Chapter 2 Zain
Zain
Kaia fits into my arms too damn well.
That is the first thought that cuts through the smoke, the heat, and the sirens growing louder as they close the distance from Main Street.
Her face is pressed into the front of my turnout coat, one hand twisted into the heavy fabric as if she is afraid I might disappear before I get her clear. I feel every cough that moves through her, every tremor, every uneven breath.
I tighten my hold and keep moving.
The porch is behind us. The yard opens ahead, lit by the glow pouring from the windows of her house. The fire has spread faster than I expected, feeding somewhere inside the walls, and the sight of it makes something violent tear through my chest.
I should be looking at the structure, reading the smoke, tracking where the fire is moving.
Instead, all I can think about is the woman in my arms.
Kaia Evans is too young for me, too bright for me, and too damn easy to want.
I knew that the first day I saw her.
She had been standing beside a car packed so full I could see boxes pressed against every window, with a tiny trailer hitched behind it and a streak of blue paint across one cheek.
Her hair was pulled into some kind of loose knot that had already given up, chocolate-brown strands falling around her face while she argued with a box that refused to come out of the trunk.
Curvy little thing, soft everywhere a man like me had no business looking.
Hazel eyes. Full mouth. Full hips beneath a pale dress.
Then she laughed at something Joyce said from the porch.
That laugh hit me harder than it should have. Warm and unrestrained, the kind of sound that filled space without asking permission.
My heart gave one hard, unfamiliar twitch.
I hated it immediately.
Men like me do not build their lives around women like Kaia.
We watch from a distance, make sure their porch steps are safe, notice when their windows are left open before bad weather rolls in, and pay attention when their kitchen light flickers three nights in a row while telling ourselves the concern is professional.
Wanting is where the trouble starts because wanting is how people get inside, and once they are there, they can be taken from you.
I learned that before I was old enough to put words to it.
Foster homes taught me the first version.
Families could call you son for six months, then pack your clothes into a garbage bag when the placement changed.
Adults could promise permanence while filling out paperwork that said otherwise.
Belonging was temporary, affection conditional, and every room came with the understanding that one day you would be told to leave it.
The military gave me something cleaner. There were orders, structure, and men who did what they said they would do.
For a while, I thought I had beaten the part of me that expected everything good to disappear.
Then came the rescue that ended all of that. Fire, a collapsing structure, men under my command trusting me to get them out.
I survived, and some of them did not.
The scars across my shoulder and back healed better than the rest.
After that, I stopped pretending I was built for anything beyond the next emergency. I came back to Whispering Pines because saving people made sense. Fire behaved according to rules. Heat moved. Smoke told you things. Buildings failed in patterns.
People were harder because they left, they died, and they trusted you to bring them home when sometimes you failed.
Kaia shifts in my arms and coughs against my chest.
My grip tightens before I can stop it.
I will not fail with her.
The thought comes from somewhere deep enough to scare me.
Her hand stays twisted in my coat, and the words she whispered upstairs are still lodged somewhere beneath my ribs.
You came for me.
They hit harder now than they did the first time.
Because I remember exactly how I got there.
An hour earlier, after leaving her house and crossing back to my own, I had opened a beer and sat down without bothering to change out of my department pants.
The bottle stayed untouched on the table while I stared at nothing and thought about a white bra hanging from a lampshade, a covered canvas she had guarded like classified information, and the way her voice changed every time she called me Chief.
I was still sitting there when the smell reached me.
At first, I thought the smoke had followed me home from shift, trapped in my shirt or hair. Then light flickered against my wall from the wrong direction.
I looked outside.
Smoke was rolling from Kaia’s house.
Everything in me locked, and I was moving before the thought finished.
The command truck sat in my driveway with my gear in the rear compartment. As I dragged it open, my radio cracked with Tessa’s voice, followed by Kaia’s address and the report that the caller was trapped upstairs.
The words trapped upstairs nearly stopped my heart, but training took over before panic could.
My hands kept moving. My boots went on, my coat came over my shoulders, and I secured my helmet and tightened the SCBA harness by muscle memory.
Every movement was fast.
Every second still felt too slow.
By the time I forced my way through the front door, smoke had swallowed most of the lower level. I kept low and moved toward the stairs, following the structure of the house as it revealed itself through heat, walls, and brief breaks in the smoke.
Visibility was almost gone. Smoke rolled thick across the room, and heat pressed through my gear as I pushed forward. My shoulder slammed into the easel near the wall hard enough to send it pitching sideways, and the paint-splattered cloth covering the canvas caught on my coat and ripped free.
My own face stared back at me.
Unfinished, painted with enough detail that it felt like being watched by someone who knew too much.
Me.
Kaia had painted me.
The realization struck somewhere beneath my ribs, hard and impossible.
Then I saw the small black sketchbook on the floor beside the easel, knocked loose when I hit it. The edge had already started to curl from heat.
I grabbed it.
I should not have. There was no reason to take anything from a burning structure except a person.
But I shoved it into one of my coat pockets anyway.
Then I reached the stairs, and the painting stopped mattering. From that point on, every thought narrowed to one thing: finding Kaia, getting her out, keeping her alive.
Her fingers tighten in the fabric.
The memory breaks.
I am back in the yard with smoke in the air, fire behind us, and Kaia still in my arms.
She is looking at me, a small, embarrassed crease forming between her brows.
“Of course you came,” she whispers. “I mean, you’re a firefighter. It’s part of your job.”
My jaw locks.
My job.
I look down at her soot-streaked face and nearly lose what little control I have left because she is wrong.
I would have gone into that house for anyone.
But I would not have felt like this for anyone.
I would not have seen smoke and had every old failure tear open at once. I would not have run across a yard with my pulse hammering hard enough to make me sick. I would not have carried another person out with the insane urge to keep carrying them until nothing in this world could touch them again.
Kaia looks up at me with watering hazel eyes.
I want to kiss her.
The thought is immediate and brutal. I want my mouth on hers so badly I can almost feel it.
The place is wrong. The timing is worse. She is too young, too sweet, and too damn dangerous to every rule I have lived by for years.
Mine, some dark part of me says.
I crush the thought before it can take root.
Kaia’s gaze moves past me toward the house, and her body goes rigid.
“Ivy.”
I stop. “Who?”
“Ivy.”
My attention snaps to her face. “Is someone else in the house?”
“What? No.”
“Kaia.”
“My fern.”
I stare at her.
She coughs, then gives me a look that would be almost offended if she were not shaking in my arms.
“Ivy is my fern.”
For one second, I have no response.
Then I look toward the house. The lower windows glow orange now, and smoke pushes hard from the upper floor.
My chest tightens.
“Nothing in there is surviving this.”
Her face crumples a little.
Damn it.
I would rather take another burn than watch that expression settle on her.
Then I remember the weight in my coat pocket.
“I got something.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
I shift her carefully, keeping one arm under her while I pull the black sketchbook from the pocket.
The cover is warm, and one corner is singed.
Kaia goes completely still.
Even her coughing stops.
Her eyes widen. “You…”
I hold it out.
Her fingers close around the book, and she looks at me before dropping her gaze back to it.
Something like horror flashes across her face.
I file that away.
Before I can ask, the first engine tears onto the street.
Red lights sweep across the trees and houses. Air brakes hiss. Doors fly open.
The world snaps back into order.
My order.
I lower Kaia carefully onto the grass, making sure she is steady before I let go. Every instinct in me rejects the distance immediately.
I ignore it.
Jordan Crush is first off the engine, six foot four and already moving before the door finishes swinging open. Calm when it counts and stubborn enough to keep going long after smarter men would quit, he is exactly who I want on a bad scene.
“Chief.”
“Heavy smoke through the first floor with extension upstairs. One known occupant, now out. No one else reported inside.”
Jordan’s eyes flick to Kaia, then back to me.
“Got it.”
“Jordan, you’re with Jesse on interior. Confirm the first floor is clear, then push upstairs if conditions hold. Check for extension toward the rear as you move.”
Jesse Harrington is already gearing up beside him. The man smiles through most of life, but never when lives are on the line.
“On it.”
“Lance.”
Lance Renner needs one look at the house before his expression hardens. I trust his instincts around fire, especially when a structure starts looking unstable.
“Backup line. Watch the left wall. I don’t trust it.”
His gaze tracks the structure.
“Neither do I.”
“Then treat it like it’s already failing.”
He nods and moves.
The three of them go to work with no wasted motion and no questions I do not need.
Another engine pulls in behind them, and Gabriel Hall is off it almost immediately. He crosses the yard already reading the structure, his attention moving from the upper-floor smoke to the crew advancing on the house.
“Status?”
I give it to him fast. “One occupant out. Jordan and Jesse are interior. Lance has backup. Possible extension upstairs and toward the rear. Left wall is questionable.”
Gabriel studies the house once, then looks at me.
“I’ve got command.”
I hold his gaze for a second.
He gives one short nod. “Go.”
That is all I need.
More emergency vehicles are filling the street by the time I strip off my helmet, air tank, and turnout coat and leave the gear near the command truck.
Then I turn back to Kaia.
She is sitting on the grass with the sketchbook held against her chest. One of the paramedics has already checked her over and cleared her to leave, after repeating twice that the coughing means she needs watching and any change in her breathing means she goes straight in.
She looks too pale, too shaken, and too close to that burning house.
I walk to her.
She looks up. “I’m okay.”
I do not answer because she is not.
Her stuff is inside. Her paintings. Her plants. Her clothes. Whatever pieces of her life she brought here when she decided to start over.
Gone.
And she is sitting barefoot in the grass trying to convince me she is fine.
“Zain?”
I bend and slide one arm behind her back, the other beneath her knees.
Her eyes widen. “What are you doing?”
I lift her.
She makes a soft sound and grabs my shoulders.
“You should be with your crew.”
“They know their jobs.”
“I can walk.”
“No.”
Her mouth opens.
I look down at her. “Do not argue with me right now, Kaia.”
Her eyes narrow slightly.
Good. Angry is better than scared.
“Where are you taking me?”
I carry her away from the smoke, toward my cabin.
“Your place is gone for tonight.”
Her grip tightens around my neck.
“I can call Joyce.”
“No.”
“I can stay at a hotel.”
“No.”
“Zain.”
I stop and look at her.
She is exhausted, smoke-streaked, stubborn, and holding that damn sketchbook like it contains state secrets.
My decision settles with a certainty I have not felt in years. She has nowhere to sleep tonight, she is still shaking despite trying to hide it, and the thought of handing her over to a hotel room or sending her across town sits wrong in a way I have no intention of examining.
I know where she will be safe. I know where I can make sure she breathes through the night, where I can hear if she coughs, and where I can see for myself that she is still there.
The need behind that thought is something I refuse to examine.
“You’re staying with me.”