Running Hot

by Rachel Hanna

  I nodded. Before I keyed the mic, I said, "Do you need to go back? I can – "

  He shook his head fiercely. "This. My job." And then gestured at the mic.

  For no good reason I felt tears prick my eyes. I blinked them back and pushed the talk button. "Hello?"

  I thought I saw just the edge of a grin before the muscle started jumping in his cheek again. Apparently hello wasn't the proper greeting. What would I know? The times he'd been talking on it I'd been too busy panicking to listen.

  I garbled out something about being with Cody Green and heading down trail from them, that he'd dumped dirt on the fire that had been burning across the road and now there was a firebreak. The entire time I watched him. He nodded when I had it right, shook his head if it was wrong, though I couldn't know how I had it wrong and couldn't correct it.

  And the person receiving the message asked very few questions before he knew everything I did. I had no idea if Cody meant this as a way for them to control the fire or to get out. My knowledge of firefighting was limited to movies and then I was watching the actors, not studying how to fight a wildfire.

  "This is exactly what I never wanted to do," I said aloud.

  I didn't miss the smile that time. He quirked his lips at me and mouthed, "Good thing. Can't get lost."

  I managed not to encourage him by smiling.

  Then he just drove.

  * * *

  There still weren't any runners on the road. Partway down the mountain I asked him about the race.

  "The other runners shouldn't even see the fire. That was pretty much all on you. You were far enough off the trail you saw far more fire than anyone else is going to."

  I sighed, but he didn't seem to be taunting me, just explaining. Outside the truck the feathery deep green trees that grow around 1500, 2000 feet would suddenly clear to an amazing flash of blue mountains and steep drops into valleys. Every time I clutched the seat or the door handle or the panic bar above the door. Instinct. If I'd been on foot I'd have been a lot more comfortable. I knew on my own I wasn't going to pitch over a cliff.

  "We're headed west," Cody said.

  I appreciated he didn't take his eyes from the road to explain.

  "The fire was coming out of the northwest, running right at you, but you should have been farther southwest than you were. If you'd been where you were supposed to have been, you'd have missed all but a little smoke."

  He wasn't teasing or taunting. The effect was unsettling, like having someone you respect listen to something you're saying that you're unsure of.

  "The other runners, the ones who knew where they were going? They're probably getting some haze but they're not seeing fire."

  That sounded more reasonable than antagonistic. It also sounded like the plan was just to let all those other runners go on running, skirting the fire. Suddenly I felt awfully protective of all those people I'd mostly never seen.

  "But," I started and then considered. Getting everyone evacuated would be long and tricky and if they weren't that close to the fire, they probably all traveled through the area more easily and in a more organized way than trying to find 300 runners who were spread out through an entire mountain.

  Spread out enough that I hadn't seen any of them.

  "I kept running completely alone," I said, and shivered as the impact of what I'd just said hit me. It wasn't just the Sierra 100 Endurance Run. It was my life for the last couple years. Even before the beginning of the end, Jason had separated me from the herd. So to speak. The same way first the weirdness of my being out there alone separated me from the race and now the way having an injured ankle and a ride from a very hot firefighter kind of changed the landscape of my race.

  "You're thinking pretty loud there," Cody said. He glanced at me then, but the trail had flattened out, finding its way onto another plateau. I didn't have the instant instinct to shout Eyes on the road.

  But I wasn't in any condition to enjoy his eyes on me, blue as they were.

  I shrugged, irritable. "I trained hard for this. I thought." Another shrug but I felt anything but nonchalant. "I wanted to win."

  "Fire's nothing to fool around with," he said.

  Wow, that was prissy. But nothing else about him was. Damn it, why couldn't he be the same from one minute to the next?

  "I wasn't fooling around. I was running. You just got done saying the other runners aren't going to be stopped. They get to run the race."

  He squinted at me like I made his head hurt. "You aren't being prevented, you're being." He hesitated, then said, "Assisted. OK?"

  "No." I'd wanted this. There'd been that night with Melody, the two of us drinking at Scruples, margaritas and nachos after work, back when I had a consistent schedule and worked for the advertising agency, before I lost that job. All around us there were cocktail waitresses in tight t-shirts and shorts, amazing looking guys all over the bar and diner, watching multiple sports on multiple screens, the general noise of a crowd that's almost music, no individual notes standing out. It was just before the turn of the year and I was still so fresh from the breakup, still in that state where every man looks like him in that frisson of mistaken recognition that makes the heart jump in terror, and every comment from every friend sounds like censure, and every thing makes you cry.

  Melody is my best friend since high school. The one who can either listen to me for a solid night of drunken regrets, or make me laugh so hard that the conversation once we recover goes sprinting off in new directions, unable to contain itself long enough to be morose about whatever it was we were delving into. She'd been there for me all the way through my marriage and even she didn't know everything she was there for.

  That was the night I decided to run a race, spurred on by my one-time love of running, before running came too close to running and fighting with Jason about it became not worth it, before he'd put his foot down and –

  And into that Melody had made a comment about the Sierra race, 100 miles, endurance and agony and insanity and I'd banged my glass down and said, "I'm going to do it," and she'd stared at me as if she'd already thought of and discarded what we were talking about because of course I didn't mean that, did I?

  I had, though. It was going to be my renaissance. My recovery.

  It was going to be how I won. Look, Jason, not only am I running, I'm running right over a damn mountain. Just try to keep up.

  I felt tears pricking the back of my eyes. Cody was waiting for me to go on, and I wasn't about to cry in front of him. "You don't understand," I mumbled, and would have let the topic drop.

  But he didn't. Instead, he said, "Oh, nooo, I couldn't possibly understand." And when I turned to stare at him, nonplussed, he said, "Poor little thing, you didn't get to finish your race. I'm sure it's the worst thing that's happened to you in, like, ever."

  I shook my head. "What's the matter with you?"

  His hands were hard on the wheel, knuckles going white. "You were lost, OK? I'm not there fighting the fire like I'm supposed to be because you were lost and then you insisted on running and then you hurt yourself so they're down one man because I'm not there and someone could get – "

  He stopped, like he'd finished the sentence. Very abrupt. And his eyes remained on the road. He shook his head. The muscle in his cheek began to jump again.

  Far as I knew, I hadn't asked for any of this. I definitely hadn't asked to be personally evacuated by this guy who kept making my heart thump funny when I looked at him and then turned around and was so damned annoying.

  But what if? What if I'd sent all the wrong signals and it was me and he was supposed to be back on site and…

  "Did I do something wrong?" I asked as mildly as I could. Instantly I wished I hadn't. I didn't want to hear that tone coming from my own mouth again.

  But Cody had already lashed out. "Did you do something wrong? Aren't you listening? You've taken me out of the game, they're down one – "

  "I heard you," I snapped. "Poor Cody, taken out of the f
ire. I didn't ask you to, I was going to try and – "

  "You were going to try to finish the race. Don't bother, princess. You weren't going to stop at the aid station, you were going to push it, and that's if you made it to the aid station because you were fucking lost and you weren't getting any closer to the trail."

  I started to speak and he cut me off, went on furiously. "So you would have put me or anyone who came after you at risk, because you'd have been too close to the fire, all it would take is a breeze, a spark, and everything around you would have gone up, all summer dry."

  "Look," I said loudly.

  "And don't tell me you didn't ask to be rescued because, baby? That's what we do. We're firemen. We fight fires and we save idiots from themselves."

  "Don't," I flared. Outside we were passing through dazzling landscapes but inside the cab of the truck it was ugly. "I'm not an idiot. I'm not stupid. I'm not just some girl who." I choked before I could go any farther.

  Cody stuck his chin out mutinously and ground his teeth, but when he did finally speak again, while I blinked furiously to make the tears back down, he only said quietly, "You could have gotten hurt. You could have gotten killed."

  We were almost off the mountain, still on a trail hemmed in by greenery all around but no longer steep. We couldn't be more than a couple miles from the fire, still a lot of smoke in the air, but it had taken forever and way too much conversation, both spoken and not, to get here.

  It was safe for him to look at me as he spoke, and there was something in his eyes when he did so that scared me, a depth of feeling I didn't expect.

  I shoved it away instantly. "My getting hurt is none of your business." I decide for me.

  For a second that ice blue gaze stayed on me, complex and frightening, and then he blinked shields back into place, the arrogance coming back like a mask.

  "But it is my job," he said.

  And he kept driving.

  Chapter 4

  We had dropped down at least another thousand feet, nearly all the way to the valley floor, before either of us spoke again. I'd just ventured, "I didn't mean to," and he'd just said, "Sometimes this job gets the better of me," when the trail bent around a copse of lowland trees and around a slight foothill to the left that blocked our view of much of anything ahead of us, and when the truck rounded the foothill, the smoke and flames caught us by surprise.

  Cody radioed for a crew, the message coming back that what we'd left behind on the mountain was nearly contained. They could have someone down here in minutes. He radioed we'd stay.

  It was already after ten. By now I should be way past the last aid station and feeling unbelievably that I was headed into the last five miles of 100. Obviously people don't finish the race every time. End of any race there are the DNF – Did Not Finish – results listed. Some races list the aid station the runner got to and their time.

  I could train again. It wasn't like I had planned to hit the finish line and go find a recliner and watch TV for the rest of my life. Plus however good of shape I'd gotten into for this race, twenty two pounds down, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, faster than a speeding slug – because I wasn't a fast runner, but I was a runner. I'd been doing it. Despite all that? Might turn out that next year's training kicked off harder and faster, went stronger and farther, that the race itself was faster and smoother and I felt more like a mountain goat and less like a sack of potatoes scrambling up those inclines.

  All of that was possible. It was even possible next year there'd be no fires, no firemen, no aggravating conversations that seemed to come out of nowhere, all judgmental and pre-pissed.

  It's just that this year had been my first steps of independence. Of a new life. Of – and I couldn't help glancing at Cody, though I really meant the running – of new loves. The kind of If I can do this, I can do anything gesture.

  Hell of a gesture, running 100 miles, Melody said dryly in my mind.

  Was, really. The Rory Avery I Believe In Myself Running Cure. And I wasn't quite up to the part where you talk yourself out of the omen. The "I finished the race, good things happening" omen that instantly got discounted if the opposite happened. "I didn't finish the race, but that doesn't mean everything else won't be sunshine, roses and kittens. Right?"

  I was afraid it did mean that.

  Cody opened the truck door and got out. He had the shovel with him. Where we'd parked was a natural little cove of greenery. I thought it would be a good idea not to be here with sparks on the wind and fire burning on the edges, but honestly there was defensible space around the truck.

  There wasn't defensible space around Cody. He had just headed directly toward a tree when I saw a branch catch fire.

  Cody didn't see it. His attention was on the line of sparks in front of him. What was burning wasn't out of control yet. It was the mop up part of the whole event, I thought, finding where trails or tongues or rivers of fire, whatever the professionals called it, had spread, and closing those down.

  Then he'd head back to some place I couldn't quite imagine past the hot water blasting out of the shower nozzle, the thick steaming spray cascading down over that broad chest, the thick hard muscled shoulders, the tanned forearms, the well-used hands with their fine tracery of scars and their long fingers. The water beading on his skin, the steam rising up to create the illusion of some kind of private world and I couldn't explain why in the vision I'd be there with him, but I still felt my hands move involuntarily in the cab of the truck as I imagined tracing patterns of water on his skin, hands moving lower and lower on his body, touching, brushing gently, moving down to where the towel wrapped around his waist and –

  I jolted out of the daydream. He hadn't seen the branch behind him catch fire. He was using the radio and I didn't know if that meant he couldn't hear the burning or if the baby fires, the sparks and smoldering grasses were too loud.

  He'd told me to stay in the truck. He'd told me enough horror stories about idiot girls who didn't listen and got the firefighter killed that I was starting to doubt the veracity of the stories.

  But he didn't see the tree, the branches sagging.

  And I did.

  I shoved the truck door open and started running for him. I shouted as I went, not words, just his name and a shout to move.

  He turned back toward me, face astonished, radio held up in his hand. Next instant he saw the branch over his head starting to come down.

  He moved fast as a cat, there one minute and not there the next, and the branch went right by him, right in front of me, sending up a shower of sparks into the air.

  My legs caught the brunt of them. Nothing more than sparks, not actual flames, I wasn't on fire. It was like running into nettles, or into a swarm of angry bees. Fire stung my legs. I yelped, and darted backward, aware that Cody had backpedaled out of reach of the branch. It had fallen, sparked, and gone charcoal dark on the gravel. Nothing to burn there.

  Cody reached me an instant later. His arms went around me easily, pulling me up against his chest, one hand under my knees, the other around my back. My head went automatically to his strong chest and I could hear how fast his heartbeat was.

  He didn't waste time asking if I was all right. My body was sending up signals, loud, demanding signals. I'd been hurt, a lot more than the twisted ankle. I kept sucking in ragged gasps of smoky air.

  "You have to – " I started, trying to gesture at the fire.

  "I know," he said, but he didn't let go of me. He carried me back to the truck. A small part of me didn't expect him to take care of me. It expected him to yell at me because I'd left the truck and now for a second time he'd have to leave an active burn scene.

  That didn't happen, either. There was no yelling. He slid me onto the seat. I turned to look at him but my mind was blank, full of pain and confusion. The burns on my legs weren't quite being processed yet.

  Cody's eyes met mine. He reached up and smoothed back some of the hair that had escaped my ponytail, his hand gentle on
my cheek. Then he leaned in and kissed me a second time. His lips were chapped now, just a little, roughened by the fires and the dry summer air.

  I fell into the kiss. No thought, mind still blank, I reached for him, not with my hands, but with something that wasn't physical. He answered a need I hadn't even acknowledged yet.

  He pulled back, his mouth leaving mine and his hand sliding away from my cheek, leaving me feeling chilled in the mid-morning July heat. "I'm going to double check the ground. I think the fire's out here. I'll call it in. Were you driving home or do you have a room somewhere near? My place is a long drive from here."

  Without his hand, I felt unsteady and the pain had begun to crescendo. "I rented a cabin. It's really near the finish line. My car's in Squaw, where the race started.

  He looked at me curiously. "How were you going to get around?"

  Yeah, I'd pondered that one. All my newfound independence and the fact that Melody was going to be out of town, off visiting family in Los Angeles on the day I ran through the mountains. There were other friends I could have asked, but I've never been good at imposing, or asking for help, or trying to make it sound like fun that someone should leapfrog from aid station to aid station for nearly 30 hours to cheer me on and then to drive me somewhere at the end. So I'd driven from Reno to Squaw Valley where the race started, and left my car there, booked a cabin that was literally two miles from the finish line.

  "Because at the end of one hundred miles, two will be a walk in the park?" Melody had asked.

  "Shut up," I'd answered, hoping I would actually be able to make it. The race actually ended outside Auburn proper, and the cabin was rural enough I wasn't sure if there'd be a taxicab to come get me if my legs didn't want to cooperate for another two miles. The whole plan definitely hadn't taken into account what happened if my DNF resulted in being evac'd down to the finish line because of some kind of major injury and from there I had to make it those two miles. I told myself if I broke a bone or something I'd be in the hospital anyway. Then I'd be within my rights to call my mother in Reno and admit I was doing this crazy thing and could she possibly just pop on over to Auburn and collect me? Thanks so much….