29. Ember
Ember
“What was made with care still spoils without attention.”
— Dairy Log
The heat in the kitchen is sticky and heavy, the kind of humidity that makes my clothes velcro to my skin the second I stop moving. I have the ancient box fan sitting on the floor, whirring on its highest setting, but all it’s doing is pushing the warm, milky air around the room in circles.
I’m so hot I feel like I’m melting from the inside out.
My brain is completely fried.
I’ve tried to wash the cheesecloth twice, and both times I forgot I’d already rinsed them and just stood there staring at the soapy water like a total idiot.
I need someone to talk to before I start arguing with the goats just to hear a voice that isn’t the echo of my neighbor currently taking up every spare inch of my head.
I grab my phone and dial Amy.
She picks up on the third ring.
“Hey, stranger,” she says. “Are you alive? Did the livestock stage a coup?”
“Amy,” I say, leaning my lower back against the sink. “Listen to me. I know we’re not like… super duper best friends forever who share a diary, but you are the only person within a fifty-mile radius who won’t tell everyone what I’m about to say.”
The line goes dead silent for a second. “Okay, you sound insane. What happened? Did you set the barn on fire?”
“No,” I hiss, dropping my voice even though the house is completely empty. “But the Brooks situation has… progressed. Like, significantly progressed. And you have to swear on your students that this stays between us. No one can know. Not the post office people, not Marge, nobody.”
A loud clatter comes through the speaker, like she just dropped a tray of silver beads. “Wait, what? The hot, grumpy fire chief Brooks? I thought it was just a fun thing we made up.”
“Yes, him,” I say, my face instantly burning hotter than the room.
“We… it happened. Well, it started earlier but then this morning he was over here testing the batch of goat cheese, and Amy, he boxed me against the counter and told me I tasted better than the cheese and then his fire radio went off because some birch trees fell on Route Nine.”
Amy lets out a sound that is half-shriek, half-cough. “Oh my god. Emmy. You broke him for real?”
“I didn’t break him! He broke me! He’s like…
a tactical sniper with his words, Amy. He just stares with those gray eyes and says these low, horrible, perfect things that make my knees turn into literal dishwater.
And then he just walks away to move logs!
He told me he’d come by after work, and I’m sweating so bad just waiting for the truck to pull into the lane. ”
“Wow,” Amy says, and I can hear the massive grin in her voice. “Your mother’s romance novels have nothing on this. But Emmy, seriously—be careful. Make sure this is something you both want. I’m all for a hot night—that you describe to me in great detail—but I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’m being careful,” I mutter. “It’s just… it’s a lot. He’s a lot.”
“Keep me posted,” she says, her voice softening into something genuinely sweet. “And put some ice on your face, city girl. You sound like you’re about to combust.”
We hang up, and the silence settles back into the kitchen, thicker than before.
? ? ?
By seven o’clock, the sun is finally dropping behind the western ridge, turning the sky a dusty, bruised apricot color. The humidity hasn’t let up, but the air has taken on that cool, sharp edge that comes from the mountain trees.
I’m standing by the screen door when the heavy, familiar rattle of his department truck cuts through the cricket song.
My heart does that stupid, violent flip against my ribs.
I watch through the mesh as the truck pulls into his driveway next door. But he doesn’t get out alone. The passenger side door swings open, and a little streak of pink denim and blonde pigtails flies out, tumbling into the grass.
Brooks gets out slowly.
Even from this distance, I can see the exhaustion in his shoulders.
He catches Sophie before she trips on the top step, his hand cupping the back of her head with that fierce, protective gentleness that always makes something ache in my chest.
He doesn’t look toward my house. Not once. He just follows her inside, and the screen door clicks shut behind them.
I wait.
An hour passes. Then two.
The twilight deepens into a solid navy, and the lights in his kitchen click on, throwing long squares of yellow across his grass.
My phone sits on the counter, dark and completely silent.
My fingers are twitching. The playful, confident energy from this morning is starting to sour into a restless, slightly defensive irritation.
He said five. It’s nearly nine.
I grab the phone and pull up our text thread.
Emmy: I saved some cheese. It’s lonely over here. And I’m pretty sure the goats are plotting against me without you around to look intimidating.
I hit send. I watch the screen.
Five minutes. Ten minutes.
The little bubbles don’t appear.
Nothing.
A tiny spark of heat—not from the weather this time, but from pure, stubborn pride—ignites in my stomach.
I don’t do well with silence. If he’s tired, he can just tell me he’s tired. He doesn’t get to leave me unraveled in my kitchen and then ghost me across a gravel driveway.
I grab the small wooden cutting board with the block of cheese, stomp out onto the porch, and march across the damp grass.
The dew is cold against my bare ankles, but I barely feel it.
I’m on a mission. I’m going to make him taste this batch if it’s the last thing I do, and then I’m going to tell him he’s a terrible communicator.
But as my boots hit his porch steps, the anger loses its sharpest edge.
Through the low living room window, I can see the outline of Sophie’s small sneakers on the sofa. She’s asleep, her head propped against a pile of laundry Brooks probably hasn’t had time to fold.
Any desire I had to make a dramatic, theatrical entrance evaporates instantly.
I am bold and chaotic, but I am not going to bring a loud argument to a house where a little girl is resting. Sophie adores her dad, and I adore Sophie.
I knock gently, tapping out a playful, rhythmic little pattern against the solid oak door. A shadow moves across the hallway glass. The lock turns and the door swings open.
Brooks is standing there in a plain gray t-shirt and dark trousers. His hair is damp, like he just threw cold water on his face, but it hasn’t done anything to clear the deep, dark circles under his eyes.
He looks hollowed out. Bleak.
“Emmy,” he says. His voice is incredibly quiet, but it doesn’t have that warm, gravelly weight from this morning. It sounds thin. Distant.
“Hey,” I say, holding up the board like a peace offering. “You didn’t text me back. I’ve been sitting in my kitchen for three hours waiting. You told me… you said when you got back…”
“I’m busy, Ember.”
The smile on my face falters.
The contrast between the man who bit my neck this morning and the man standing here right now is so sharp it makes my head spin.
I force myself to keep a light expression, but my voice feels a little tighter now, a little less steady. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Brooks lets out a long, slow breath through his nose, his chest expanding against the fabric of his t-shirt. He looks past me, staring at the line of trees separating our properties, as if he can’t bear to look at my face.
“It means this was a mistake,” he says quietly. “I’m exhausted, I’m running on no sleep, and I let things get out of hand.”
I take a step forward, forcing him to either back up into his hallway or stand inches from me. He doesn’t move.
“Out of hand? This morning, you were… you looked at me and you told me exactly what you wanted. You didn’t seem confused at all.”
For a second, I honestly wonder if I’ve imagined the last few weeks. Maybe I’ve assigned meaning where there wasn’t any. Maybe I’ve been translating a language he was never actually speaking.
He lets out a sharp breath. “I was running on adrenaline. I was being reckless.”
“Reckless,” I repeat. “Is that what you call it?”
“It’s more than that,” he says, his jaw tight.
“I was at a fire this afternoon. We were pinned down in the brush, the heat was spiking, and Davis was screaming for a line report. I had the radio in my hand, and for a second—a full, terrifying second—I couldn’t hear him.
All I could think about was the way your kitchen felt this morning.
I was standing in the middle of a blaze, and I was picturing you.
I almost missed the transition call. I almost got us burned. ”
The silence in the room feels deafening.
He paces away, his voice dropping low. “Davis caught it. He didn’t say anything over the comms, but when we got back to the station, he cornered me by the engine.
Asked me if I’d left my head in a bakery window.
He made some joke about the city girl’s farmhouse. He asked if I was getting distracted.”
I actually flinch.
It’s small, involuntary, but his eyes catch it anyway.
I swallow hard, the humiliation burning hot and fast behind my eyes, but I push through it. I want to understand. I need to know where this wall came from.
“So what? Davis is a gossip. Everyone in the valley gossips. Since when do you care what the guys at the station say about your personal life?”
“It’s not about the gossip, Ember,” he snaps. “It can’t happen. I have to be sharp. I have to be safe. I can’t let myself get swept up in how much I want you when people’s lives depend on me keeping it together. I just can’t. That’s how people get hurt. That’s how Tommy died.”
He rubs a hand over his face, his jaw tight.