Chapter 4
Burn Marks and Battle Scars
The front door slams open hard enough to rattle the frame.
Boots hit the floor in a rapid, controlled rhythm—heavy, purposeful—cutting through the crackle of dying flames and the low roar of smoke still choking the room. A flashlight beam slices through the haze, sharp and blinding, sweeping once—
Then it lands.
And everything else fades.
Noah Morgan strides through the smoke like he owns it. Like the fire already lost the second he stepped inside.
Helmet tucked under one arm, turnout coat hanging open just enough to reveal the black T-shirt plastered to his chest, damp with sweat.
The fabric clings, outlining muscle and heat and something rawer beneath it.
Steam curls off his shoulders, ghosting into the air as he moves, backlit and larger than life.
His jaw is set, carved from stone. His eyes—focused, cutting—track the room in a single sweep, assessing, calculating, already deciding.
Command radiates off him. Not loud. Not forced. Just there. Inevitable.
The kind of presence that takes control without asking.
For a second, it doesn’t feel real. Feels staged. Like something ripped straight from a movie where the hero walks in at the exact right moment and everything shifts on impact.
Except this isn’t a movie.
And the way my pulse stutters, the way my breath catches as recognition hits—this is very, very real.
My jaw drops.
I can't help it. He moves with purpose, command radiating from every inch of his tall, broad frame. Ten years gone, and he still walks like the world bends around his will.
I forget how to breathe.
He spots me, and something shifts behind his eyes. A flicker of recognition. And something darker.
He takes in the scorched wall, the foam-splattered counters, and then me—singed, disheveled, braless under a clingy tee that's now soaked and borderline see-through.
One eyebrow lifts slowly.
"Still can't make tea without burning something down, Bennett?" Noah moves like a man who's done this a hundred times before—efficient, calm, in control.
His crew fans out behind him, checking for hot spots, scanning the ceiling, and flipping switches with gloved hands and crisp commands. One opens the windows while another begins ventilating with a portable fan.
"Minor damage," the youngest one reports. "Kettle's toast, curtain's scorched, but no active flame."
"Good." Noah nods once, then kneels beside the stove.
He reaches down and lifts something from the floor—my stomach sinks when I see it.
The sticky note.
The very one that had been taped to the kettle in bold black marker: DO NOT USE.
He holds it between two fingers, his jaw flexing once before he crumples it into his fist.
My pulse stutters.
Noah stands slowly. "Rodriguez, Martinez—you're dismissed. Let Mabel know we've cleared the scene."
The firefighters exchange a look, then file out without comment, leaving behind a trail of fresh mountain air and ozone.
I back toward the hallway. "I'll, uh... start cleaning up—"
“Stop." The tone in his voice freezes me mid-step.
He steps into my path, close enough that I have to tilt my chin to meet his eyes. There's no teasing in his expression now. Just pure, blistering worry wrapped around something harder.
Heat rushes to my face, but not from shame. No—it's the memory that does it. The very specific, vivid memory of the last time I screwed up in a kitchen—trying to make him pancakes in nothing but his flannel shirt and setting off every smoke alarm in his mother's house.
He stood in the doorway, hair wrecked from sleep, and just..
. looked at me. Not angry. Not amused. Something deeper.
Like he was memorizing me—smoke-smudged and barefoot and completely his.
Then he crossed the kitchen in two strides, lifted me onto the counter, and kissed me until I forgot the burnt pancakes, the shrieking alarm, and my own name.
Intense. Consuming. Like the rest of the world fell away when he touched me.
I look at him now—ten years older, broader, sharper around the edges—but that same focused intensity is still coiled just beneath the surface, and my body remembers exactly what falling for him felt like.
I swallow hard.
His gaze drops briefly to the mess behind me—the charred drapes, the foam-streaked floor, the scorched metal on the stove.
"You could've burned the whole place down, Riley.
You know better. I'll be damned if Mabel lifts a finger to clean your mess.
You want to act like this town doesn't matter to you?
" He meets my eyes again. "Fine. But you're not leaving this kitchen until every last bit of that bad judgment is scrubbed off the tile. Clean this up, Riley.”
He presses the crumpled note into my palm, then steps back, giving me space. But not absolution.
"And next time…” His voice is low and rough, "read the goddamn signs, Riley. Before someone gets hurt."
The words should sting. Maybe they do. But it's the emotion behind them—tight-leashed worry wrapped in frustration—that catches me off guard. He's not mad that I was careless. He's shaken. It’s in the flicker behind his eyes and the taut line of his jaw.
We stand too close, the air charged and heavy with things we never said. My fingers curl around the note. It's still warm from his hand.
He starts to turn away, but I catch it—a subtle shift in his expression. A flicker of something raw in his eyes. Regret. Longing. The ghosts of ten years ago are swirling between us like the smoke. The words he just spoke cost him. More than he'll ever admit out loud.
My chest tightens. Because for one heartbeat, I remember exactly what it felt like to be his. To be cared for with intensity so fierce it frightened me. To be wanted so completely, I didn't know where he ended, and I began.
He clears his throat and scrubs a hand along the back of his neck, the tension bleeding off him like steam from a kettle.
"Almost forgot," he says, not looking at me. "The Summer Festival starts tomorrow. Local tradition to kick off tourist season."
I blink, thrown by the abrupt shift. "I heard. Sounds like good color for my article."
"Wear comfortable shoes—there's a lot of ground to cover." He adjusts his gear, his gaze still angled somewhere past my shoulder.
And just like that, he's gone. Boots echoing down the hallway, shoulders squared, jaw tight.
I'm left standing there, surrounded by the faint scent of smoke, bergamot, and sandalwood. And the knowledge that whatever this is between us... It's far from extinguished.
Noah's footsteps fade down the hall, and still, I don't move.
The crumpled note is still clenched in my hand—his frustration folded inside paper.
Clean this up, Riley.
I should be insulted. I should throw the note away, go upstairs, and pretend this didn't happen. Instead...I clean.
Not because he told me to. Not because of the note, or the look on his face, or the way his voice went low and rough.
I clean because I need to do something with my hands before they start shaking.
Because Mabel doesn't deserve a scorched kitchen.
Because if I stand still for one more second, I'll have to sit with the fact that Noah Morgan just looked at me like I was the most infuriating, precious thing he'd ever pulled out of a fire.
So I scrub. The stovetop, the tile, the counters.
Polish every surface until the lingering smell of burned metal fades beneath lemon-scented cleaner.
I take out the trash, open the windows, and straighten the chairs around the tiny table.
I move with a kind of furious precision, channeling every tangled feeling into the simple rhythm of clean, rinse, repeat.
Because ten years ago, we had a rhythm too. He moved, I followed. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Because everything between us was effortless in a way that terrified me then and terrifies me now.
One look from him used to unravel me completely. One word in that low, steady voice could melt every ounce of my resistance.
God help me, it still can.
Still does.
By the time I finish, the house is silent again. No firemen. No alarms. No witnesses to the quiet unraveling of my composure.
I press my hands against the counter, breathing deep, but it does nothing to steady me. If I still react this strongly to Noah Morgan... If I still care this much about what he thinks of me, then I’m nowhere near over him.
And maybe I never will be.
I kill the lights in the kitchen, my fingers brushing the crumpled note one last time before I toss it into the trash. But his expression stays with me like a bruise.
That look. Not anger—fear. Fear for me.
Even now, hours later, the echo of it reverberates inside me. Not the frustration. The worry underneath. The maddening, almost unbearable tenderness he tried so hard to hide behind that tight jaw and those clipped words.
I slip between cool cotton sheets, exhausted yet oddly alert. My body thrums with a nervous energy I can't shake, my skin too sensitive, my mind too full.
My phone glows in the dark as I scroll through emails and messages, answering my editor's increasingly curious questions with deliberately vague assurances.
My thumb hovers over the photo app. I know what I'll find there—an album I never deleted, not even through three phone upgrades. Pictures from before. Noah and me at Alpine Lake. At prom. On his father's boat. Evidence of a love I've spent a decade pretending wasn't real.
I close the app without looking. No good can come from that trip down memory lane.
Instead, I let my mind drift... to the firehouse.
To Noah in that navy-blue uniform, authority written in the proud set of his shoulders, in the way he said Riley like it was both a curse and a promise.
God, I wanted him to do more than lecture me. I wanted him to close the distance between us and finish what that look started.
I imagine it now—his office door clicking shut behind me, that low voice saying my name the way he used to. His hands cupping my face, tilting it up, making me meet those glacier-blue eyes while the last of his composure crumbled.
You could've burned the whole place down. You know better.
My breath catches as I picture him backing me against the wall, his forehead dropping to mine, breathing hard.
Not angry. Not distant. Just a man tired of pretending he doesn't still feel this.
A man finally letting himself want what he wants.
Because I always was his. I don't think I ever stopped being his.
My thighs clench under the sheets, my fingers gripping the pillow as heat blooms low and deep. The ache is sharp, familiar, unbearable.
I want the weight of his body pressed against mine.
I want to feel that fire in his eyes as he finally stops pretending we're nothing but a distant memory.
I want to hear him say mine and know he means it.
I press my face into the pillow, groaning softly. This—this is exactly what I was afraid would happen. One day back in Angel's Peak, and already, the walls I spent a decade building are cracking. Fast.
I don't know if I want to hold them together... or let them fall.
It's just proximity. Just the surprise of seeing him again, the physical response to an attractive man who happens to share history with me.
Nothing more.
I'll go to the festival tomorrow. Gather material for my article. Keep things strictly professional.
I roll onto my back, staring at the ceiling. The scent of his aftershave lingers in my memory, woodsy and warm with notes of cedar. Would it taste the same on his skin as the cologne he wore at eighteen?
Groaning again, I pull the pillow over my face. It's going to be a very long three days.