Chapter 34
An eerie orange glow welcomed Eiley back to Belbarrow.
In the back of the cab, she leaned forward in her seat, careful not to disrupt Saff, who slept soundly on her lap.
Sky was also dead to the world, his snores fogging the window.
It had been a long day for them all, and it seemed about to get longer.
What on earth had she come home to?
“Is that a fire over in the hills?” she asked the cab driver, quietly so as not to wake the exhausted children.
“Looks like it, aye.”
Her heart leapt into her throat, thudding until it felt like she couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t that far from Galbreath Farm, and Warren would likely be up there tending to it. If it spread …
“Hope we don’t have to bloody evacuate,” the cab driver was moaning. “Last thing I need after a night shift. Good job it happened before fireworks night, eh?”
Beside her, Brook looked terrified, peering over Saff’s head. “What will happen, Mum?”
“The firefighters will put it out.” She smoothed his hair gently, hoping he didn’t feel her shake.
“Like Warren,” he said, eyes widening. “Do you think he’s scared?”
She squeezed her eyes closed, but the fire still flashed behind her lids.
She couldn’t help but imagine him there, not knowing if the house he’d worked hard to build would survive.
Not knowing if he would survive, not if it got out of control.
“I think anybody would be scared, but firefighters are very brave and very experienced. They won’t let it hurt us, munchkin. ”
They pulled up to the house after what felt like hours, and Mum dashed out in her slippers to meet them, balancing on one crutch. The smell of smoke was faint but impossible to ignore when she opened the car door to meet her.
“Eiley! What on earth are you doing home? You’re supposed to be in Glasgow!”
Eiley paid the driver and got out, Saffron still in her arms. She didn’t have the time, or the desire, to explain the exhausting day, this new fear pushing it all away. “Is everyone okay?”
If the fire spread any further downhill, the forest would be next, and Fraser’s cabin …
“Cam and Sorcha are inside with the kids, but I can’t get hold of your bloody brother.
I don’t know if he’s even gone to Manchester with Harper or not!
” When she saw the two sleeping children in the back of the cab, she lowered her voice.
“Everyone’s wondering if we’ll have to evacuate.
We’re lucky to be away from the woods, but … ”
“We need to find Fraser,” Eiley’s voice rattled with fear. God, if something happened and she lost her brother, or Warren, or—
Warren . He should have been the last thing on her mind, but he kept inserting himself to the front of it like he belonged there.
Would it be like this if she gave him a chance?
Would she always be wondering whether he’d make it home in one piece?
Were those scars just one of many incidents that might have ended badly?
“I’m going to get the kids into bed, and if we haven’t heard from him then, I’ll go and look,” Eiley decided.
Mum clucked her tongue. “Don’t be silly. You can’t go back out!”
“We need to know if he’s in the cabin, Mum!” She was already heading in with Brook and Saffron, and she looked back to find Myra gently waking a groggy Sky behind her while the cab driver emptied her suitcase from the boot.
Cam appeared in the doorway, the fierce distress on her dishevelled features throwing Eiley further off-kilter. Cam was never afraid. Even when she’d been in hospital, it had been everyone else who had worried for her. She’d laughed and joked through a bloody emergency C-section and haemorrhage.
There was no time to answer her questions, or even greet Sorcha and their children. Eiley remained composed only for as long as it took to put her children to bed, and then, when Fraser still didn’t pick up the phone twenty minutes later, she ignored Mum’s protests and dashed back out to her car.
She’d lost enough today already.
The flames hadn’t reached the cabin, and when she used her spare key, she found there was no one home, living room and bedroom both swathed in darkness. The empty Harper side of the wardrobe and the lack of coats on the hook suggested they’d gone to Manchester as planned.
Thank heavens for Harper . “Then answer your bloody phone, eejit !” she yelled at an abandoned plaid shirt, and then whirled to get back into her car.
She should have been relieved, but the fierce terror in her belly didn’t thaw as she clicked her seatbelt into place. She opened her phone just in time to see three texts and a missed call from Mum, who really liked poop emojis.
Fraser, Harp, and Bernard on their way to Manchester. Have shouted at him v loudly for making us worry. Come home!!!!
As Eiley leaned against the steering wheel, she stared at the blazing shards of the hilltop fire visible between the trees. If she could just check that Warren’s house wasn’t caught in it …
If she could make sure he was safe …
For once, driving was the least scary thing in her life as she reversed onto the road that would lead her to the old farm. Her mind raced with the worst possibilities: that he would lose the house he wanted to start a family in; that he’d been there when the fires broke out, and she would lose him.
As though he were hers to lose.
She’d wasted so much pointless time trying to push him away to protect her own broken heart.
She’d taken him for granted. If something happened to him, he’d get hurt not knowing that her entire trip back to Belbarrow had been spent wondering if they were supposed to be together, because he was all the things Finlay had never been. Reliable, compassionate, selfless.
When she saw the roadblocks ahead, along with silhouetted figures scattered before the craggy incline of the uplands, she hit her brakes swiftly.
Even from low ground, she could make out a persistent glow at the peaks and mourned the heather-smattered farmland she’d gazed upon not so long ago.
Newscasters and photographers were positioned in front of the blocks to report the fires, and a few farmers loitered with worry etched into their faces.
Warren wasn’t one of them; she didn’t know if it was a good thing or not.
A gloved hand tapped on her window, and she wound it down, the thick smoke clinging to her eyes like grit.
It was Nate who greeted her, a patient smile on his face, which was half-shrouded by a heavy helmet. Beads of sweat glistened on his Cupid’s bow, turnouts looking worn.
When he recognised her, the smile vanished. “Eiley, what are you doing out here?”
“Where’s Warren?”
“He’s doing his job, like we all are.” That gave her some relief, but not enough. He put his hand over hers on the lowered window. “You need to get home. Have you been evacuated?”
“No, but—”
“Then get home,” he insisted. “Warren’ll call you when he can, I’m sure.”
But he wouldn’t. They hadn’t spoken since the argument. The last thing she’d said to him had been cruel and final: don’t fucking come back . “What about his house?” she pleaded.
A frown. “What house? He lives in a van, love, and it’s parked at the station. He’s fine.”
“No, not the van. The house that he’s building,” she iterated desperately. “On Galbreath Farm. It’s up near the fires!”
How could he not have known? Had Warren not told him?
“Right. I … I didn’t know that.” Warily, Nate looked up to the hills, the distant flames tainting his skin a terrifying shade of orange.
“He should have somebody looking out for it.” Eiley got out of the car, only for Nate to catch her before she could move more than a few steps.
“No, love. You can’t. Everyone beyond this point has been evacuated. I’m sorry.”
“What’s going on?” another firefighter demanded from the parked engine, so shrouded in protective gear that Eiley couldn’t make them out. The voice belonged to a woman, possibly the one who had been in the bookstore the night of the flood.
“She’s a friend of Warren’s,” Nate said, an edge to the word friend that implied they were more.
Considering what she was doing right now, they probably were.
“Well, knowing Warren, you won’t see him in a while.”
“What does that mean?” That he was gone? That he’d been stationed further afield? That—
“Warren is always the first to turn up on the scene and the last to leave, tryhard that he is.” The firefighter batted her hand, then went back to ushering the concerned locals and reporters away.
A hurricane of panic gusted through Eiley, and she gripped the car for support. Of course. Of course she had to go and fall for a man with a dangerous dedication to his job.
A bellow carried down the hill suddenly, and Eiley’s head spun with the relief she felt. She’d know that voice anywhere, and it was all she’d wanted to hear; not just tonight, but for weeks. “Nate, it’s no good. We need more hands until the helicopters come in!”
Eiley rose to her tiptoes to find him, releasing a jagged breath at the sight of him jogging closer on the other side of the roadblocks. His visor was up, face marked with sweat and soot, and Eiley’s knees nearly buckled.
“Warren! Thank god—”
“ Eiley ?” Warren wasn’t nearly as happy to see her, stiffening after he’d slipped between the barriers to reach them. He was breathless, barely looking at her. “What the fuck are you doing out here? Go home.”
“I had to make sure you … The house … I just—”
“Are you mad ?” The word chopped through her like an axe, leaving her splintered. “I thought you couldn’t get any more thoughtless, but here you fucking are.”
“Warren—” Nate tried to intervene, but Warren nudged him back, squared shoulders rippling with every breath as he tugged off his helmet.
“Do you even know what you’re risking, being here?”
“I don’t need you to shout at me again. I just needed to know—” She was cut off, words lost on her tongue.
“You just rush headfirst into everything, not caring if eejits like me have to clean up your mess!” His fist slammed into his chest, face turning the same red as the fire truck behind them.
She’d never seen him this way, not even last time they’d fought.
He was unrecognisable, veins protruding from his neck and his voice hoarse with anger.
“You don’t know how lucky you are to have people who care about you.
Who want to protect you. Some of us don’t.
And instead of being grateful, you act like we shouldn’t bother! ”
“That’s why I’m here ,” she begged, because she understood now.
The farmhouse. The scars on his back. The fact he’d left town when he was young.
His incessant need to protect those around him, even at his own expense.
The warnings he’d drilled into Brook and the other children about how quickly a fire could burn away everything.
She couldn’t be sure, but those scars were old, silver, and he’d looked at the house’s scaffolding like he’d lost something in that same spot. “I’m here for you !”
“Well you shouldn’t be.” His nostrils flared. “Go home.”
“No. We’re not fighting anymore. I care about you, Warren,” she said desperately.
He turned away. “Nate …”
“Aye, I’ll see she gets home,” Nate muttered.
“Lorna.” Warren beckoned to the firefighter by the truck, the one who had all but told her that Warren was as reckless as her when it came to his safety. The first to arrive and the last to leave.
Eiley couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, as she watched him run back towards the fire, repositioning the helmet on his head so he was protected again. He didn’t look back, like he found the flames easier to stomach than her.
Was she selfish? Thoughtless? Ungrateful?
Did she just keep making everything worse?
At her crestfallen expression, Nate sighed. “You’re not going to go home, are you?”
“I tried to tell him that I …”
“I know. He can’t really listen. He’s full of adrenaline, not thinking. But we can’t do this now, so if I tell you to wait for him at the fire station, will you?”
She nodded obediently. She wasn’t done yet. She needed these cycles to stop, needed to stop pushing away the first sign of something good she’d had in a long time.
If that meant it was Warren’s turn to fight her, so be it. But she was tired of letting life happen to her, letting the bad things win. She wanted good, and not just any good, but his . Him.
She just wished it hadn’t taken a wildfire to realise it.