Chapter 7
The first light finds me at the edge of camp.
I didn’t sleep. Couldn’t. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the supply closet. The shelves. The way Felix’s voice fractured when I pushed inside him. The way he looked at me afterward, like I’d given him something he’d stopped letting himself want.
Now the sun is coming up, pale gold through the smoke-hazed sky, and the crew is packing the last of the gear into the trucks.
Felix is among them, his yellow Nomex traded for a clean shirt, his radio still clipped to his belt.
He moves through the chaos with the same efficiency he had during the blowup, but every few minutes, his eyes find mine across the camp.
My duffel is packed. My cameras are in their case. The Forest Service truck that brought me here is idling near the command trailer, waiting to take me back to Missoula, back to the airport, back to New York. The driver honks once, impatient.
I don’t move.
My phone is in my hand. My editor’s number is on the screen. I’ve been staring at it for five minutes.
Felix is at the treeline. His back is to the camp, his silhouette sharp against the glowing sky. The tension in his shoulders is back, not the coiled alertness from the tower, but something quieter. Something sad.
I cross the clearing.
He hears me coming. I can tell by the way his head tilts, the way his shoulders shift. But he doesn’t turn around until I’m close enough to touch.
“They’re almost ready,” he says. His voice is even, the radio voice, the one he uses when he’s trying not to feel something. “Your truck’s waiting.”
“I know.”
He turns. His eyes are dark, the lines around them deeper than they were two days ago. “You should go. You’ve got a deadline.”
“I know.”
I hold up my phone. The screen is still lit, my editor’s contact glowing in the morning dim. Felix looks at it. Looks at me.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?”
“Graham…”
“I’m not asking permission.” My thumb hovers over the call button. “I’m telling you what’s about to happen so you can’t talk me out of it later.”
I press call.
It rings twice. My editor picks up, his voice groggy, it’s early in New York, earlier than he’s used to. I don’t let him get past hello.
“I’m extending the assignment. Following the crew to the next fire.”
He starts to argue. Budgets, deadlines, the story I already filed. I let him talk. My eyes don’t leave Felix’s face.
“I’ll file from the field,” I say, cutting him off. “Weekly pieces. Fire behavior, crew profiles, the whole season. You want coverage, I’ll give you coverage. But I’m not coming back yet.”
More arguing. A grudging concession. I hang up.
The phone drops to my side. The camp is waking up behind us, engines rumbling, voices calling, the clatter of the last gear being loaded. Felix hasn’t moved. He’s staring at me like I just did something he didn’t think I was capable of.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he says.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to follow me into every fire.”
“I’m not following the fire.”
I step closer. Close enough to see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, the soot still caught in his eyelashes, the way his throat moves when he swallows. I cup his face with both hands, my thumbs brushing his cheekbones.
“I’m following you.”
His breath catches. His hand comes up, fingers wrapping around my wrist, not pulling me away, just holding on.
The contact is warm, solid, grounding. The same hand that covered mine on the binoculars.
The same hand that guided my fingers in the supply closet.
The same hand that held onto my shoulder when he came apart.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he says. “You’ve been here three days. You’ve been through a blowup and a night in a tower and…”
“And I’ve spent more time with you in those three days than I’ve spent with anyone in two years.” I press my forehead to his. “I know what I’m saying.”
He closes his eyes. His breath leaves him in a long, unsteady exhale.
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 chasing without knowing it, the man who’s been waiting for me to stop long enough to see him.
“You’re serious,” he says.
“I’m serious.”
“The next fire could be worse. Could be weeks. Could be…”
“I don’t care.” I pull back just enough to look at him. “I spent two years photographing danger from a safe distance. War zones, riots, wildfires. I thought that’s what I wanted. The adrenaline. The chase. But it wasn’t the danger I was chasing.”
“What was it?”
“You. I was chasing you. I just didn’t know it.”
He kisses me.
It’s a promise. A beginning. A door opening onto something neither of us has let ourselves imagine.
The camp is waking up behind us. Someone shouts Felix’s name. He pulls back, his lips swollen, his eyes bright.
“I have to go,” he says.
“I know.”
“But you’ll be there. At the next fire.”
“I’ll be there.”
He holds my gaze for another moment. Then he nods, once, and steps back. His hand lingers on my wrist for a heartbeat longer than necessary before he turns and walks toward the trucks.
I watch him go. The set of his shoulders, the way he moves through the chaos like he was born in it. The crew greets him with nods and handshakes, and he climbs into the cab of the lead truck without looking back.
But I know he knows I’m watching. I know he can feel it, the same way I’ve been feeling him for years.
The Forest Service truck honks. I grab my duffel and my camera case and climb into the passenger seat. The driver doesn’t ask questions. He just pulls out onto the fire road and follows the crew’s convoy down the mountain.
The forest is still burning in the distance. Columns of smoke rising into the pale gold sky. The next fire is already waiting, somewhere over the ridge, and Felix will be there. And so will I.
I lean my head against the window and close my eyes. The engine hums beneath me. The road unwinds ahead of us. And for the first time in two years, I’m not thinking about the next assignment. I’m not thinking about the next flight or the next horizon or the next thing I’m running toward.
I’m thinking about a supply closet. A jar of coconut oil. A voice in the dark telling me to go slow.
I’m thinking about Felix.