Sharing a Roof with the Smokejumper

1. Ivy

one

Ivy

Something is purring against my face. I turn my head deeper into my pillow. The purring follows. A cold nose presses against my cheek.

“No.”

The nose disappears. I think I've won. Then a paw lands on my shoulder. I pull the blanket higher. The mattress shifts as Dani's cat, Mabel, steps onto my ribs, walks across me, and settles on the other side of my chest. The purring resumes, louder than before.

I crack one eye open. Two green eyes stare back at me.

“You have an actual owner.”

She rubs her face against my chin. I close my eye. A paw presses against my collarbone.

“You also have Tessa.”

The paw taps my nose. I reach blindly for my phone on the nightstand and squint at the screen.

5:03 a.m. On a Saturday. Our first day off after a long week.

“Why me?”

Mabel purrs louder. I know what I'm going to find when I get downstairs. An empty food bowl that has led her to decide starvation is imminent.

I push the blanket back and sit up. Mabel jumps to the floor and trots toward the bedroom door without so much as a backward glance. Of course. She knew I'd cave. I shove my feet into a pair of flip-flops and follow her into the hall.

The Blackpine crew house is quiet and dark.

Eight to ten seasonal Forest Service employees usually live here during the summer, and normally someone is awake at almost any hour.

But after the week we've had adjusting to the physical demands of the job, even the early risers are taking advantage of Saturday.

Except the cat. And me. Mabel trots several feet ahead, tail held high, confident the human has finally understood her responsibilities.

I make it down the stairs without turning on a light. I've lived here every summer for seven years. I could find the kitchen with my eyes closed. Which is essentially what I'm doing.

As I cross the common room, my foot catches on something.

Whatever it is, it’s large. For a half second I'm still walking, still moving forward, like my body hasn't caught up to the fact that the floor is no longer where it's supposed to be.

I pitch forward and throw my hands out, grabbing at nothing.

The air leaves my lungs in a short, undignified sound.

Then I hit something that is not the floor. Something warm. Something that grunts.

Arms close around me on reflex. For one weightless second I have no idea what's happening. Up and down lose all meaning as everything flips, fast. My back hits the floor and a heavy body comes down on top of mine.

It takes several seconds for my half-asleep brain to catch up. I was walking. Now I'm on my back, pinned beneath what feels like several hundred pounds. Somewhere above me, a voice exhales something that isn't quite a word.

“You're crushing me,” I manage to get out.

“Sorry.” The weight disappears but not the person. He's still above me, his arms braced on either side of my shoulders.

My eyes begin to adjust to the pre-dawn light streaming in from the window. As I blink, the shadowed face just inches above mine comes into focus. Oh. Oh no. I know this face.

Beck Hale.

His hair is rumpled from sleep, and his eyes aren't quite open all the way. This is not how I've pictured seeing Beck again. Not that I've pictured it. Much.

Beck is one of my older brother’s best friends. A smokejumper. They met at jumper school. Beck has passed through Timber Creek with my brother for a few days each summer season.

He's unfairly attractive, his jaw rough with a day's stubble. He looks like he walked straight out of a gear catalog and onto my chest. Even in bad light, at a bad angle, with his weight braced above me, some part of my brain is cataloging the details.

Not that it matters. Beck comes through town, hangs around for a few days, and leaves.

It's easy to ignore an inconvenient attraction when it has a reliable departure date.

At the moment, though, ignoring it is harder.

Because his face is less than a foot from mine.

And his lower body is still lying on top of me.

A light clicks on at the edge of the room. I turn my head and see Tessa. Her hair is pulled into a crooked knot, and she's wearing flannel pajama pants and an old Blackpine sweatshirt. Her gaze moves from me to Beck. Then to the floor behind us. Then back to me.

“Already calling dibs on the new houseguests?” Tessa questions.

Heat climbs into my face. “I wasn't—I tripped. The cat—”

“Fascinating trajectory,” her mouth twitches.

I don't respond. There is no answer that improves this situation.

Beck lifts his head and looks over his shoulder. “It'd be weird if she called dibs on the other guy. Since they're related.”

Other guy? I turn my head. There's a sleeping bag on the floor a few feet away. A man is sprawled across it, one arm thrown over his face. I stare. “Reid?”

My brother doesn't move.

I look at the distance between him and Beck. Then at my flip-flop, which is no longer on my foot. “I tripped over Reid?”

I look up at Beck. He's still braced over me.

There's a lot of him. That's what I register — the actual weight and size of a person I've only ever seen from across a porch or a dinner table.

His forearm is planted an inch from my ear.

His knee is somewhere near my hip. I am, physically speaking, trapped.

His eyes meet mine.

“You're still on top of me.”

He looks down, as though this fact has only now occurred to him. “Right. Sorry.” He pushes himself up and gets to his feet in one smooth movement.

I sit up and grab my missing flip-flop beside Reid's sleeping bag.

Beck holds out a hand. I take it. His fingers close around mine, and he pulls me easily to my feet. I end up closer to him than I expect, close enough to catch the faint scent of soap on his skin. Then he releases me.

I take a step back. I've had more physical contact with Beck Hale in the last sixty seconds than I have in the previous four summers combined. Which is the entirety of the time I’ve known him.

Tessa walks over to Reid. “Reid.” Nothing. She nudges his leg with her foot. “Reid. Wake up.”

He doesn't even twitch.

She looks at me. “Is he alive?”

“Probably.”

Beck picks up the edge of Reid’s sleeping bag and gives it a tug. Nothing. “We got in around midnight,” he says. “He'll be out for a while.”

“You got in then too,” I say.

“I'm a lighter sleeper,” he responds.

“I gathered.”

Tessa nudges Reid again, harder this time. He rolls slightly onto his side. That's it. She considers my brother for another second. “Impressive.”

A sharp meow comes from the kitchen doorway. We all turn. Mabel sits there watching us, expressing her dissatisfaction over not yet being fed.

“This is your fault.” I point at her.

Mabel trots into the kitchen.

I follow, mostly because putting a wall between me and the place where I just spent the last minute underneath Beck seems wise.

Tessa flips on the kitchen light. I squint against it while she fills the cat's bowl.

The second it hits the floor, Mabel starts eating.

No gratitude. No acknowledgment of the trouble she's caused. Just breakfast.

“You woke the wrong person,” I tell her. She ignores me.

Beck walks into the kitchen behind us. He's wearing gray sweatpants and a faded navy blue T-shirt. I turn my attention to the coffee maker. Very deliberately. I measure coffee into the filter. Tessa gets three mugs from the cabinet. Behind us, Beck remains silent.

I look toward the common room. “Why are you two sleeping on our floor, anyway?”

“Temporary reassignment.”

I stop pouring. “What?”

Beck leans one hip against the counter. “We got sent over yesterday. Didn't get here until after midnight, so we figured we'd find actual beds this morning instead of waking everybody up.”

“Sent over from the jumper base?”

He nods.

“Why?”

“Nothing's happening.”

I stare at him.

He smiles slightly. “Which is a good thing when your job involves wildfires. We've had an unusually slow stretch. They're shifting some people around instead of having us sit there waiting for something to burn.”

Tessa leans against the counter beside him. “And Blackpine gets you?”

“For now.”

Reid has worked out of Blackpine before and knows this area as well as anyone. He started on a trail crew here years ago, the same way I did. Beck's been here before. Usually with Reid, for a day or two between assignments. Then he disappears again. That's how Beck works. He arrives. He leaves.

Footsteps sound overhead, followed by the squeak of a bedroom door. Someone else is awake now. The crew house is starting to come to life.

I press the button on the coffee maker. The machine begins its slow gurgle. “What’s the plan for while you’re here?”

“Whatever Russ needs.” Beck shrugs. “Trail work. Fuels reduction. Brush clearing. Equipment. Supply runs. He said you're short a couple people.”

“How long is the reassignment?” I ask.

Beck rubs a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Don't know.”

I look at him. “A few days?”

“Probably longer.”

“How much longer?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Could be a couple weeks. Could be the rest of the season.”

The rest of the season.

Tessa looks at me and then pulls out a chair and sits. “So you're basically ours until somebody lights Montana on fire.”

Beck gives her a look. “Let's hope nobody does that.”

“You know what I mean.”

A few days around Beck is one thing. I've done that before. A few weeks sharing a kitchen, a living room, days off, and, as of this morning the occasional section of floor, is something else.

Every other summer, Beck Hale was just passing through. This year, he's unpacking.