Chapter Twenty-Three Kincaid
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kincaid
A week into the fire
“Ah, hell,” Graham muttered as he sat down, dragging his sleeve across his face.
I glanced sidelong toward him. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”
“This fire is an asshole,” Hudson chimed in.
I barked a laugh just as Parker reached us. He set a chainsaw on the ground and sank onto the wide fallen log that Graham was already perched on. “You found the only tree,” Parker said.
Graham glanced down at the charred hunk of tree he was seated on. “Well, most of them have been burned,” he pointed out dryly.
Within the hour, the rest of our crew had gathered. This was officially a safe zone now, because there was nothing left to burn, no fuel left for the fire. Nothing of worth anyway. Fire has to have fuel to keep burning.
We’d been out here with another crew from Willow Brook, along with a crew from Fairbanks, fighting a massive wildfire in the interior of Alaska. Just like most of the West, fires were becoming more common because summers were hotter and winters weren’t as cold.
“How much longer do you think we’re gonna be out here?” I asked Graham, who was the superintendent for our crew.
He let out a breath. “Maybe a week. We’ve got this section under control.
The Fairbanks crews are gonna move around to the other side, and we’ll stay over here to establish safety lines.
The river a few miles away gives us a natural barrier, and apparently, some rain should be rolling in within the next few days. After that, we head back.”
That evening, we actually got to relax a little more than we had so far. When fighting wildfires, we had a lot of gear to carry. The work was grueling. We ate light and slept light until the fire was enough under control that we could relax a bit.
Tonight, we played cards, traded jokes, and gradually spread out to sleep.
I lay awake for a little while, staring up at the sky, which felt so vast here in Alaska.
There was zero light pollution out here.
The nearest town was over one hundred miles away.
It felt like I could stretch a fingertip up and touch the stars.
Tori sashayed into my thoughts. I missed her. Fuck, I missed her. That was a new feeling for me. I thought about my mom’s hopefulness—for me to have a relationship, to build something lasting.
A fuzzy, gray emotion floated through me. I didn’t know how else to describe it. It wasn’t black or bitter, not resigned or angry either. That used to be how I felt about my dad. But those old feelings were sort of neutralized a little. Maybe.
If he hadn’t been so honest, I wasn’t sure I would’ve believed a word he said. But he had acknowledged the reality, and that mattered. Honesty was something my mom had drilled into me from the start. Tell the truth. Own your choices. I trusted people more when they admitted they’d screwed up.
With my dad, ignoring my existence was a pretty damn big screw-up.
I did a quiet check-in with myself—plumbing the emotional depths of that little boy still inside me.
The one who had grown up without a dad. The one who’d still hoped to meet him for so many years.
Now, somehow, I’d finally connected with him.
Less than a year before he was probably going to leave this earth.
It was a strange relief. Not that he was sick and facing down the end of his life.
At least, I didn’t have to wonder anymore.
I had the truth. I could sit there and tell myself I would’ve handled things differently if I’d been in his shoes.
Maybe I would have. But he and my mom were barely more than teenagers.
She had been twenty-two when she got pregnant.
She’d joined the Air Force straight out of high school.
I was thirty-three now. The idea of being a parent felt like a big deal. When I’d been the age my mother was when she had me, I couldn’t imagine what that must’ve been like. Contemplating the responsibility of a having a child would’ve terrified me.
I took a long, slow breath and let it out. Tori slipped into my thoughts again, nudging her way inside the way she always did—quietly, insistently. She was the first woman I’d been with where I actually wondered about the future.
Oh, hell. I knew I wanted more with her. I didn’t even like considering the thought of not seeing her when I got back. That had never even occurred to me before when I’d even casually dated.
I’d always figured I was the perfect fit for this kind of life, for being a hotshot firefighter. No ties. No missing someone I loved when I was out in the field.
But now? I was surrounded by men on my crew who were happily committed. Many of them had kids back home. They made it work.
In the end, if I’d learned anything from my mom, it was that you made the life you had work. She had done more than that with me.
I knew that no matter what happened with Tori, we could make it work, too. But I also knew how hard trust came for her, and the long shadows cast by what happened in her family.
I understood why. What a fucking asshole her dad had been.
I took another deep breath, letting it out slowly as I stared up at the stars. I counted a few and tried to get my thoughts settled before I drifted off to sleep.