what a mistake she’d made. Sean was not “love” material. He’d told her that. Just look at his parents. Jesse had dragged his family around like tin cans tied to a dog’s tail. As a hotshot, Sean needed to be free to jet off at a moment’s notice—without making someone else suffer for that.

  Just like Brad had said, he couldn’t drag the McGraws into the Marcus family mess. Those bank statements sat under his cot in the dorms like a neutron bomb about to go off. No way would he let anyone else get hurt by the fallout. Especially not someone as amazing and perfect as Evie.

  When he was finished in the bathroom, he pushed open the door to find Josh just outside. He loped alongside Sean and read from the newspaper article as they headed for the next training session.

  “Hotshot firefighters are often referred to as ‘elite.’ While they are highly trained, what really sets these backcountry firefighters apart is their toughness. The physical demands are intense, but the true test of a hotshot is his or her inner strength. To work at such a grueling pace for sixteen plus hours a day, then do it again the next day, and the next, and the next, until the work is done, requires a special kind of mental toughness. That strength was put to the ultimate test on July 24 of last year, when the Big Canyon wildfire defied all predictions and the twenty crew members of the Colorado Fighting Scorpions were trapped between a wall of flames and a wall of stone.”

  Josh whistled. “Wow, she really has a way with words. I’m starting to think I’m pretty hot shit, reading this.” He scanned the rest of the article. “LCES, blah blah blah… Escape routes…pre-determined safety zone such as an already-cleared or burned area.”

  “Has she gotten to the part where I apparently made the terrible decision to deploy where we were, rather than try to make it to the black?” Sean asked as they strode through the base toward the area they’d designated for training drills.

  “Yup. But that’s not how she put it. Crew boss Sean Marcus was faced with a terrible choice. Keep running the quarter mile to the safety zone or deploy the fire shelters. He’d lost contact with the lookout, who could have told him how fast the flames were traveling. And the helicopters had been called back to base. The decision rested on his shoulders. As Marcus put it, “I had to go with what I was seeing, and I saw and heard a forest fire that was moving faster than anticipated. We had predicted that it would take an hour to go from the first trigger point to the second. It took fifteen minutes.”

  Sean shuddered as the visceral memory of that moment came flooding back. He hadn’t felt this way when he’d recounted the story for Merry. But now, hearing his own words read out loud, he could practically smell the smoke and burning brush.

  “She goes into an explanation of trigger points here…blah blah,” continued Josh. “Okay, here it is. Not far away, another crew boss made the opposite choice. As we all know, three firefighters couldn’t outrun the fire. Then she has a quote from the National Fire Safety Board that says you made the right call under the circumstances, but they’re investigating the supervisor of the Arizona crew.”

  “I hate all the second-guessing,” Sean muttered angrily. “You do the best you can. If a single one of us had panicked and ditched his shelter, I’d be the one taking all the blame. If Finn had died, I’d take the blame.”

  “Mental toughness,” said Josh wisely, tapping his skull. “Speaking of Finn, she talks about him, too.”

  “Oh yeah? Conference call from Hollywood?”

  “Guess so. See here? His quote is, ‘Sean did a good job and saved some lives.’ When asked why he chose to try to outrace the fire instead, deploying his shelter in a gravel stream bed, he refused to comment. Full disclosure: a production company owned by Finn Abrams’s father is fast-tracking a movie about the events of the Big Canyon burnover. Its tentative release date is in the summer of next year.”

  Josh crumpled up the paper and tossed it in a burn barrel as they jogged toward the hotshots doing pushups on the grass. “How the fuck did Finn manage to get a plug for his movie into this article?”

  “Are you surprised?” Sean made a mental note to be nowhere near a movie theater next summer. He had no interest in watching Finn’s father’s version of events. Finn would probably end up looking like the lone wolf hero instead of the guy who panicked and got lucky. Whatever. It didn’t matter what Finn said or did
.

  He wasn’t even sure if it mattered anymore what Jupiter Point thought of him. Hometown hero. Wasn’t he the hometown fuckup just last week?

  Merry’s article was just the icing on the cake, he knew. The one person who had really restored his reputation was Evie McGraw.

  He hadn’t paid for a single cup of coffee or a single beer since she’d made her dramatic appearance at Brad’s press conference. Everyone in Jupiter Point loved Evie, and now they were embracing Sean.

  While he felt like a piece of dog crap on the bottom of someone’s shoe. That look on her face…

  He shook it off. Focus, asshole.

  If Jupiter Point knew about the bank statements and Brad’s suspicions about Jesse and the crash, he’d be back on the “bad boy” list again.

  “Okay, kids. Time for some fun,” he called to the crew. The Jupiter Point Hotshots were now fully staffed. Nineteen men and one woman, ranging in ages from twenty-two to thirty-six, a mix of fire veterans, military veterans, and six local hires. One superintendent, two captains, two crew bosses, three sawyers. As required for a Type 1 crew, a full eighty percent of them had at least one fire season under their belts, which made training a lot easier.

  “Packs on,” he directed them.

  The firefighters shouldered their fully loaded packs, which weighed forty-five pounds.

  Sean pointed toward the trail that led up Heart Attack Hill, as they’d nicknamed it. The wind was a steady fifteen knots, perfect for a deployment drill. “As some of us can verify, you need to be able to deploy your shelter in winds that feel like a hurricane. I want you to run three and a half miles up that trail. When you reach the lookout, you set up your shelter. The wind should be pretty fierce up there. Wait sixty seconds, then pack up your tent and run back down the hill. This is a timed exercise. It should take you no more than ten seconds to deploy under any conditions. We’ll be practicing this over and over. But first, you two.”

  He pointed to the two rookies on the squad, who were both locals.

  “What’s the proper method to deploy a shelter in fifty-mile-per-hour winds?”

  Tim Peavy raised his eyes to the sky as if looking for the answer. “Um…you lie down first?”

  “Correct. If you’re standing up, it’ll turn into a kite. Okay, everyone ready? And…go!”

  The group took off toward Heart Attack Hill. Sean ran ahead at full speed. Without a pack, he could move faster than the rest, and he needed to reach the top before they did so he could time their deployments. Besides, he needed the burn. He needed to feel his muscles pumping and oxygen pounding through his bloodstream.

  He needed to obliterate the image of Evie’s crooked smile behind the window of her car.

  Why couldn’t he forget about it? He’d done nothing wrong. He’d tried to help Evie in any way he could. Because he cared about her.

  Then why hadn’t he told her that?

  Yes, that’s how the conversation should have gone.

  I love you, Sean.

  And I really care about you, Evie.

  Yeah, no. That definitely wasn’t any better.

  I love you, Sean.

  I wish I could say the same, but I’m not really sure what it means and the word terrifies the living crap out of me.

  Nope, even worse, if more accurate. One more time.

  I love you, Sean.

  If I could love anyone, it would be you. I feel things for you I can’t put into words or explain and I can’t stop thinking about you, but can you hold that “I love you” thought until I can work it out my Neanderthal brain?

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. He slammed up the trail, branches whipping against his face. This was why he didn’t bother with relationships. This was why his only attempt at marriage had been an unmitigated, embarrassing disaster.

  He should leave Evie the hell alone. Nothing he said would make things better at this point. He’d stood there like an ice statue while she’d opened her heart to him. And even if he did get a do-over, would it really be any different?

  If only he could get rid of this longing to see her again. Touching would be even better. But he’d lost the right to touch her when she’d rolled up her car window. Just to see her face, bask in her smile one more time. Even from across a room or a street. He needed some other image of her to replace the one playing on a torturous loop in his head.

  Yeah. That was all he needed. Then he could go on with his life.

  30

  The Sky View Gallery had never done this kind of business before. For the next week, Evie was slammed from the moment she walked in the door to the moment she flipped her sign. Her town wanted to show its support in the most material way it could. She appreciated the dollar vote, of course, but mostly she was grateful to be busy. The more she worked, the less she thought about Sean.

  Theoretically, anyway.

  Jack Drummond and Belladonna came by the gallery with an official apology from the business coalition.

  “We want you back, sweet-pea.” Belladonna leaned both elbows on the counter and fixed her purple-ringed, pleading gaze on Evie. “Your resignation is like an open wound in our hearts. We miss you, our dear fearless leader.”

  Evie snorted. “Now that’s a description I definitely don’t deserve.”

  “She’s right, Evie.” Jack lowered his voice so none of the lingering honeymooners could hear. “We need you back. Since you left, we’ve had more squabbles over pettier things than you can imagine. No one can agree on the new posters. Some people want the town motto, others don’t. We need your calming presence and sense of perspective.”

  Evie kept her focus on the lemon she was peeling for twists to add to espressos. “Of course you need the motto. We’ve always used the motto.”

  “But it might be changed at the next meeting.”

  “It will never be changed. It’s a great motto. ‘Remember to Look Up at the Stars.’ That’s Jupiter Point in a nutshell. Every time someone tries to change it, there’s a full-scale revolt. Keep the motto. Trust me.”

  “See, this is why we need you.” Belladonna batted her eyelashes. “We’re lost without you.”

  “You’re just embarrassed because Brad had to withdraw.”

  “I’m embarrassed because we should have trusted you,” said Jack softly. “We should have known you weren’t just playing games. I take full responsibility for my role in this debacle.”

  Evie scooped her pile of lemon twists into a ceramic container. “It really wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have been so…reserved. I’m trying to change that part of myself.”

  “Well, don’t go changing too much. We love our Evie.” Belladonna reached over and pinched her cheek. “Think about it, sweet-pea. It would mean a lot to us, and I think you can really make a difference for Jupiter Point. Your fellow business owners need you. We want you. We love you.”

  Well, it was nice to hear words of love from someone, although she would prefer them to come from a strong and sinfully handsome firefighter.

  “I’ll think about it,” she promised. “And believe me, I do appreciate the gesture.”

  “It’s not a gesture.” Jack shook his head gloomily. “If you don’t come back, you’re going to doom me to an early grave. The poster alone will be the death of me.”

  Evie laughed. “You have no conscience, do you?”

  He grinned at her. “Is it working?”

  “When’s the next meeting?”

  Belladonna let out a whoop of glee and the two of them danced a little polka across the gallery floor, nearly mowing over Brianna as she burst through the door. She made a wide, wary circle around them.

  “I’m not even going to ask,” she told Evie.

  “I think I just agreed to be president again.”

  “Well, good, I hope you made them beg.”

  “Not really.” She spoke over her shoulder as she steamed a hot chocolate for Brianna. “I want to be president.”

  “Get it, girl. Go for what you want.”

&n
bsp; She passed the mug to Brianna, then went to ring up a sale for one of the honeymooning couples. “I love this one,” she told them, admiring their choice, a close-up shot of the dense atmosphere surrounding the planet Venus. “It’s so mysterious, you know?”

  “We’re going to hang it in our bedroom,” the bride confided. “It’s supposed to remind us that love is an enigma.”

  “So very true. Also, its atmosphere contains toxic gases,” Evie pointed out. At the espresso bar, Brianna snorted into her hot chocolate.

  The groom laughed. “Luckily, we’ve known each other since high school. We know all about each other’s toxic gases.”

  “Shht.” The bride swatted his arm and he pulled an “I’m in trouble now” face.

  After they’d left, Evie returned to Brianna. “Newlyweds are so adorable,” Brianna deadpanned. “Seriously, I thank the Goddess every day that I work with plants and not people.”

  “Hey, I’m the reserved introvert around here. And I think they’re sweet.”

  “That’s because you’re a sweet reserved introvert. Which is why I forgive you. Not that there was ever any doubt about that.” Brianna’s freckled face twisted ruefully. “It might be harder to forgive myself.”

  “Brianna, stop that.” They’d been moving in and out of this conversation over the past few days. “You aren’t a mind reader. How would you have any idea unless I told you?”

  “I just think I should have known. Granted, flowers are a lot more predictable, and I understand them much better than human beings. But you’re my best friend, Evie. And I let you down.”

  Brianna’s woebegone expression, so different from her usual sunshiny mood, ripped at Evie’s heart. Why couldn’t Brianna understand that Evie was the one who’d made the mistakes?

  “You didn’t let me down. I promise. You’re the best friend I could ever wish for. Ever. And now I need you to help me with something.”

  “Really?” Brianna perked up. “What can I do? Name it.”