Chapter 15 Abilene
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Abilene
Tuesday
I’ve never been more aware of my own breathing in my life.
Every inhale. Every exhale. Every rustle of fabric sounds too loud in this quiet cabin that isn’t mine, with people who aren’t mine, in a world that caught fire overnight. I lie perfectly still, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling.
The wood above me is knotty and warm-toned, with faint cracks tracing along the beams. It smells of cedar and dust and the faint smoke that seems baked into my skin now, like last night crawled inside me and stayed.
A bird calls somewhere outside, but without the background hum of my bees, the sound is wrong.
My eyes sting.
I roll onto my side and look toward the small window. Morning light filters through the trees. No orange glow. No thick clouds of smoke pressing against the glass.
Just daylight.
I survived the night.
My house might not have.
The thought punches the air from my lungs. I press a hand to my chest, feeling my heart flutter like a trapped bee.
You’re okay, I tell myself. You’re safe. You’re here.
“Here” being the fishing cabin, tucked by a lake miles from town, pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
Except it does.
And it’s burning.
And I’m in borrowed safety, in a borrowed bed, surrounded by three men who have somehow become the axis my mind keeps spinning around.
I push the covers back and sit up slowly. Every muscle aches, a deep, tired soreness from moving hives, packing in a panic, and carrying all that fear around in my body.
My bee pendant sits on the dresser, where I left it last night because I was afraid I’d snap the chain if I slept in it.
It glints up at me, stubborn and familiar.
I fasten it around my neck as armor and whisper a quick, wordless prayer to my grandmother, my mother, my bees, anyone listening, that my house is still standing.
Then I straighten my shoulders and go find the men whose lives I’ve crashed into.
The cabin is already awake when I step into the main room, bare feet silent on the wood.
The first thing that hits me is the smell.
Coffee. Bacon sizzling in a pan. Toast warming in the oven.
The second thing is the sound.
Eliza laughing.
Caleb arguing with the conviction of a tiny lawyer.
Jesse humming off-key.
Wyatt murmuring something under his breath.
Marshall’s low rumble cutting in now and then.
I hover at the edge of the hallway, fingers curled around my pendant, watching. It looks like an image out of a photograph.
Jesse stands at the stove, flipping bacon, wearing an apron that definitely doesn’t belong to him, faded letters declaring: Kiss the Cook. The twins sit at the small table, coloring on the backs of old envelopes.
Wyatt leans against the counter, phone in one hand, glasses halfway down his nose. Marshall stands near the window, mug in his hand, staring out toward the trees with a look I recognize in my bones.
Worry.
He’s hiding it well, but it shows in the tight line of his shoulders, the way his jaw ticks every so often. He’s thinking about the ranch. The fire. All the things he can’t do from here.
Just like me.
They move around each other with easy familiarity, all well-practiced rhythm and shared history. For a heartbeat, I feel painfully, acutely out of place.
They’re an orbit.
I’m the stray satellite.
I’m half an inch from quietly retreating back into my room when Eliza looks up and spots me.
“Miss Abilene!” she squeals, nearly tipping her chair. “You’re awake!”
Every head turns.
Heat rushes to my face. I give an awkward little wave. “Um. Morning.”
“You want coffee?” Jesse calls out playfully. “Or a tea that Wyatt calls a ‘medical necessity’?”
Wyatt pushes his glasses up with one finger. “Because it is.”
“I… yeah. Coffee would be great. Thank you,” I say, stepping out of the hallway fully and tugging my sweater down.
“Sit,” Marshall says, gesturing to an empty chair at the table. He sets his mug aside, reaches up to a cabinet, and pulls down another. “You take it black or sweet?”
“Sweet,” I answer, then add quickly, “but I can do it myself, it’s okay.”
He’s already moving.
“Sugar’s here.” He nods toward a jar. “Food is still good. Checked dates last month.”
“You check expiration dates at a fishing cabin?” I ask, surprised.
He shrugs. “Cabin’s not useful if everything in it’s expired. No sense dragging groceries out here every time. And last night… we were lucky we remembered to grab anything from the fridge at all.”
Can’t argue with that.
I slide into the seat beside the twins. Eliza immediately scoots her chair closer. She’s been waiting for me.
“You were sleeping forever,” she informs me gravely.
“Forever?” I echo.
“Almost,” Caleb says. “We were gonna check if you turned into a bee.”
Eliza nods seriously. “You might have grown wings.”
“Did you grow wings?” Caleb asks.
I wiggle my fingers. “Not that I noticed. Maybe later.”
They collapse into giggles.
Some of the tightness in my chest loosens. It’s hard to feel like you don’t belong when two small people act as if you’re part of their morning.
“Here you go,” Jesse says, setting a plate in front of me.
Eggs, toast, bacon, all steaming and golden. It smells of comfort. Of a world where things aren’t on fire.
“Thank you,” I say, letting the warmth of the plate soak into my hands.
He grins. “Cooking is my love language. Don’t tell my kids, or they’ll start leaving dirty dishes on my pillow to feel emotionally secure.”
“Daddy,” Caleb says through a mouthful of bacon, “you already do our dishes.”
“Yes,” Jesse says. “And I will remind you of this kindness when you’re teenagers.”
Marshall sets my coffee down within easy reach. “Sugar’s on your right. Cream’s on your left,” he says. “Food first. Worry later.”
“Is that ranch policy?” I ask.
“Something my mom used to say,” he replies, gaze flicking toward the window again.
I stir sugar and cream into my coffee, the smell curling up into my nose, settling the frayed part of me.
Wyatt taps his phone, then clears his throat.
“Update,” he says. “Crews held the line on the east side overnight. Wind dropped after three. That helped.”
“That’s good,” Jesse says.
“It’s not bad,” Wyatt corrects. “But it’s not over.”
My fork pauses halfway to my mouth.
“What about… the valley?” I ask.
The word “home” might crack if I say it out loud.
He looks at me, eyes soft. “No new evacuations since last night. They’re watching it. If anything shifts, we’ll know.”
I nod and pretend that helps more than it does.
I glance at Marshall.
He’s eating in that mechanical way people do when they’ve forgotten how to taste. His eyes are unfocused, somewhere far past the wall, where the ranch is.
“You okay?” I ask him quietly.
He blinks.
“Fine,” he says automatically.
One of my eyebrows lifts. “You know you don’t have to say that, right?”
His mouth quirks, humorless.
“I hate being away from the ranch,” he admits after a beat. “Feels wrong. But I know staying there last night would’ve been worse.”
“You moved the animals,” Jesse points out, not looking up from buttering toast. “We moved Abilene’s bees. You got everybody out and here. That’s not nothing.”
“Doesn’t feel like enough,” Marshall mutters.
I understand that feeling all too well.
“You did a lot,” I say softly. “For them. For me.”
He looks at me, not sure he heard right.
“If you hadn’t taken me with you…” My throat tightens, but I push through. “I’d probably still be standing in my kitchen trying to decide what to save. Or worse.”
His jaw flexes.
“Thank you,” I say. “For thinking about my bees when you had a hundred other things to worry about.”
The table goes a little quieter.
Jesse glances up from his plate, expression gentler than his tone when he says, “Yeah, man. That was above and beyond.”
Wyatt nods, eyes flicking between us. “You made good calls last night.”
Marshall shifts in his chair, clearly unused to being on the receiving end of this much gratitude at once. Some of the harsh lines in his face ease.
He nods once, filing the words away somewhere private. “Just doing what needed doing.”
But as I take a sip of my coffee and listen to the twins argue happily about who gets the last piece of bacon, the knot of fear in my chest loosens just a little more.
Because my house might not be okay.
The fire might get worse.
The past might still be waiting to claw its way into my present.
But here at this table, with these people, I don’t feel like I’m bracing against the world alone.
Later on, after dinner, the twins’ yawns become so frequent they look like two tiny lion cubs trying, and failing, to convince us they’re still fierce. Jesse scoops them up with the easy strength of a man who’s done this bedtime rodeo every night for six years.
“Come on, monsters,” he says, nudging the loft ladder with his foot. “Up you go.”
“We’re not monsters,” Eliza insists sleepily.
“Ferocious angels,” Caleb corrects.
“Terrifying cherubs,” Jesse finishes.
They giggle all the way up.
I expect the men to scatter once the kids are tucked in. Wyatt with the fire updates. Marshall with his thoughts. Jesse pretending he’s going to “clean up” before getting distracted by something shiny.
I expect to be politely ignored.
Instead, when silence settles over the loft, they all drift back into the living room like gravity pulls them there—and, strangely, it pulls me too.
I hover awkwardly on the edge of the kitchen at first, hands wrapped around a mug of the chamomile tea Wyatt made earlier.
“You don’t have to hide,” Jesse calls from the couch. “We don’t bite.”
“Speak for yourself,” Wyatt mutters into his mug.
“Doc,” Jesse groans, “your vibe is the human equivalent of a warm blanket. You absolutely do not bite.”
“I could bite,” Wyatt says, offended.
“You absolutely could not.”
Marshall, sitting in the corner chair with a piece of rope he’s idly tying knots into, rumbles low, “He’s got teeth, Jesse. Let him have this.”
Jesse snorts. “Fine. Wyatt bites in spirit.”
I don’t mean to laugh, but I do. A bright, startled sound that pops something open inside me.
Three sets of eyes flick toward me, then soften in unison.
“Come sit,” Wyatt says, patting the cushion beside him. “We’re safe company. Mostly.” He casts a pointed glance at Jesse.
Jesse gasps. “You take that back. I’m excellent company.”
“Oh no,” I say, walking toward them with my tea, “I believe him.”
Jesse slaps a hand over his heart in mock betrayal. “And here I thought we were bonding.”
“We are,” I say, settling on the couch. “You just… radiate madness.”
Marshall gives the smallest, most approving grunt. “That’s accurate.”
Jesse glares at him. “Don’t you start.”
“It’s not an insult,” I say.
“It is when Marshall says it,” Jesse protests.
I laugh again, surprised at how easy it feels around them. How the tight coil in my chest unwinds a little more each minute.
Wyatt pushes a bowl of pretzels toward me. “Snack?”
“Thanks.” I take one. “So, what’s tonight’s entertainment? More poker? Story time? A dramatic reading of emergency alerts?”
Jesse snaps his fingers. “Ooh. Let’s make her read Wyatt’s college thesis.”
Wyatt goes rigid. “Absolutely not.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “You have a thesis?”
“Everyone has a thesis,” he mutters.
Jesse leans forward eagerly. “Wyatt wrote about equine metabolic disorders and—”
“Stop,” Wyatt pleads. “Please stop.”
Marshall, watching from his chair like this is the best show he’s seen all week, says, “He got an award for it.”
“I will walk into the lake,” Wyatt threatens.
“Deep end?” Marshall asks.
“Deep end.”
I can’t breathe, I’m laughing so hard my tea nearly spills.
“Okay, okay,” Jesse says, grinning at the shade of red creeping up Wyatt’s neck. “Maybe not the thesis. But we are telling embarrassing stories tonight.”
Wyatt points sternly. “I veto that.”
“You don’t get veto power,” Jesse says.
“He absolutely does,” I say at the same time Marshall says, “He doesn’t.”
We stare at each other.
Then all four of us laugh.
Jesse starts, naturally. “Fine. I’ll go first. Picture this: summer rodeo, age seventeen, I’m trying to impress a girl named—”
“No,” Wyatt interrupts. “That story involves a fence, a goat, and a missing shirt. Hard pass.”
“You’re just jealous my teenage years were cinematic.”
“Your teenage years were a hazard,” Wyatt says.
Marshall clears his throat. “Fence was broken for a week.”
“And that,” Jesse declares proudly, “is legacy.”
Another laugh escapes me.
It feels good.
Like I’m waking up in a different part of myself that I forgot how to access.
By the time they drag out the battered deck of cards, my cheeks hurt from smiling, and my tea has gone lukewarm in my hands.
It’s been a long time since I laughed this much.