EPILOGUE LANA
One Year Later
The bell rings and third period files in like they own the place, because they do.
There are new faces this year and new names I'm still learning. There are kids who slouch and shine and swear up and down they did the reading. But it's the same room with the same scarred desks. Today I have the same battered copy of Gatsby riding against my palm.
The building smells like fresh paint now instead of cedar and smoke. They rebuilt the north wing over the summer, and you'd never know it burned unless you were the kind of person who counts the exits out of habit.
I still count them. Some habits don't pack up and leave. But for all the sameness surrounding me, I’m different now. I’m calm, happy and settled. Here's the thing nobody warns you about being safe, you stop noticing you have it.
But there are signs. I don't sleep with a chair under the doorknob anymore. My kitchen is unpacked. There's a real curtain on the back window now. Though, I left Jordan’s number on the inside of the cabinet because some things are just too special to change.
It’s amazing how this community has become a family to me. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
"Okay." I tap the book against my palm. "Page ninety. Somebody tell me what the green light is actually about… and I swear, if anybody says 'a dock,' it's a pop quiz Friday."
Laughter bubbles through the class. But the door bursts open before anyone can guess wrong. It's our principal. She’s wearing the particular smile of a woman who knows something I don't and that isn’t typically her style.
“A visitor, welcome.” I give her a nod.
"Miss Summers. We're moving you to the gym for the all-school assembly. Bring your kids."
“What? I’m sorry, I didn’t see it on the schedule. We will be right down.”
Half the room is already up, because there is no sentence on earth a teenager loves more than we're moving to the gym.
When we enter, the gym is loud and warm and packed to the rafters. My class scatters up into the bleachers in an instant. Meanwhile, I plant myself at the bottom like always and turn to keep an eye on a few of the usual suspects.
I count heads as they find their seats. All twenty-nine are present and accounted for. Then I wonder what the assembly is about. It isn’t homecoming week and we aren’t in the middle of a fundraiser. I wonder how I missed the schedule change.
Down on the floor there's a microphone and a banner in the school's colors that reads WHISPERING PINES FIRE DEPARTMENT.
Lined up in front of it, in dress blues I have never once seen any of them wear, is the whole crew.
My eyes move from Zain to Gabriel, Brady, then Lance. Tessa from dispatch is here too.
What in the world? Jordan didn’t mention a safety training at the school today. But it seems odd that he is the only one not here.
Then I notice that there's a gap in the middle of that line. My stomach does a slow, suspicious roll. It’s just one empty space exactly the size of a man I kissed goodbye this morning. The same man who told me he had a long shift but did not breathe a single word of this school visit.
Our school principal taps the mic and the chatter in the gym quiets. "Whispering Pines. A year ago, this building caught fire while every one of you was inside it."
The gym goes quiet, fast, and my body tenses with the memory.
She continues, "But we are so lucky that our story didn’t end in tragedy. Every one of you walked out and that is a testament to our community. But today, we are going to say a special thank you to the people on the front lines who risked everything to keep us safe."
The place detonates. Kids stomp the bleachers until the whole structure shakes under my feet. Their enthusiasm brings tears to my eyes and I cheer and shout along with the crowd. I’m so grateful to be a part of this community.
She taps the mic and continues, "I'm going to hand it over to one of our own. Maya? Can you come up here please?"
Maya, a junior now, walks with confidence toward the center of the gym. It’s hard to believe that she’s the same girl who lost her way in the stairwell that day. I beam with pride as she takes the microphone like she was born holding it.
Maya holds up a hand and the room falls silent. "A year ago, I got lost in the smoke." Her voice doesn't shake, mine would. "I could have had a very different outcome if it weren’t for somebody who came back in to find me. She didn’t have to, she wasn't a firefighter. She was my English teacher."
Oh, no. My eyes go glassy.
"Miss Summers, can you come down here?"
I shake my head no on instinct. But every head in the gym turns to find me anyway.
A year ago the thought of a thousand pairs of eyes finding me would have stopped my heart cold.
I'd have turned away from it the way I turned away from a reporter's camera in a parking lot.
I was certain that being seen was the same thing as being found.
But I'm not hiding from anyone anymore. I won’t ever have to again. If anyone wants to get to me, they’re going to have to come through Jordan and this entire town first. So I walk down. Maya hugs me hard the second I reach the bottom.
I whisper, "I am going to kill you for not giving me a heads-up."
She laughs in response, then speaks into the mic again. "There's actually one more person who wanted to say thank you.”
The doors at the far end of the gym open.
And there he is.
No helmet. No gear. Just Jordan, in a jacket and jeans, walking across the gym floor toward me the way he came through that wall of flashing lights on the interstate. Like he grew there. Like he's been walking toward me his whole life and only needed me to hold still long enough to let him arrive.
The gym loses its collective mind. Students scream, clap and whoop. The sound is deafening and I can’t wipe the smile off my face. Off to the side I catch a small red light and turn to see Noah Kim, filming. For the first time, I don't want to disappear out of the frame.
Jordan stops a foot away and the whole gym hushes. He doesn't reach for the mic. He just looks at me with those dimples that could stop traffic. "Hi, sweetheart."
"Hi… Jordan, what are you doing?" I breathe and my stomach trembles.
"I’m doing something I've wanted to do since I looked at a valley with my whole life laid out in it and realized the only part that mattered was sitting next to me." He takes my hands.
Mine are shaking, and he covers them the way he always does. “What?” My lip quivers and I blink back tears.
This isn’t happening.
This is too good to be true.
But I blink, and he’s still there when I open my eyes.
He continues, "You walked into a burning building for a kid who wasn't yours to save. You are the bravest person I have ever met. I told you that on a tailgate, and I've told you every day since, and I'm going to keep telling you until I run out of days."
"Jordan—"
He grins and lets go of my hands. Then he goes down on one knee in the middle of the gym floor.
Maya, beaming, presses a small box into his palm.
I look around to see they are all in on it.
The only surprised face in the house is mine.
Somehow that makes it so much sweeter. Then the whole world goes quiet around Jordan and me the same way the valley did.
"Lana." His voice cracks right down the middle, and he lets it.
"Marry me. Build a big life with me in this ridiculous, beautiful, small town.
Let me make you breakfast and stand between you and the whole world.
Let me read you only the good chapters. You are my favorite person. I want you to be my wife."
I spent my whole life sure I was a fire. Sure that everything good burned down around me, that I didn't get to keep a single bright thing. But here is this man who I love with all my heart, on his knee in a gym that burned and got built back better, asking to keep me.
It’s my turn to keep something good and I will never take that for granted.
"Yes." It comes out broken and certain all at once. "Yes! Yes, Jordan, of course, yes."
The gym explodes.
He's on his feet and I'm in his arms before the ring is even on my finger.
Then he's laughing into my hair and I'm crying into the jacket that still, after everything, smells like smoke and pine.
A thousand kids are stomping the bleachers.
Lance's whistle cuts clean over all of it.
Maya is sobbing openly and pretending she isn't.
Jordan slides the ring onto my finger and it fits. Then he kisses me, right there in the middle of the gym, in front of the whole loud beautiful town. He lets the noise wash over both of us like he's got all the time in the world.
He pulls me flush against him and dips his mouth to my ear, his voice a low rumble only I can hear under all the screaming.
"The second I get you alone tonight, fiancée, I'm taking my time with you all over again.
Every. Single. Inch." Heat floods my cheeks—and somewhere a good deal lower—and I have to bite my lip to keep from grinning like a fool in front of three hundred teenagers.
When he pulls back, he keeps his forehead pressed to mine. "I told you I was never leaving," he murmurs.
"You did." I'm laughing and crying at once. "Inside a cabinet. In permanent marker."
"Damn right." His lips brush my forehead. "Come on, sweetheart. Let's go home."
The whole town is still on its feet, and that little red light is still glowing, catching every second of the first day of the rest of my life.
Later—much later, when the gym has emptied and it's just us and the squeak of his boots on the polished floor—I'll tell him the other secret I've been keeping.
The one that's only four weeks along and the size of a poppy seed.
I'll watch the man who only ever wanted a family of his own come completely undone in the middle of an empty gym.
But that's a story for tonight. Right now, I just let him hold me, and for the first time in my whole life, I don't count the exits.
The End