Chapter 26
JOSH
The fire passes over us like a living nightmare, a beast with hot breath and claws made of flame.
I stay frozen beneath my shelter, counting seconds that stretch into eternities, until the roar fades and the ground stops shaking.
I wait until the hellish heat diminishes from unbearable to scorching.
With trembling fingers, I peel back the edge of my cocoon and squint into a transformed world, the surrounding landscape blackened and smoking.
It’s night already, and the flames nothing more than a distant glow on the horizon. A supertanker flies over us and drops its water cargo, snuffing out most of the nearby spot fires.
“Martinez here,” comes a hoarse response to my left.
“Diaz. I’m good,” follows from somewhere behind me.
“Brett. Still alive, somehow,” the last voice confirms.
Relief washes through me, stronger than the pain radiating from my smoke-filled lungs. We made it. All of us. I stagger to my feet, my legs wobbling beneath me like a newborn colt’s. My turnout gear is scorched and blackened, but it did its job—I’m battered but still standing.
The ravine we sheltered in is unrecognizable, a charred valley with ghostly skeletons of brush still smoldering at the edges.
The fire has moved on, leaving destruction in its wake.
Other firefighters emerge from their shelters like reluctant butterflies from apocalyptic cocoons, their faces streaked with soot and sweat.
“Lieutenant.” Martinez approaches, coughing. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod, though “okay” is relative when you’ve just had a staring contest with death. “Everyone else?”
“Some severe burns, but everyone’s walking.” He gestures to the ridge. “Radio’s working again. Command says we’re to fall back to the secondary staging area.”
We gather what’s left of our equipment. Tools abandoned in our mad dash have been reduced to metal parts with the handles burned away. My squad looks like extras from a war movie, exhausted and shell-shocked, but alive. That’s what matters.
The hike back is a blur of pain and determination. It’s as if my boots are filled with concrete, each step a battle against my body’s desperate plea to lie down and stop. But we keep moving because that’s what firefighters do; we push through when everything in us wants to quit.
The secondary staging area is another war zone crammed with ambulances, command vehicles, and tired firefighters sitting on the ground guzzling water and getting medical attention.
EMTs swarm us as soon as we arrive, checking vitals, slapping oxygen masks over our faces, applying burn cream to exposed skin.
“Lieutenant Collins.” The incident commander approaches as a paramedic shines a penlight in my eyes. “Your squad did good work today.”
I remove my oxygen mask. “Thank you, sir. Any word on containment?”
“Wind’s dying down. We’ve got air support now, and the eastern flank is holding. You’re off duty. Your crew needs medical evaluation and rest.”
I want to argue that there’s still work to be done, but one look at my squad’s faces tells me he’s right. We’re spent. Diaz is getting a nasty burn on his wrist treated, and Brett looks ready to collapse where he stands.
“Yes, sir.” I nod, wincing as the movement sends a stab of pain through my neck. “Any casualties?”
His face darkens. “Three confirmed. Civilians who refused evacuation.” He pauses. “We got to them too late. But it could have been a lot worse if those structures hadn’t been prepped. Good job on Descanso.”
The knowledge that homes were saved offers little comfort when weighed against the lives lost. But that’s the brutal math of this job; you tally what you saved against what you couldn’t, and hope the former outweighs the latter.
The next few hours pass in a daze of medical checks: we’re fine, but they keep monitoring us for smoke inhalation. By the time we pile back into our truck to drive home, it’s dawn already.
The rocking motion nearly lulls me to sleep, but every time my eyes close, flames dance behind my eyelids.
My mind won’t shut off, replaying moments from the fire in vivid, terrible detail.
The wall of flame rushing toward us, the panicked dash for shelter, the certainty that I might never see Lily or Penny again.
Lily. Her name alone sends a jolt through me. I didn’t call her. Didn’t text. She must’ve heard about the fires on the news by now.
I fumble for my phone, then remember it’s dead, the battery drained hours ago. Doesn’t matter. What would I even say? “Hey, just survived being nearly burned alive. How’s your day going?” No, better to tell her in person.
Since my housing complex is on the way to the station, Martinez drops me off straight from the truck.
I’ll go get my pickup tomorrow. I drag myself out of the cabin with a mumbled thanks.
Every muscle protests as I shoulder my duffel bag and shuffle across the parking lot.
My uniform reeks of smoke and sweat, the fabric stiff with dried perspiration and ash.
I look like I crawled out of hell. I certainly feel like it.
But I’m home, I’m safe, if not in grave need of a shower.
I drag my beaten body through the complex entrance, lungs still feeling like someone scrubbed them with steel wool.
The early morning air hits my face—cool, clean, lacking the superheated oxygen I’ve been breathing for the past twenty-four hours.
It hurts to inhale, but I do it anyway, savoring the burn that reminds me I survived.
I’m one walking bruise, singed at the edges, but I’m alive.
The courtyard is quiet in the light of dawn. I lift my gaze to Lily’s balcony, a habit I’ve developed over the past four months, a reflex as natural as breathing. I don’t expect to see her at this hour, but I look anyway—and freeze.
She’s standing at her railing like she’s been there for hours, waiting. Watching. Her knuckles white where they grip the metal.
Her hair is a mess. Her expression a mask of anguish I can make out even from a distance. Did she spend the night on the balcony? Or is she up early?
When our eyes meet, her face crumples with emotion, and, gosh, that look, it wipes away everything else.
The sting in my lungs, the sweat crusted on my back, the heat of the fire I left behind.
All that exists is Lily, wild-eyed on that balcony, and the hope that maybe she needs me as much as I need her.
She straightens up, hands dropping from the railing, as she kicks off at a run, sprinting down the exterior staircase and bursting across the courtyard toward me.
She flings herself at me with such force I stagger back a step, my duffel bag hitting the ground with a thud.
Her arms lock around my neck, her face buried against my filthy uniform.
I barely have time to catch her, but when I do, her grip tightens, desperate, as if she’s checking that I’m real, that I didn’t vanish in the smoke.
I wrap my arms around her on instinct, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other splayed across her spine. Her body pressed against mine brings me back from the edge, wipes the fatigue away.
But something is wrong. Lily is trembling against me, her whole body shaking, even if the temperature is mild.
I pull her closer, breathing in the scent of her hair.
It’s the smell of the weekends, different from work days when the antiseptic is mixed in with the flowers.
When did I get to know her so well? I haven’t been in California that long, and yet it feels like forever.
“It’s okay,” I murmur into her hair, not even sure she hears me as her shoulders shake with silent sobs. “I’m here. Everything’s fine.” My voice catches, roughened by smoke and emotion.
But Lily’s body goes rigid in my arms, and she pulls back.
Her face is blotchy and streaked with tears, but what startles me is the fury blazing in her eyes.
Before I can react, she slams the underside of her fist into my chest—no actual force behind it.
I barely feel the hit through the heavy fabric of my turnout coat, but the shock of it jolts through me.
“It is not okay!” The words tear out of her, raw and ragged, shuddering, torn straight from a deep visceral place inside her. “None of this is okay!”
She hits me again, an open-handed smack against my shoulder. Once more, the physical blow is nothing, but it’s the emotional one that knocks me out.
“Lily—” I try, but she cuts me off with another smack to my chest.
“You had no right,” she sobs, her voice breaking. “I told you I couldn’t do this again. I told you!”
Each new sentence is punctuated by another hit—none strong enough to hurt, but each enough to break me. I try to catch her wrists, to make her stop hurting herself on my gear, but she twists, swatting at my hand, wild and unpredictable.
The desperation in her eyes is all-consuming; she looks lost, split open. I want to take her anguish, to absorb her pain, but all I can do is stand and let her fall apart on me.
“Do you have any idea what it was like?” Her voice rises, cracking at the edges. “Getting those burn victims in the ER? Seeing firefighters rolled in on gurneys? Not knowing if the next one would be you?” She shoves at my chest again. “I couldn’t breathe! I couldn’t think!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Too fucking late. I asked you to leave me alone, but you kept showing up,” she accuses, tears streaming down her face.
“Always there, always kind, fixing things, always being so damn perfect.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and she pushes me back, eyes blazing.
“You made me fall in love with you without me even realizing it!”
My heart pinches—a sharp, beautiful pain. She loves me. I want to shout, to tell her I love her, too. That I always have, from the start. But the pain in her words keeps me silent. Her confession holds no joy, only agony.
“Why?” she demands, her voice rising to something between a yell and a plea. “Why did you make me care? Why?”
I can’t hold back anymore. “Because I couldn’t stay away.” The words come out half-broken, matching her own desperate tone. “Because I love you too, Lily. I’ve loved you since you stitched up my arm and wouldn’t tell me your first name.”
Her face crumples further, and for one wild moment, I think she might collapse against me again. Instead, she yells, “No!”
The sound tears through the silent courtyard, a scream that echoes behind my ribcage and shatters everything in its path.
“NO! You don’t get to say that. Not now.
Not when you smell like smoke and ash and—” She breaks off, a sob wrenching from the place in her heart where she’ll never let me in.
“—and him. You smell like he did. Every time. Every fucking time he came home from a fire.” She shoves me again, harder. “I can’t do this. I can’t take it.”
I open my mouth to plead, to promise… I wouldn’t know what… so I only say, “I know. I’m sorry.” The apology is inadequate. I reach for her, wanting to comfort her, to shelter her, to—
Lily recoils. “I want you out of my life,” she chokes out, stumbling back another step. “Move somewhere else. Find some other place to live. I never want to see you again.” She’s crying so hard now she can barely get the words out. “Stay away from me. I can’t function with you around.”
My heart seizes as if it’s being crushed by a vice. Before I can respond, she turns and runs past me, past the pool, out of the housing complex, disappearing into the fading darkness.
I stand with my empty arms at my sides, feeling like I’ve been gutted. Should I go after her? She ran out in her pajamas and flip-flops.
Every instinct in me tells me to go. But no.
I’ve already hurt her just by being who I am, by doing the job I love.
I’ve done enough damage. Chasing after her now would be for me, to know she’s safe.
But Lily doesn’t want me anywhere near her.
She’s made that clear. It’s time for me to listen.
She’s drawn the line. I should stop pretending I don’t see it.
Loving her means backing off when she asks me to. Especially since I don’t have a solution to offer.
I pick up my duffel bag and make myself turn away, trudging toward my apartment with legs that weigh a thousand pounds each.
Inside, I strip off my turnout coat, hanging it on the hook by the door.
I stare at it, the heavy fabric still reeking of smoke, the shoulder streaked with Lily’s tears.
I’ve wanted to be a firefighter since I was a kid playing with toy trucks.
It’s my dream job, and after years of hard work, I’m in the position I’ve always dreamed of: squad lieutenant in LA County.
But at what price?
I peel off the rest of my filthy uniform, leaving it in a heap on the bathroom floor. The hot shower stings the bruises on my arms and back, but I welcome the pain—it’s pure and honest, unlike the twisted mess of emotions churning inside me.
Clean and exhausted, I sit on the edge of my bed, staring into the void. Lily’s words echo in my head on an endless loop: “You made me fall in love with you without me even realizing it.”
She loves me. But she can’t bear to be near me. Can’t bear to love someone who might leave her alone again.
I close my eyes, but all I see is the fire rushing toward me, the silver shelter that saved my life, and Lily’s face contorted in grief and rage.
I’ve spent years training to handle worst-case scenarios: flash floods, backdrafts, earthquakes. But nothing prepared me for surviving when the person I love can’t stand loving me back.
Maybe the real danger was never the fire.
Maybe it was thinking I could have both—this job and her—and pretend one wouldn’t burn the other to the ground.