Chapter 5
The hike down from the tower takes two hours.
The trail is still there, barely, a thin line of dirt winding through the blackened trees.
Everything smells like char and wet ash.
The forest is a skeleton of itself… trunks stripped bare, branches reduced to brittle fingers reaching for a sky that’s still hazy with smoke.
My boots crunch on the scorched earth with every step, and the sound echoes in the silence like a heartbeat.
Felix is quiet.
He’s been quiet since we left the tower.
Since last night. Since my hand wrapped around him in the dark and he came apart against my shoulder.
He walks ahead of me, his pack slung over one shoulder, his yellow Nomex shirt dark with sweat and soot.
His shoulders are tight, his jaw set, and he hasn’t looked at me once since we started down.
I know what he’s thinking. I can see it in the way he holds himself, the guardedness, the distance. He’s afraid this was just the adrenaline. Just the fire. Just two bodies pressed together in the dark because the world was ending outside and we needed something to hold onto.
He’s wrong.
The trailhead comes into view through the haze. A Forest Service truck is parked at the edge of the clearing, its windshield coated in ash. Beyond it, the road winds down toward the valley, toward the camp, toward the real world that’s been waiting for us since the blowup.
Felix stops at the edge of the treeline. His hand rests on the trunk of a charred ponderosa, his fingers tracing the blackened bark like he’s reading something I can’t see.
“We made it,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“That’s all you’ve got? Yeah?”
He doesn’t answer. His jaw tightens, and he turns away, and something in my chest snaps.
I grab his arm and push him against the tree.
His back hits the charred bark with a thud, and his eyes go wide, and before he can say anything, before he can pull away or deflect or do any of the things he’s been doing all morning, I’m kissing him.
It’s not gentle. It’s not careful. It’s hard and desperate, our teeth clacking together in the urgency of it, my hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt. I taste ash and sweat and the faint salt of his skin, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
“This isn’t because of the fire,” I say against his mouth. “This isn’t because I thought I was going to die.”
He stares at me. His chest is heaving, his lips parted, his eyes dark with something that looks almost like fear. Then his hands come up, gripping my face, pulling me back in.
He kisses like he fights fires, with everything he has, no hesitation, no holding back. His tongue finds mine, and the heat of it sends a jolt straight to my groin. I’m already hard, already aching, my cock pressing against my jeans in a way that’s impossible to ignore.
Felix notices. His hand slides down my stomach, his fingers tracing the waistband of my jeans, and then he’s unzipping me, reaching inside, wrapping his calloused palm around my shaft.
I gasp against his mouth. His grip is sure, practiced, the same slow deliberation I used on him in the tower. He strokes me from base to tip, his thumb swiping over the head where I’m already slick, already leaking. My hips buck into his hand without permission, chasing the friction.
“Like that?” he asks. “Do you like it when I grab it like this?”
“Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t. He works me in a steady rhythm, his fingers tight around my length, his other hand braced against the tree beside my head.
The bark is rough against my back, the wood still warm from the fire that passed through here, and the contrast of it, the heat of his hand, the scrape of the trunk, the cold ash drifting down around us, makes everything sharper, brighter.
I’m close already. I’ve been close since the tower, since last night, since the moment his hand covered mine on the binoculars and I felt the world tilt on its axis.
“Felix…”
“Let go.” His forehead presses to mine. “I want to see you come.”
I come with a groan that’s swallowed by the empty forest. I cum over his hand, and my body arches against the tree, my fingers digging into his shoulders. He strokes me through it, his grip gentling, his breath warm against my cheek.
The forest is silent. No wind. No radio. Just the sound of our breathing, ragged and uneven, and the distant thrum of a helicopter somewhere over the ridge.
I sag against the tree. Felix doesn’t pull away. He keeps his hand on me, his thumb tracing lazy circles on my hip, and rests his forehead against my shoulder.
“I thought you’d regret it,” he says. His voice is muffled against my shirt. “When the sun came up. I thought you’d pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I don’t regret anything.”
“Graham…”
“I really don’t.” I cup his face, tilting his chin up until he’s looking at me. His eyes are red-rimmed, and he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “This isn’t the fire. It’s not the adrenaline. It’s not the tower or the danger or any of the things you’re telling yourself.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s you.” I brush my thumb across his cheekbone. “Just you.”
He closes his eyes. His breath leaves him in a long, unsteady exhale, and when he opens them again, the guardedness is gone. The distance is gone. There’s only Felix, the man I’ve known for a decade, the man I’ve been running toward without knowing it, the man who’s been waiting for me to catch up.
He pulls a bandana from his back pocket and cleans us up in silence, his touch efficient but gentle. Then he zips my jeans, his knuckles brushing my stomach, and the casual intimacy of it makes my chest ache.
“We should get to the extraction point,” he says.
“In a minute.”
I pull him back against the tree and kiss him again. The desperation is gone. The fear is gone. There’s only the warmth of his mouth on mine, the solid weight of his body, the rough bark against my back.
The forest looks dead after a burn. Blackened trunks and ash-covered earth, the charred remains of everything that used to be here. But under the ash, the roots are still alive. Waiting for the rain. Waiting for the right moment to push through the soil and start again.
We’re still alive. After everything—the fire, the years apart, the words we never said—we’re still here.
Felix pulls back first. His lips are swollen, his eyes bright, and there’s something on his face I haven’t seen before. Something that looks like hope.
“We should go,” he says.
“Yeah, we should.”
I grab my pack and follow him down the trail. The helicopter is getting louder, and the extraction point is just beyond the next ridge, and the real world is waiting for us with all its complications and questions and things we haven’t figured out yet.
But I’m not afraid of it anymore. I spent all this time chasing danger with a camera between myself and the heat, and none of it ever felt like this.
Felix glances back at me over his shoulder.
“You coming?”
I adjust my pack and follow him down the mountain.