Chapter 2
The fire doesn’t stop.
It rages past the tower for hours, an ocean of orange and red crashing against the ridge below.
The windows rattle in their frames, and the glass is hot to the touch, and every time the wind shifts I feel the tower shudder like it’s deciding whether to stand or fall.
Felix says we’re safe as long as the wind doesn’t turn again.
He says it the same way he said my name when we reached the top—level, matter-of-fact, like the fire is just another variable to account for.
I don’t know how he does it.
The cabin is twelve feet square. Maybe less.
There’s a narrow cot against one wall, a small table with a radio setup, a single shelf with a dusty field guide and a half-empty water jug.
The windows wrap all the way around, giving us a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the apocalypse.
I can’t stop looking at it. The flames, the smoke, the trees bowing under the heat.
My cameras are in my bag. I haven’t touched them since we got here.
What’s the point? I’ve spent my career framing shots. I don’t know how to frame this.
Felix hasn’t stopped moving. He’s on the radio every fifteen minutes, checking in with the incident command post, relaying wind speeds and fire behavior and coordinates I don’t understand.
His voice is the same one I heard across the camp.
He doesn’t waste words. He doesn’t waste movement.
Every gesture has a purpose, every glance out the window is a calculation.
The soot on his jaw has dried into dark streaks.
His yellow Nomex shirt is dark with sweat, clinging to his back, his shoulders.
There’s a tension in his body that hasn’t eased since the blowup, a coiled alertness that makes me think of a deer just before it bolts.
He’s wired. Exhausted and wired at the same time, running on adrenaline and training and something deeper that I don’t have a name for.
“You should sit down,” I say.
“Can’t.”
“Felix.”
He glances at me. Just for a second. His eyes are red-rimmed, the whites bright against the soot on his face. “I need to monitor the radio. The wind shifts again, we could lose the ridge.”
“You’ve been monitoring it for four hours.”
“Then another ten minutes won’t kill me.”
I don’t argue. I’ve known Felix long enough to recognize when arguing is useless. Instead, I pour water from the jug into a tin cup and push it across the table toward him. He looks at it like he’s not sure what it is. Then he drinks, his throat working, and some of the tension in his jaw loosens.
“Thanks.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
“I did the same for you. Sophomore year. That party at the Delta house.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You were very drunk.”
A laugh catches me off guard. It’s short and rough, scraped out of a throat that’s still raw from the smoke. Felix’s mouth twitches. The first crack in the armor since we got here.
The fire keeps burning. The sun goes down, and the flames paint the inside of the cabin in shades of amber and red.
Felix finally steps away from the radio, his shoulders slumping, his movements slower now that the adrenaline is wearing off.
He drops onto the cot and leans his head back against the wall, his eyes closing.
“Get some sleep,” I tell him.
“You too.”
“I’ll take the floor.”
“Don’t be stupid. There’s room.”
The cot is narrow. There’s no room. Not for two grown men, not comfortably.
But Felix shifts to one side, his back against the wall, and after a moment I lie down beside him.
My shoulder presses against his. The mattress is thin, barely padding over the wooden frame, and I can feel the heat of his body through our clothes.
Neither of us sleeps.
Or at least, I don’t. I lie there in the dark, listening to the fire roar and the wind howl and the radio crackle with distant voices.
Felix’s breathing slows. His body relaxes, muscle by muscle, until he’s completely still.
He’s asleep. Actually asleep, his face turned toward the window, the firelight playing across his features.
I watch him.
The soot streaked across his jaw. The fine lines around his eyes, deeper than they were two years ago.
The way his lips part slightly when he breathes.
His hand rests on his chest, fingers curled loosely, and I notice the callouses on his palms. The small burn scar on his forearm that I don’t remember from college.
A warmth spreads in my chest. Nothing to do with the fire outside.
My body reacts before I can stop it. A thickening below my waist, a heat spreading through my groin. I’m hard, like, fully hard, my cock pressing against the fabric of my jeans, aching in a way that’s impossible to ignore.
I don’t touch myself.
I just lie there, my heart pounding, my breath shallow, staring at the ceiling of the tower while Felix sleeps inches away.
I don’t name what’s happening. I don’t examine it.
I don’t think about the engagement ring in my nightstand drawer back home or the two years I spent running from anything that felt like commitment.
I just feel it. The heat. The ache. The terrifying, undeniable pull toward a man I’ve known for a decade and never let myself see.
The fire howls outside. The tower shakes. Felix shifts in his sleep, his shoulder pressing harder against mine, and I close my eyes and wait for the feeling to pass.
It doesn’t.
It just settles deeper, a low burn under my skin, and I realize with a clarity that feels like a punch to the chest that I’m not going to be able to ignore this. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
The firelight flickers across the walls. The radio crackles. And I lie there, hard and aching and completely, utterly lost, while the man I’ve been running toward without knowing it sleeps beside me.