Chapter 33
Levi
The tones dropped at nine forty-seven.
I was in the common room finishing a cup of coffee that had gone cold twenty minutes earlier, half listening to Jude explain to the third-shift probie why you never, under any circumstances, touched the good mugs on the second shelf, when the alert cut through everything.
Riverside Pines Campground. Structure fire. Active involvement. Occupants reported.
The address slammed into me like a fist to the sternum.
I didn’t remember crossing the bay floor.
I remembered gear—the cold snap of turnout pants, the familiar weight of the jacket settling onto my shoulders, boots already laced because I laced them at the start of every shift and never unlaced them until it was over, helmet, gloves, the practiced sequence that lived in muscle memory rather than thought.
I ran it while some part of my brain was doing math I did not want to do.
Nine forty-seven. The meeting had started at nine.
She was there. She was in that Airstream with the whole campground around her, which meant she was at that address, which meant—
“Levi.”
Jude was at the truck beside me, not looking at me, checking connections with the focused efficiency of a man who understood that the seconds before a call were not the time for anything except readiness.
I got on the truck.
Four minutes and twelve seconds.
I counted without meaning to—the numbers moving through my head the way they did when my mind needed somewhere to be.
Four minutes and twelve seconds of watching the smoke column climb above the tree line, visible a full mile out against the dark sky, pale gray and rising steady, the kind of column that meant the fire had found its rhythm and was not interested in losing it.
The river wind was up—I felt it through the glass, coming off the water and moving through the trees, carrying the smoke toward the campground in a long unhurried drift that told me everything I needed to know about which direction the fire intended to travel.
Dry brush, river wind, land that hadn’t seen meaningful rain in weeks. I had seen this combination before.
We could hear it before we saw it—the low, sustained roar underneath the wind, the horrifying sound of fire that had gotten into the tree line, deeper and more patient than structure fire, the sound of something with time on its side.
I was scanning before the truck stopped moving.
The campground road was controlled chaos—people moving fast but not blindly, the unmistakable rhythm of a community that had been in the middle of something organized when something catastrophic interrupted it.
More people than usual, all of them displaced from the same starting point, the evacuation edges were uncertain and confused.
The air tasted of smoke, and the orange glow at the perimeter threw moving shadows across the gravel, across the faces of the people moving through it. But Becca was not with them.
Aggie’s Airstream was the worst of it. The far end was fully involved, flames crawling along the aluminum skin like liquid light, the awning gone, the Christmas lights that had blinked through every kind of weather reduced to a melted line of plastic at the edge of the damage.
The near end was going fast—fire licking up the side panels, heat rolling outward in waves you could feel from the road, the smell of burning insulation and melting vinyl thick and chemical under the pine smoke.
I came off the truck, my crew spread, and I ran toward Aggie’s trailer with no thought other than to make sure she wasn’t in there.
Then I saw her.
Becca was on Aggie’s porch, just stepping out of the doorway.
She held Gerald cradled against her chest like a baby—both arms wrapped securely around him, one hand supporting his hindquarters, the other gently cupping his head so his face tucked into the crook of her neck.
The hoodie was streaked with soot and ash but intact, sleeves pushed up, hair wild and smoke-darkened.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, streaming from the smoke, but she moved with calm purpose, every step deliberate, protecting the small, trembling weight in her arms.
My chest locked.
The world narrowed to her—the way the firelight painted her face in flickering gold and black, the way she held Gerald like he was the only thing keeping her upright, the way her shoulders were set against the collapse behind her.
Every second between seeing her and reaching her felt like years and no time at all.
My pulse hammered in my ears, louder than the fire, louder than the sirens still coming.
All I could think of was to be grateful that she was alive. She was right there. She was breathing.
I crossed the gravel in seconds.
Her shoulders dropped a fraction when she saw me—not relief exactly, more like permission to finally feel the weight.
I reached her and didn’t stop. One arm went around her back, the other under her knees.
I lifted her in one clean motion—her and Gerald together—her body fitting against my chest, like it was made to.
She didn’t fight it. Just let her head fall against my shoulder, Gerald wedged safely between us, and exhaled a shaky sound that wasn’t quite a sob.
“You’re here,” she whispered against my neck, voice raw from smoke and something deeper, fingers curling into my turnout jacket over my heart like she needed to feel it beating to believe it.
“I’m here.” My voice cracked on the words. I pressed my lips to her temple through the soot and smoke, breathing her in—ash, citrus shampoo, her—and the relief hit so hard it almost buckled my knees. “The second the call came in, nothing else existed. Just the road, the siren, and getting to you.”
Her free hand fisted tighter in my jacket, knuckles white. “I thought—” She swallowed, voice trembling. “For a minute, I thought I wasn’t getting out. The fire spread so fast.”
I tightened my hold, fingers pressing into her back like I could keep her anchored to me forever. “But you did. You’re out. I’ve got you both.”
She buried her face against my throat, breath hot and uneven against my skin. “I thought—”
“I got you,” I said. “You’re both safe. You saved him. You’re so brave. You’re okay.”
I carried her away from the porch, away from the heat, away from the collapsing roar behind us—far enough that the smoke thinned and the air tasted clean again.
Only then did I set her down gently on the tailgate of the closest responder truck, keeping one hand on her shoulder, as if I let go, she might disappear.
She looked up at me—red-eyed and ash-streaked, right here in the rotating red and white lights—and my heart cracked wide open.
“You went back in,” I said. Not a question. A fact that hurt to say out loud.
“Gerald was in the closet.” Her voice cracked on the name. “He always goes to the closet.”
I nodded once.
Behind us, the Airstream gave a deep, groaning crack—something structural giving way—and flames shot twenty feet into the night sky.
She flinched. I stepped closer, blocking the view with my body, keeping her eyes on me.
“You’re safe,” I said. “He’s safe. Aggie’s down by the road. She’s okay. They all are.”
She swallowed. “Okay, good.”
The paramedic appeared at my elbow—calm, efficient, already reaching for the oxygen mask.
I stepped aside but didn’t go far.
Becca looked at me over the mask—eyes shining in the rotating red and white lights—and my words came out quiet, almost lost under the sirens. “I have to go.”
“Cross your heart, you’ll come back,” she murmured.
I looked at her for a long moment—memorizing her face in the firelight, the soot on her cheekbones, the way her eyes streamed with tears, the stubborn set of her mouth that said she was still fighting even now.
“Cross my heart,” I said.
Then I leaned in, kissed her once—slow, certain, ash and smoke and her and the cold night air—pouring everything I couldn’t say into the kiss.
I love you. I’m terrified. I’m never letting you out of my sight again.
When I pulled back, I rested my forehead against hers for one heartbeat, breathing her in.
“Don’t scare me like that again,” I whispered.
She gave a small, shaky laugh against my lips. “I won’t.”
I kissed her once more, then turned around and went to work.
But every step I took away from her felt like pulling against gravity.
She was still there.
She was breathing.
She was mine.
And I was going to make damn sure nothing ever came close to taking her from me again.