Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Clay
Gabe doesn’t mean to tell her.
“Clay’s not…” Gabe searches for the word as I come in from inventory, boots scuffing concrete. He spots me, too late to shut the door on the story. “He’s not good at… birthdays.”
Ember smiles at him like she knows it already. “Neither am I. Mine’s always a disaster.”
“It’s not that,” Gabe says, and now he won’t look at me. “His started going bad the year Dani—”
“Gabe.” My voice clips hard.
He flinches. Ember’s gaze cuts to mine, sharp. “Dani?” she asks softly.
Gabe exhales like he’s stepping into a room on fire. “His high school sweetheart. There was a house fire, years back. Clay was first on scene. He—” Gabe stops, shakes his head once. “He had to wait for backup. It took too long.”
The station is suddenly too loud—coffee machine hiss, radio chatter, hose couplers clinking—everything turning into that high-pitched whine I get sometimes when memory bites bone.
Ember doesn’t speak. Doesn’t fill the space with apologies or pity. She just slides off the tailboard, thanks Gabe, and walks straight for me like she’s decided forward is the only direction left.
“Clay,” she says.
I move past her. “Drill at fifteen hundred, Quinn. Don’t be in the way.”
“Hey,” she says, catching my sleeve. “Look at me.”
I do. And I hate that it matters—her eyes on me like cool water, steady hands on a man who forgot what steady felt like.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she says.
The words scrape. I ease my arm out of her hold. “Go home, Ember.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “That I heard it from him.”
“Doesn’t matter who said it.” I pull open the bay door to let the wind cut the heat out of me. “Doesn’t change a damn thing.”
I don’t mean to show up at her rental.
I tell myself I’m there because the night is dropping below twenty and the text she sent said heater out again with an ice cube emoji.
I tell myself it’s easier to fix it than read the town Facebook group arguing over whether my “fiancée” needs space heaters or a miracle, because apparently she posted in there too. I tell myself it’s my duty.
It’s a lie.
I show up because she heard holy ground and didn’t run.
I rap twice on the cabin door, knuckles against cheap wood, and the door swings open on a rush of cold and citrus. Ember’s hair is twisted up, loose strands curling near her collarbone, and she’s swimming in a sweater the color of old smoke. Bare legs. Wool socks. Bare legs.
“Clay.” She steps back to let me in. “You didn’t have to come.”
“I’d never leave you out in the cold,” I say before I can stop myself.
Her mouth tips. It’s not a smile; it’s something softer, something that says she heard what I didn’t mean to give away and she’s putting it in her pocket for later. “The thermostat clicks,” she says. “But the heater just coughs like a dying dragon and then gives me the middle finger.”
I follow her down the basement stairs. The little rental is a patchwork—found rugs, a chipped table, a clay wind chime that sings when the door opens and freezes when it shuts. Ember in a house is like a candle in a jar: everything takes on the warmth, whether it deserves it or not.
The furnace sulks against cinderblock. I kill the power, pop the panel, and crouch. Dirty flame sensor, easy fix. I pull a rag from my back pocket and rub the carbon off, hands working on muscle memory while my mind keeps playing that tailboard scene on repeat.
Dani, I can hear Gabe say again. And the waiting.
“Will it live?” Ember asks from the stairs, hugging her arms like she’s not sure if she’s cold or just braced.
“It’ll try,” I say, slotting the sensor back and tightening the screw. “Filters are in the coat closet. Behind the avalanche of coats. Bring me one.”
She pads off, socks silent. I stand, listen to the quiet of a house that doesn’t know us yet. The kind that will, if we’re stupid enough to let it.
She returns with a filter and a breath that fogs. I take both.
“I’m sorry,” she says while I slide metal into metal. “About earlier.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It felt wrong. Hearing your story like that. I wanted you to tell me. Or not tell me. But get to decide.”
I snap the panel closed. “Gabe doesn’t always think before he shares.”
“Sounds familiar.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “I do that too.”
“You do it louder,” I say, hitting the power. The furnace hesitates, then wakes with a low hum. The flame catches, steady. “There we go.”
Heat in the bones of a house always comes like a slow apology. It crawls up walls, slips under doors, puts hands around things that forgot they had edges. Ember leans closer to the unit like she can thank it. I wipe my palms on the rag and step back.
“Clay,” she says to the flame. “How long were you with her?”
“Dani?” I keep my eyes on the pilot. “Since we were kids. Off and on in high school. On for real after bootcamp.”
“And the fire,” she says quietly. “You were there.”
“I was around the corner.” I feel the old iron door swinging shut behind me.
I push a boot against it, keep it open just enough to breathe.
“Back then we didn’t roll two engines for a single-family alarm.
Just us, nozzle and driver. I went in to check and it flashed.
I backed out, like I was trained. Radioed. Waited.”
Ember’s breath is careful. “She was inside.”
It’s strange what brains keep, what they make up later.
“But there was a load-bearing wall we didn’t know was rotten.
It took the kitchen. By the time the second engine got there—” I break off.
The door wants to slam. “Don’t matter what we might’ve done.
What happened is what happened. She was gone. ”
Silence in a basement is different. It adds weight to the things you don’t say.
“I’m sorry.” Ember’s voice doesn’t reach for me; it lets me come to it. “That you had to wait. That you have to live with the waiting.”
I prop my shoulder against the cold wall. “All I do is stand where I’m told until the worst part passes. That’s the job.”
“And the life?”
I huff a laugh that never smiles. “Same rules. You push feelings back behind the line. You keep your head clear. You don’t get sloppy. You leave before the debris shifts.”
Ember rubs her palms together like she can knit heat with friction. “I throw myself into the room and start painting.”
“That tracks,” I say dryly.
“Shockingly, my method is less safe.”
“Shockingly,” I agree.
She looks at me, head tipped, studying like she’s sighting a horizon. “You ever get tired of safe?”
“Every day,” I say. “But tired doesn’t stop a building from falling.”
“Sometimes,” she says, “it keeps you from stepping inside at all.”
We stare at each other across a concrete floor and a pretend engagement. She’s right. I hate that she’s right. I respect the hell out of her for saying it anyway.
“Come on,” I say, jerking my chin toward the stairs. “Let’s see if this old beast can thaw your toes.”
Upstairs, the cabin is already shifting toward warm. Ember pads into the tiny kitchen, puts a kettle on the stove, then turns to lean against the counter like she’s braced for impact.
“I didn’t mean to push Gabe,” she says. “He likes to talk while he cleans hose and I like to listen while people talk, and before I knew it—”
“You didn’t push him.” I move toward the window, check the frost lacing the corners. “He thinks I’m stuck. He’s not wrong.”
Her laugh is quick, startled. “He thinks I’m the pry bar?”
“He thinks you’re a blowtorch.”
“Well.” She flicks the stove on and lifts a brow. “Maybe I am.”
“Don’t set my life on fire, Ember.”
“You already did that to mine.” She winces, then grimaces. “Too soon?”
“Always,” I say, and the worst part is that I’m almost smiling.
The kettle trills. She pours. Hands me a mug without asking how I take it. Her fingers brush mine and it’s nothing—just warmth and ceramic and human skin on a cold night—and it’s everything. The tiny crackle of static jumps from her to me and I feel it, low and off-limits.
“Sit,” she says, nodding to the two-chair table. “Drink your tea. Try not to brood. I hear it causes wrinkles.”
I drag a chair back and brace my thighs around wood that wasn’t built for men my size. Ember tucks one foot under herself and sits across from me, sweater sliding off one shoulder, collarbone a line I don’t have the right to follow with my eyes. I look anyway.
“I hate that you know,” I tell her, because truth sits better than silence.
“That you loved someone?” she asks. “Or that she’s gone?”
“That you know where the floor gives out.”
Ember holds my stare. “Then we won’t step there.”
“You don’t get to decide the weak points.”
“Maybe not. But I can listen when the boards start to creak.” Her mouth curves, self-aware and infuriatingly tender. “And I can bring extra nails.”
“You’re not fixing me with craft supplies.”
“Wrong,” she says. “I’m going to fix you with inappropriate jokes and carbs.”
I snort. “Terrible plan.”
“Wonderful plan. It’s got sugar.”
I sip tea because my mouth needs something to do besides find hers. She watches like she’s drawing me—line, shade, smudge. I want to tell her to stop making me into something softer. I want to stop wanting the thing I stopped letting myself want.
“So the fiancé thing,” she says, and I nearly choke on honey.
“Quinn.”
“I’m serious.” She sets her mug down, palms flat on the table between us. “The investigator’s back Wednesday. The story in the Gazette… it helps me. It makes me look, you know—legitimate.”
“You are legitimate.”
“Tell that to my tax returns,” she deadpans.
When I don’t bite, she softens. “You know what I mean. My studio is gone. My invoices are ash. People remember headlines. ‘Artist loses everything’ is sad. ‘Artist engaged to local hero’…” She trails off, winces at herself.
“It’s gross. I know it. But it’s helping.
I didn’t start it, but I’m not exactly stomping it out. ”
“I know.” I drag a thumb around the rim of my mug. “We’re in it now.”