Chapter 13 Abilene
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Abilene
Tuesday
Someone is trying to break down my door.
That’s what it feels like, anyway.
I jolt awake to a thunder of fists on wood, my heart slamming into my throat so hard I taste metal.
For a split second, I have no idea where I am, bedroom blurred in darkness, sheets tangled around my legs, mind still wrapped in some hazy dream of bees and smoke and a man’s hands on my waist.
Then the pounding comes again.
“Abilene! Open up!”
I know that voice.
Jesse.
Another, deeper voice follows, sharp and urgent. “Abilene, it’s Marshall. We need you to answer, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
That word should not make my knees weaker when I’m already half sure I’m dying.
I scramble upright, sleep still clinging to me like cobwebs. The room is dim, pale light coming in through the window.
Not sunrise. The sickly glow of fire and smoke reflected off low clouds.
My clock reads 3:17 a.m.
The next knock rattles the whole frame.
“Coming!” I croak.
My hands shake as I grab the nearest sweater from the chair, pulling it over my tank top and shorts. My feet find my boots without socks. I shove my arms into the sleeves, fingers fumble with the doorknob.
When I yank it open, the night rushes in—smoke, cold, and three large, ash-dusted men.
Jesse is front and center, hair a wind-tossed mess, jaw tight, eyes blazing with adrenaline and fear.
Wyatt stands just behind him, glasses askew, his usual calm stretched thin.
Marshall fills the doorway on the other side, tall and solid and grim, his hat pulled low, shirt half unbuttoned like he threw it on without thinking.
All three of them look wrong in the same way, frightened, which is somehow more terrifying than the door pounding.
“What’s going on?” I manage.
Jesse doesn’t answer right away. His gaze sweeps over me quickly, as if checking for tangible harm. “You okay? The kids?”
“I… I’m fine. They’re sleeping. What’s…?”
“The fire jumped again,” Wyatt says. “Wind shifted. It’s coming down toward the valley much faster than they expected.”
My stomach drops.
“The mayor’s been going door to door,” Jesse adds. “She hit the farms on the ridge first. She stopped by Willow on her way down. We argued with her for a while.”
“I did not argue,” Wyatt mutters.
“You negotiated,” Jesse says. “I argued.”
Marshall cuts in. “Point is, they’re telling folks in the immediate path to evacuate. Now.”
I stare at them.
Evacuate.
I knew it was bad. The smoke all day. The sirens. The glow on the horizon. Moving my bees to the far pasture with shaking hands, trying to pretend my chest wasn’t a tight, buzzing hive of panic.
But I hadn’t thought…
I hadn’t really let myself think it would get this far.
“I…” I look past them toward the sky.
Over the tops of the trees, the glow is brighter now. A deep, angry orange, pulsing with every gust of wind.
It smells sharper, as if the fire has crept closer, like the world is turning to charcoal.
“How… how much time do we have?” I ask quietly.
“Enough to leave safely,” Wyatt says. “Not enough to wait until morning.”
“You need to leave too,” Jesse says softly. “Tonight.”
My heart hammers so loud I can barely hear them. The house feels suddenly fragile around me, these old floorboards, these walls, this roof, all the memories soaked into them.
“I can’t just… leave,” I whisper. “What about my things? My… my grandmother’s journals? The photos? The—”
“We’ll help you grab what you need,” Marshall says. “Essentials only. Clothes, documents, anything you can’t bear to lose if the worst happens.”
If the worst happens.
My knees feel weak. I grip the edge of the door to calm myself.
My gaze flicks toward the hallway. “The twins?”
Jesse is already moving. “I’ve got them.”
He slips past me, and a moment later, I hear sleepy protests along with the rustle of blankets.
Jesse reappears with one tucked against each shoulder, carrying them out into the dark toward the truck.
“What about the bees?” I ask Wyatt.
“They’re in the safest place for them right now. Fire crews know not to backburn near that section if they can help it.”
I try to breathe. In. Out.
Evacuate.
Leave.
I knew this might happen. We all did. But it’s one thing to move livestock and bees, another thing entirely to uproot myself.
To admit my house, my land, my safe little bubble isn’t safe anymore.
“What if it doesn’t reach us?” I ask weakly.
“Then we come back in a day or two,” Wyatt says. “You swear at us for dragging you out of bed in the middle of the night, and we all laugh about it over tea.”
“And if it does?” I ask, barely audible.
Marshall holds my gaze. His gray eyes are serious, full of emotion that feels like a promise and a warning at once.
“Then you’ll be alive,” he says. “And we’ll deal with the rest later.”
My throat goes tight.
This is not how I pictured tonight. I thought maybe I’d wake up slowly. Make tea.
Pretend the letter from yesterday wasn’t burning a hole in my mind.
Pretend my dreams about one of my neighbors weren’t doing the same.
Now I’m standing in my doorway with three men telling me to leave everything behind because the world might burn.
Panic rises, hot and wild and choking.
I grip my pendant, thumb rubbing frantically over the tiny silver bee. “I don’t… I don’t know what to pack. I don’t know what to do.”
Jesse comes back up the porch steps. “Hey. Look at me.”
I do.
His blue eyes are softer now, worry still there but wrapped in warmth.
“We’re not going to let anything happen to you,” he says. “Okay? You’re not alone in this.”
The words hit me deep. It hits the old me, the one who remembers standing in front of a burning house with no one saying that to me at all.
My eyes sting suddenly.
“I…” I swallow. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“You got us,” Jesse says immediately.
Wyatt nods. “We have a cabin. Out near the lake. Fishing spot. Far from the fire line.”
Marshall adds, “We don’t use it much, but it’s stocked. Beds. Blankets. Water. It’s safe. You can stay there with us until this passes.”
My brain stutters over the phrase “with us.”
“You… you don’t have to…”
“We know,” Wyatt says. “We’re offering anyway.”
The rational part of me knows I should hesitate. Think through the logistics of sharing a cabin with three men who make my pulse do strange gymnastics.
The panicked, exhausted, smoky-lunged part of me just wants to not die.
So I nod.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”
“Good,” Marshall says. “We’ll help you pack. Ten minutes tops.”
“Ten minutes?” I squeak.
“Fire doesn’t care how attached you are to your furniture,” Jesse points out gently.
He’s not wrong.
I let go of the door and step back. “Okay. Um. Bedroom’s down the hall. Bathroom’s that way. Kitchen… obvious.”
Jesse steps inside again. “I’ll get the kitchen and any meds.”
Wyatt and Marshall follow.
“Bedroom, then. Clothes, keepsakes, documents,” Wyatt says.
The three of them move through my home with purposeful efficiency.
I stand in the center of the living room, frozen, watching them.
It’s disorienting, these big, solid men in my quiet space. Their bootsteps thud against my grandmother’s floors. Their hands touch cupboards she built, drawers she organized. They move with care, but it still feels surreal.
Then reality snaps back, and I move.
In the bedroom, Wyatt is pulling my old duffel bag from the closet while I grab clothes with shaking hands.
“Comfy, warm layers,” he reminds me. “Not your entire wardrobe.”
“My ‘entire wardrobe’ fits in three drawers,” I mutter, trying to fold shirts and failing.
He glances at me over his shoulder, and I catch the ghost of a smile. “Then two of them.”
He helps without hovering, handing me hangers to slide off, finding my extra socks, tossing in pajamas.
“Essentials,” he says gently. “Think: if you had to start over completely, what would you be devastated to lose?”
My gaze shoots to the bookshelf.
“The journals,” I breathe.
“Go,” he says. “I’ll zip this up.”
I rush back into the living room. Marshall is there, stacking framed photos on the coffee table, sorting them quickly.
“Mabel, I’m guessing,” he says, pointing at one. “Your parents. You.”
I nod, throat tight.
“Take the photos,” he says. “Glass can be replaced. Pictures can’t.”
I grab a smaller bag and start sliding frames inside, wrapping them in spare sweaters.
From the kitchen, I hear Jesse rummaging through drawers.
“Got your tea,” he calls. “And your favorite mug. And, okay, wow, that is a lot of honey.”
“Don’t you dare judge my inventory system,” I yell back, breaking on a half-laugh, half-sob.
He appears in the doorway a second later with a crate, mugs, tea tins, and three jars of honey tucked safely inside. “I’m emotionally supporting you the only way I know how: carbs and sugar.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
His expression softens. “Anytime.”
My eyes fall on the coffee table. The letter is still there.
The anonymous one. The one that cracked open everything I thought I knew about my family and then left it all hanging.
For a heartbeat, I consider leaving it. Letting it burn with the rest of the secrets. Watching the fire do what silence never did—end it.
Then I grab it.
I shove it between the pages of my grandmother’s last journal and tuck the whole stack into a bag.
I don’t know why.
Maybe because running from one fire is enough for tonight.
Maybe because the past has chased me far enough—it’s time I chase back.
“Time’s up,” Marshall says quietly.
I look around my house, bags in hand, heart breaking in slow motion.
It still looks the same.
Same couch. Same curtains. Same crooked rug.
But it feels… hollow.
Like I’ve already left, and the walls are remembering me instead of holding me.
My throat burns.
“Hey,” Jesse says softly beside me. I didn’t even hear him move. “You can cry if you need to.”
I shake my head hard. “If I start, I won’t stop.”
He nods, not pushing.
Wyatt appears with my duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “We’ll make sure you come back. To this. Or to something better. That’s a promise.”
I nod, blinking rapidly.
We step out into the night. The air hits me as a wall, smoke and wind and heat baked into the dark.
The glow on the ridge is brighter now, smudging everything with a hellish orange. The sound of the fire is louder, too, a distant roar like the ocean, if the ocean wanted to eat everything.
Two trucks wait in my driveway, engines idling.
The twins’ sleepy faces peer from the back seat of Jesse’s truck, their silhouettes outlined by the dash light. Eliza clutches a stuffed horse. Caleb has his favorite blanket bunched under his chin.
“Miss Abilene!” Eliza calls when she sees me. “You’re coming too?”
“Yes, I am,” I say, managing a smile. “We’re going on a little adventure.”
“In the middle of the night,” Caleb says, awed.
“Best adventures start that way,” Jesse says, kissing the tops of their heads before straightening.
Marshall opens the trunk of his truck and sets my things inside.
“You ride with us,” he tells me. “Wyatt will be in the back seat with you. Jesse’s following in his truck with the kids.”
“Is it safe to drive?” I ask, squinting through the haze.
“It’s getting worse, but roads are still clear,” Wyatt says. “Cabin’s north, away from the worst of it. Less smoke that way.”
I nod.
My hands shake as I climb into the truck, the seat too big and too strange under me. Wyatt gets in beside me, my duffel bag wedged between us as a lumpy buffer.
Marshall climbs in the driver’s seat, his presence filling the cab. The door shuts with a solid thunk, cutting out some of the wind noise but none of the fear.
All I hear is my own pulse in my ears.
Then Marshall turns the key, and the engine rumbles to life.
Jesse flashes his headlights behind us.
As we pull away, I twist in my seat to look at my house.
It stands there, small and stubborn, porch light still on, wind chimes clinking wildly in the smoky air.
“Be safe,” I whisper.
Whether I’m talking to the house or the girl who used to live in that life, I’m not sure.
Wyatt must see it on my face. His hand finds mine on the seat between us and curls around it.
“I know it’s hard,” he says quietly.
“I feel like I’m abandoning them,” I say. “The house. The land.”
“You’re not abandoning anyone,” he says. “You did everything you could. The rest is up to the fire crews and the wind. But you being here alive? That matters more than anything inside four walls.”
Marshall nods once, eyes fixed on the road. “Your grandmother built you for survival, not for going down with a building.”
That hits harder than anything.
I squeeze Wyatt’s hand. He squeezes back.
We drive.