12. Jake
12
JAKE
As I follow the path that leads from the edge of our patrol route back down toward the cabin, I draw in a deep breath of fresh air.
Yeah, on days like this, I know I’ve got my reasons for staying in this place so long. Not that I need any more of them. I’ve got plenty of motivation as it is, and I intend to keep it that way.
But the bright sunshine, the sound of the birds singing, the blue sky above me—I could almost fool myself that this place is a kind of paradise, and I’m never going to complain about that. Especially not when I come back to the cabin to have some time to myself, given that Killian and Mason are on a supply run to a nearby town.
I pause in the doorway for a moment, leaning up against the frame as I take in the forest before me. Not long from now, it’s going to be packed with tourists, all of them waving around sparklers like it’s their life’s mission to burn this place down. I’ve seen some crazy shit in the time I’ve been here, the sort of stupidity you can’t believe…
I’m just about to duck back inside when I hear a voice calling out to me.
“Hi! Hello, Jake?”
I glance up, and much to my surprise, I see Vanessa making her way along the path toward me. Her mouth is set in a hard line and there’s a furrow in her brow, and she looks as though she has just emerged from a battleground.
“Hey, I’m really sorry to bother you,” she greets me, doing her best to catch her breath. “But I’m having some trouble getting my stove to work, and I really need it to—well, Callie and I don’t have anything to eat that isn’t frozen, at least not until the delivery arrives later this week, and…”
She sounds genuinely frazzled. She’s always seemed so put-together before—well, the times we didn’t walk in on her in her towel, at least. And as much as I might not know what to make of her or her relationships with my two brothers, I know I’m not going to leave a lady to deal with this alone.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell her. “Just let me grab my tool kit, and I’ll come through.”
“Thank you,” she gasps. “I—just, thank you. I’ll see you in a minute…”
She rushes back to the house, and she leaves the door open for me so when I arrive I can head straight in. On the other side of the door, I find her chewing her fingernails, staring down at the open oven.
“I don’t know what it is, but the gas won’t start,” she tells me, shaking her head. Callie is sitting at the kitchen table, and I give her a smile and a wave. She returns it, like we’re old friends.
“Let me take a look,” I tell her, getting down on my knees and pulling open the small compartment that keeps all the functional parts of the stove seperate from the rest of it. “It could just be that your gas nozzle has come loose, and we need to readjust.”
I set to work, looking through the various tubes and wires until I find something that looks off. I nod, grabbing my phone and flicking on the light so I can confirm what I think is going on here.
“Yeah, here’s the issue,” I tell her, tapping at the spot that’s screwed-up. “It’s the gas pipe. I’ll reconnect it now, but you should get someone who really knows what they’re doing in here soon enough.”
“You seem like you know what you’re doing,” she remarks as she watches me get to work. “You done this before?”
“Comes with the fire safety training,” I tell her, squinting into the stove. “You have to know how to stop the things before they start too.”
“You have to do courses for that kind of thing?” She sounds surprised.
I glance up at her. “Yeah, sure,” I reply.
“Even if you’re volunteering?”
I laugh softly. “Especially if you’re volunteering. They can’t have just anyone running around the woods with access to this kind of equipment.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” she muses. “I never really thought about it before. Just thought that as long as you were doing something nice, nobody would look closely at how qualified you were to actually do the thing, you know?”
I chuckle again as I pin together the two loose ends of the pipe. I use some industrial sealant to keep it in place, and then nod for her to try the stove again.
“Give it a go. Should work fine.”
She does as she’s told, and claps her hands together.
“Oh, thank God,” she sighs. “I don’t know how I would have found us anything to eat. I guess I’d have to start scavenging for berries or something…”
“I’m sure Mason could tell you something about that,” I reply. “He knows all about that kind of stuff.”
“Yeah, we were talking a little when he came over yesterday,” she remarks casually, and I cock an eyebrow.
“He came around?”
“Oh, yeah, for the interview,” she replies, totally innocent. “Did he not saying anything to you about it?”
I smirk slightly, and shake my head. “Can’t say he did.”
“Oh, I guess he—he didn’t want to influence the two of you into doing interviews with me too,” she offers. She knows it’s not exactly a good reason, but at least she doesn’t try to convince me. Mason, coming around here too? After she told us that she’s writing a story on us, like we’re some kind of freaks in a zoo? I’m surprised he even considered it.
“Yeah, I can’t say that I expected him to come here and spill his guts.”
My voice comes out a little more defensive than I intend it to. I know I have no business acting this way, but there’s a part of me that’s jealous. They’ve had all this time alone with her, and I haven’t. What have they been telling her? What have they been saying? Have they told her why we do this? Showed her our weak spot like that…?
“He didn’t exactly spill his guts,” she replies with a slight smile. “He was a lot more careful than that…”
Behind her, Callie gets to her feet and heads for the door, wandering out onto the porch.
“Lunch will be ready in about an hour,” Vanessa calls after her, and I lean up against the counter. It’s not like I can’t see what my brothers find so appealing about her. No, it’s not that part I have trouble with. It’s the part where it’s just the two of us right now, and if I’m jealous, it’s because I want something to do with her too.
“So, yeah, nothing to worry about with Mason,” she continues as she turns back to me. “Though I’m happy to fill in any gaps that he might have left in his story if you want to give me something to work with…”
“You really don’t switch it off, do you?” I shoot back, but I’m only playing. I shrug. “Maybe we could talk a bit about fire safety. Make sure nobody’s setting the forest on fire with pies.”
“Hey, you’re never going to let that go, are you?” she protests. “It was one time. And look, I got you to help me when I knew there was something I needed to see to…”
“And I’m at your beck and call for any fire-related stuff you need,” I tell her.
“And what about the story? An interview, maybe?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think there’s much for me to say.”
She raises her eyebrows at me. “Are you kidding?” she laughs.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you moved out here, to the middle of the woods, with your brothers, to fight fires and help people,” she remarks, cocking an eyebrow. “There’s no way there isn’t a story behind that.”
I glance away from her. Truth be told, I don’t want to talk about my reasons for doing this. My reasons for leaving behind my whole life with the SEALs, and coming out here to make sure that nobody else goes through anything like what we did when we lost our parents.
“It doesn’t matter,” I mutter. “Too miserable, anyway. Nobody would want to read that.”
She leans forward and, to my surprise, reaches out to plant a hand on my arm.
“Hey,” she murmurs. “You can talk to me, you know. Even if it’s not for the article, even if it’s just something you want to get off your chest…”
I gaze at her for a moment—and in that instant, I can almost imagine myself telling her everything. Telling her about every little detail of what brought me to this point—standing in the burned-out remains of the home that we’d grown up in after I got the call, feeling numb, the scent of cold ash in the air…
“Nah, I’m fine,” I reply, brushing her off. I don’t want to pull her down with my shit. She’s probably been through enough as it is.
“Okay, well, the offer’s open, if you ever want to speak about it,” she assures me. There’s a note of genuine warmth to her voice. I’m not sure I entirely believe that she wouldn’t use this for a story if she got the chance, but maybe I’m judging her a little harshly.
“Speaking of offers,” she continues. “You want to stay for lunch? So I can say thank-you for saving my ass?”
I glance back toward the cabin. I know I should be getting back there. If Killian and Mason arrive back and find that I’m not there, they’re going to have a million questions about what I’ve been up to, and I don’t feel like answering them.
“I should…”
“Come on, it won’t be more than an hour,” she joshes me, grinning at me over her shoulder. And there’s something about the look in her eyes, so carefree and bright, that pushes all the doubt from my mind, and I find myself nodding.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Yeah, that actually sounds pretty nice.”
I stick around for lunch, joining Callie and Vanessa for something to eat, and I try not to think about what the guys are going to say when I get back. I can already imagine all the snarky comments they’ll have to throw at me about the fact that I’ve been spending time with this woman, especially after Killian slept with her.
Callie’s eyes start to get a little droopy after lunch as we clear up, and Vanessa plants her hands on her hips and looks down at her.
“You want to take a quick nap, little lady?” she suggests, and Callie nods. “Come on upstairs, let’s get you rested, and then I can walk Jake home.”
“You don’t have to do that—” I call after her as she heads up the stairs, but she raises her hand as though to tell me that the choice has already been made. I grin. Okay, so if I get a little more time alone with her, maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing…
She locks up the house carefully before she follows me onto the trail again. I can’t help but notice all the effort she takes to make sure this place is safe, even though the chances of there being anyone else on the trails is next to impossible. Not that I’m one to speak about paranoia.
“She’s been napping so much more since we came here,” she remarks, shaking her head, as she catches up to me. “I think it’s all the fresh outdoor air—just knocks her out in the evenings…”
“That’s not a bad thing,” I reply. “You get used to it, the more time you spend here.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to be staying long enough for that,” she laughs. “I want to get back to the city as soon as I can…”
“You don’t like it out here?”
“I…no, it’s not that I don’t like it,” she corrects herself quickly. “It’s just not what I’m used to. Not like the rest of my life, you know?”
“And what is the rest of your life like?”
“What do you mean?”
She sounds genuinely surprised by the question, but it can’t come as that much of a shock. After all, now that she’s just dropped in out of the blue, I know that there has to be something she came here for.
Or something she wants to get away from…
“You don’t live with Callie’s dad?”
I don’t know why the question comes out at that moment—it’s not like I’ve been thinking about him or anything. And I guess if she’s been hooking up with Killian, it’s not like she’s tied down. But still, curiosity gets the better of me, and her face drops for a moment before she replies.
“Johnny,” she murmurs, as though it’s been a long time since she said his name out loud. “He passed when Callie was just a few months old. Car accident.”
“Fuck, I’m so sorry,” I reply, my brows knitting together. “I…”
I trail off as she continues to walk, her gaze lowered to the ground. I don’t want to burden her with everything I’ve been through, but at the same time, the thought of leaving her hanging is getting to me.
“I don’t even know if we’d still be together now,” she admits. “We were young then, you know how it is, thought we could take on the world, but God knows how it would have actually worked out in real life.”
She falls silent again, taking a few steps before she speaks again.
“But he gave me Callie, and I’m eternally grateful for that,” she murmurs. “I don’t know what I’d do without that little girl. When I look at her, I—I feel like I have a reason to make the world a better place. Because it’s the world she’s going to live in, and she deserves nothing but the best.”
“You’re doing an amazing job with her,” I reply. “She’s a sweet little girl.”
“The sweetest,” she agrees with a grin—but I can see a hint of sadness in her eyes.
“I’m sorry about her father,” I tell her softly, coming to a halt as we reach the bottom of my steps. “You shouldn’t have to go through something like that so young, losing family. It’s…it’s not the kind of thing you get over.”
She looks up at me, her eyes searching mine. “You sound like you’re talking from firsthand experience.”
“I might be.”
I expect her to ask more questions, but she seems happy to just let the moment linger there between us.
“Well, I’m sorry you had to go through that too,” she replies. “It’s tough. But you’re doing amazing stuff out here with your brothers. I bet there are plenty of people still walking the earth right now because you were there to bail them out when they needed it most.”
I smile. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
She tips her head to the side and studies me for a moment.
“You know, that might be the first real smile I’ve ever seen from you,” she teases, and I laugh and roll my eyes.
“Come on, I’m not that bad.”
“Oh, you’re pretty bad,” she continues playfully, landing a slap on my arm. “You scared the shit out of me when you came to the house that first day…”
“So you’d rather I just let the alarm go?”
“Hey, I had it under control…”
She laughs, that warm, bright sound that fills the air around us, as she tips her head to the side and looks up at me.
And even though I know it’s stupid—even though I know she’s already been with my brother, and I have no idea what she’s doing here—there’s a flash of desire in my chest. Before I can stop myself, I bring my hands to her sides, pull her close to me, and press my lips to hers.
It’s been a long time since I’ve kissed a woman, a hell of a long time. And the explosion of fireworks that bursts in my head is intoxicating. I part her lips with my tongue and dip it inside, and she moves her hands to my belt loops, leaning into me. It’s almost as though I can taste the sweetness of her laugh on my lips, and I want more. I cup her head in my hand, and lean in deeper…
But before I can go any further, I hear a slight creak from inside the cabin—and we both spring away from each other. We’ve got damn good reason not to want to be caught, but I get the feeling this hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“I should…” she blurts out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Her lips are slightly pinker than they were before, fuller. I can see my own saliva glistening on her bottom lip before she quickly swipes it away with her tongue.
And that’s all she manages to get out before she turns and takes off into the woods—and leaves me standing there, wondering just how much shit my brothers are going to give me for what they just saw.