13. Reed
reed
. . .
Two days.
That’s how long until she’s back.
Even just thinking her name feels wrong. Like saying it out loud might summon something I can’t control.
She’s engaged.
I shouldn’t be counting down the hours. I shouldn’t be thinking about her smile, her laugh, or the way her eyes looked when she left Ruby Ridge.
But I am.
Because selfishness has a voice, and it’s been whispering louder every damn night.
Fuck it.
I run a hand down my face, feeling the rough ridges of scar tissue; uneven, raised, still warm sometimes when the fire burns too hot.
My home’s quiet, except for the crackle of the fireplace.
The firelight flickers on the photograph on the mantel—Mama and me, the summer I left for Los Angeles. Her arm is around my waist, her head tilted against my chest, both of us grinning.
She’d been so damn proud.
“Be brave, baby,” she’d said, pressing her palm to my cheek. “But be careful. You don’t gotta save the whole world to make me proud.”
I never got to tell her she was right.
She died two weeks after I left for the academy. Maverick was the one who called, his voice breaking on the words. Carter told me not to come home.
“It’s what she’d want, Reed. You stay. Finish what you started.”
So I did.
Because they were right, because that’s what she’d wanted, and maybe if I’d come home, none of it would’ve happened.
Maybe Beau would still be alive.
The tears come without asking.
They fall heavily against my palms as I sit in front of the fire, my shoulders hunched, the heat blurring my vision until the flames merge.
I try to swallow it down, but it’s no use; the ache in my chest opens wide, spilling everything I’ve been holding.
I close my eyes, and when I open them, the room around me isn’t my home anymore.
I’m taken back to the second-worst day of my life.
We were on day thirty-eight of training. It was a containment drill, and it wasn’t supposed to go wrong.
The instructors had constructed a mock structure to simulate a live-fire environment. The rules were simple: containment, rescue, suppression.
I could recite them in my sleep.
Beau and I had run this drill five times before. He was in front, his voice even through the comms. “We’re good, Hayes. Just another walk in the park.”
But that hiss, that fucking hiss, changed everything.
It came from the far corner of the room, a sound that didn’t belong.
I turned toward it, saw the gauge shaking, the line trembling where it fed into the gas system.
The pressure reading plummeted, and before I could give a warning—BOOM.
A flash of light and a roar like the sky tearing apart. Heat slammed into me so hard my helmet cracked the floor when I hit. I couldn’t hear anything but ringing, the kind that drills straight into your bones.
Beau’s voice came through the static. “We gotta move, brother! Now!”
Flames consumed the room in seconds, climbing the walls and curling over the ceiling.
The temperature soared—over eight hundred degrees. We found each other through the thick smoke, dropping to our bellies, crawling blindly through smoke so thick it turned day into night.
My tank alarm screamed, alerting me that my oxygen was low. So did his.
We had minutes, maybe less.
I looked back, saw his regulator sparking, the airflow dropping to nothing. “You’re out!” I shouted, pulling at my own line. “Take mine!”
Beau shook his head, his voice breaking. “No. You got air. You can make it.”
“Like hell I will!”
I ripped the mask off my own face, tearing at the straps, trying to shove it toward him. The heat punched into my skin, searing, eating through my turnout coat before I could blink.
The pain was instant, but I didn’t fucking care.
“Put it on!” I yelled. “Don’t argue, just take it!”
He shoved it back, eyes wild, the firelight flickering across his soot-streaked face. “Go, brother.”
“Beau—”
“Go!” he barked, his voice raw. “You hear me? Go!”
The ceiling gave way.
The sound of collapsing beams crashing overhead drowned out everything else.
I lunged at him anyway, bare arms scraping against melting metal, the skin on my side blistering before I even felt it. I grabbed his turnout sleeve.
For one brief second, I had him.
Something heavy fell between us, the heat so intense it peeled the air right out of my lungs. The blast sent me backward. My vision tunneled, the edges going dark, the smell of burning gear and flesh fusing into one.
I tried to crawl, but my arms wouldn’t move. The pain was overwhelming. The oxygen line hissed, empty.
The last thing I saw before everything went black was Beau’s helmet, glowing orange, disappearing into the flames.
Squeezing my eyes shut, letting the tears fall, the memory runs through me, relentlessly.
I remember waking up to the hospital lights being too bright. My body didn’t feel like mine. My left side was wrapped in gauze from the peak of my cheek to my waist, my arm bandaged to the elbow, the skin raw and new beneath. My throat was wrecked from the smoke.
They said I was lucky. That word still makes me sick.
My left arm always felt half-numb, the nerves too damaged to heal properly. I couldn’t even shave without my hand trembling.
Beau didn’t make it.
The academy called it a tragic malfunction.
I called it what it was, my fault.
When I was discharged, there was no turning back. My firefighting career ended before it truly began. My mama was gone. My best friend was buried.
And I was left with a face I didn’t recognize.
I came home to Tennessee with nothing but guilt that still hasn’t burned out.
My brothers helped me buy my liquor license, and I learned to bartend, turning an old feed store into my bar.
Boots it’s inside my lungs, my skin, that ghostly heat wrapping around me as if it’s happening again.
I press a trembling hand to my chest, trying to breathe, but the air refuses to come.
“Not again,” I whisper. “Please, not again.”
My vision blurs as I fumble for my phone on the table, knocking over the half-empty whiskey glass, amber spilling across the wood.
My thumb swipes until I hit Carter’s number.
Carter picks up on the first ring. “Reed?”
My voice cracks. “I can’t—” A sob punches out of me. “I can’t go to that dark place again. I need you, man. Please.”
“Stay where you are,” he says, already moving. I hear Maverick’s voice in the background—what’s wrong?—then tires on gravel, doors slamming.
It takes less than five minutes before I hear my brother’s truck rumble onto my driveway.
I’m still on the floor, my palms pressed to my ribs, as my breath comes in shallow pulls.
Carter’s the first through, his boots heavy against the boards. He drops to a knee beside me, his big hand gripping my shoulder.
“Hey, hey, look at me,” he says quietly, moving his hand from my shoulder, holding my face.
Maverick crouches on the opposite side, his eyes wide and his voice softer than I’ve ever heard. “Breathe, Reed. Slow it down. In through your nose.”
I take a shaky breath in, then another.
Carter’s hand remains still as he stays there, grounding me with the kind of patience that only someone who’s been through their own hell possesses.
The fire crackles softly, casting long shadows across the room, and the scent of spilled whiskey blends with the smoke.
Maverick leans back on his heels, exhaling. “You saw it again, didn’t you?”
I nod, releasing myself from Carter’s hold, wiping my face with the back of my wrist. “Every fucking second.”
Carter’s voice is low, careful. “You’re not there anymore, Reed. You hear me? You made it out.”
“I left him,” I rasp. “I took off my gear, he told me to go, and I did.”
Maverick shakes his head. “You didn’t leave him; you tried to save him. That’s what you do.”
I look between them, Carter’s jaw clenched, Maverick’s eyes bright with worry, and something in my chest finally breaks.
The tears come again, quickly.
Carter pulls me into a brotherly hug, holding me tight, and Maverick joins in.
For a long time, no one talks. The only sound is the soft crackle of the fire and the wind against the windows.
When the shaking finally stops, I pull back, clearing my throat. “Thanks for coming.”
Carter squeezes the back of my neck. “You call us every time before it gets that bad. You don’t do this alone again, you hear me?”
Maverick gives me that crooked grin that’s half-joke, half-love. “We’d kick your ass if you didn’t.”
A broken laugh slips out of me.
I glance between them, my brothers, and give them a small smile.
Two days.
Layla will be here in two days.
Sunshine in the shape of a woman.