20. Layla #2
Brian buys things to hold over me later, while Reed offers freely and asks for nothing in return. The difference sits uncomfortably in my chest.
The clerk finishes bagging the canvases and carefully slides them into a paper sack with their company logo stamped in green ink.
Reed thanks her, and we both wave goodbye.
We exit through the glass doors, stepping back into the lively energy of Opal Springs.
He walks slightly ahead, bags shifting at his side as he leads us to his truck, parked beneath a tree whose leaves have begun to turn a rust-red gold.
He doesn’t rush me when I pause to look around, pulling out my camera again to film more of the scenery.
Once satisfied, we make it to his truck, and he opens the door for me, taking my purse and gesturing for me to get inside.
I finally settle into the passenger seat, and he waits until I’m comfortably in before closing my door completely.
He rounds the hood and slides in beside me, comfortably putting my purse and the paint supplies in the back seat.
The flannel across his shoulders shifts with his movement. He’s rolled up his sleeves, revealing more of the scarred skin on his forearms.
My gaze lingers a bit longer than it should.
He presses the button, and his truck rumbles to life beneath us. As we pull away from the curb, the town’s bright noise begins to fade again.
We turn onto a road lined with tall pines and glimpses of water through the trees. A lake unfolds into full view, reflecting the sky in broad strokes of blue and silver.
A few people sit along the shoreline with fishing poles stuck upright in the sand. Farther out, two kayakers glide in slow synchronization across the water.
He parks on a gravel patch near a cluster of wild grass.
The engine clicks softly as it cools in the open air. He then turns to me, and there is something incredibly steady in the way he looks at me.
“This is Sapphire Lake,” he says. “We can set up just down by the pier.”
He retrieves the supplies from the back while I grab the folded blanket he packed earlier. The grass brushes against my ankles with each step, as we walk closer to the water.
The breeze carries the clean scent of the lake and a faint, earthy undertone from the woods behind us.
He kneels to spread the blanket, smoothing his palms along the edges to keep it steady. He places the canvases gently and arranges the brushes within easy reach.
Lowering myself, I sit cross-legged as he sits beside me, our knees nearly touching. His flannel shifts, revealing more of the burn scars running up his arm.
I feel the question forming before I have time to soften it. My voice emerges barely above the natural hush of the lake.
“Reed… may I ask what happened?”
He pauses, his brush hanging midway over his palette, shoulders rising with a deep inhale before settling again.
Shit, I shouldn’t have asked.
It isn’t because I don’t want to know, but because the second the question left my mouth, something in his demeanor changed.
His shoulders stiffen as his gaze drifts past me, out over Sapphire Lake, avoiding eye contact for a brief moment.
For a moment, I think he’s going to brush it off, deflect the way he always does with pure silence.
He finally lets out a soft exhale, turning towards me, his tortured eyes meeting mine. A slight sheen of tears is dusted on his lash line, and seeing him break, shatters me completely.
“You may,” he says.
My stomach drops, nerves twisting tightly in my lower stomach as my heart rate accelerates with pure adrenaline. I can feel each beat pound against my chest.
“I never told you about before,” he adds, twirling the paintbrush between his fingers.
“Before?” I ask softly, already afraid of the answer.
He exhales through his nose, and the corner of his mouth lifts into something that isn’t a smile, and it fades just as fast.
“Before the bar,” he says. “Before all of this.”
I shake my head a little. “Reed, I don’t—”
“I was in the academy,” he cuts in gently, “to become a firefighter.”
Firefighter? I blink at him, searching his face for more. “Really?”
He nods once. “Yeah.”
My gaze trails over the scars forming on his left side, starting at the peak of his cheekbone, trailing down beneath the collar of his flannel.
I don’t know the extent of his burns, but I’ve also seen the scars snaking their way down his arms, now that he’s shown me more.
“I didn’t graduate,” he says before I can speak, his voice firm but brittle around the edges. “I was still in it, working my way to earn the badge.”
Oh my God.
“Oh,” I whisper, because that’s all I have.
“I was months in,” he continues, his fingers curling tighter around the paintbrush, knuckles whitening. “Early mornings. Long nights. Running drills until my lungs felt like they were on fire. Studying until I couldn’t see straight.”
I can see it, and it makes my heart swell. Younger. Determined. Hopeful. Standing at the starting line of a life he truly wanted.
“I wanted it so bad,” he says, quieter now.
My chest aches with a dull pain as I press my lips together, afraid that if I speak, I’ll cry, and somehow that feels wrong. This isn’t about my tears.
“I thought I was right there,” he murmurs. “Right at the beginning.”
My heart cracks open.
“I never got the badge,” he goes on. His jaw tightens, as if the words hurt to say. “Never got to call myself one. Never got the chance to find out if I was any good.”
He finally looks at me then, and the grief in his eyes steals the air from my lungs.
“It ended before it really began.”
I swallow hard, my eyes stinging. “Reed…”
He shakes his head slightly. “I don’t really talk about it,” he says.
The lake is impossibly still as the paint sits untouched between us.
Everything feels suspended in that space between what was and what never got to be.
He drags in a breath, his shoulders rising and falling as he steadies himself.
His gaze drifts back to the water, his voice lowering. “It was supposed to be routine,” he says. “A containment drill. We’d done versions of it a dozen times.”
The breeze shifts the surface into broken ripples, and he watches the movement, dragging his hand over his jaw.
“Then we heard this hiss.” His eyes flick back toward the lake, and I notice the way he tightens his fingers around his knee, gripping the fabric as he relives this horrible memory.
I sit there patiently, watching him take deep breaths before he continues.
“We hit the floor hard, as the fire quickly grew. We couldn’t see a damn thing through the black smoke.” He pauses, swallowing thickly. “Both our SCBAs were blaring, alerting us we were low on oxygen.”
His dog tags clink against each other as he reaches up, enclosing his fist around them.
“Beau, my best friend, tank’s went dead first. I tried to give him mine, ripped my mask off, even though the heat was already scalding my skin.” His voice roughens, guilt rubbing with every syllable. “He pushed it back. Told me to go.”
He looks down at his scarred hand, and suddenly he seems impossibly breakable.
“I grabbed him, I wasn’t about to leave him there.” His next breath shakes. “But the ceiling collapsed, knocked me back, and when I looked up…”
He closes his eyes, blowing a shaky breath past his lips.
“All I could see was his helmet, burning, then the smoke engulfed the last piece of him I had.”
He reaches for his dog tags around his neck, again, twirling the metal chain. “His mother gave me these at his funeral; he served before he joined the academy. She said that he would have wanted me to have them.”
I finally set my brush down carefully. My hand moves toward him before I’ve entirely made the decision, and when my fingertips touch the scarred skin on his left forearm, his entire body becomes still.
The texture surprises me.
“Does it still hurt?” I ask quietly.
He doesn’t pull away, and that alone feels monumental.
“Some days,” he admits. “Some nights more than days.”
His pulse beats strongly beneath his damaged skin. I follow the line upward as my fingers graze just at the edge where the scar disappears beneath his flannel. He watches my hand move, but he doesn’t stop me.
“Sometimes,” he continues, voice slightly strained, “it feels like the fire never really went out. Not in here.” He taps his chest lightly with two fingers. “The guilt burns longer than the heat ever did.”
My thumb gently traces the edges of raised skin, a movement not to soothe pain, but to show I’m unafraid of it.
“You shouldn’t have been alone with that,” I say.
His breathing shifts, growing deeper as if he’s fighting an emotion he’s not ready for anyone to see. He leans his body closer without touching me, the space between us shrinking into something delicate.
“You’re the first person besides my brothers I’ve ever told the full story,” he confesses.
I meet his gaze, and there’s no longer any distance between us.
“Thank you for trusting me,” I whisper.
The wind shifts again, carrying the faint sound of laughter from the dock across the lake.
His eyes soften, and the tension eases just enough for me to see the man underneath the armor he wears. His hand lifts slightly, as if he’s considering reaching for me, then stops, opting to readjust his glasses instead.
We both eventually return to our canvases, but painting feels different now.
His story merges with the colors we spread across the canvas.
Nothing about him seems diminished for having said it aloud. If anything, he’s never appeared stronger.
And I suddenly feel terrified by how fast I’m falling for him.