"Keep it in the family," she'd whispered, her hand paper-thin in mine. "This land remembers us, Liam. It deserves someone who'll remember it back."
I'd promised. I'd meant it. I'd thought Claire would be there beside me, building the life Gran always wanted for me.
And now Claire was gone, and the deadline was three months away, and maybe I'd been fooling myself all along. Maybe the dream I was chasing—small-town firefighter, rancher, husband, father—was too small for anyone else to want. Maybe I was destined to love this land alone. And somehow, that still wouldn’t be enough to keep it.
My phone buzzed. A text from Cal.
Cal
Shift drinks tonight. You look like you need it.
I laughed, but there was no humor in it. Cal had been watching me spiral for three months, had probably coordinated with the crew to make sure someone checked in every few days. He meant well. They all did.
None of them could fix this.
I pocketed the phone and walked out of the barn, squinting against the morning sun. The mountains rose purple and gold in the distance, the pastures stretching green and perfect between here and there. My parents' dream. My grandmother's legacy. My inheritance—if I could figure out how to keep it.
Three months to find a wife.
Sure. No problem.
The land didn't care that I was alone. The horses didn't care that I was running out of time. But standing there in the place my family had built and lost and built again, I cared. Maybe too much.
Maybe that was always my problem—wanting things that weren't meant to be mine.
CHAPTER 2
Riley
I didn’t need anyone.
That was the rule—the first one life taught me, the one that worked because it had to. If you need people, they disappoint you. If you depend on them, they leave. If you trust them, they break you. So I didn’t. I handled Mia. Handled work. Handled the court dates and the caseworkers and the sleepless nights. Alone.
I was fine. I was holding it together.
The drill horn blared through the apparatus bay, and I was already moving. Turnout pants up, boots on, jacket sealed in the time it took most people to process the sound. Two years at West Valley Springs Station, and my body knew the rhythms before my brain caught up. Muscle memory was reliable that way. Muscle memory didn't ask questions or need explanations or wonder why you flinched at sudden movements.
That was how I lived—do what had to be done, stay in the automatic.
"Santos! You're on the nozzle."
Cal's voice cut through the controlled chaos. I grabbed the hose, felt its familiar weight settle across my shoulders, and fellinto position. The training tower loomed ahead. Four stories of concrete and smoke machines designed to break you down and build you back up. I’d climbed it a hundred times. I could climb it a hundred more.
The crew moved around me in practiced formation. Owen on my left, steady and silent. Two newer guys behind us whose names I kept forgetting because they wouldn’t last long—couldn’t handle it, would probably wash out within the year. And Murphy somewhere at the back, running the pump, doing whatever Murphy did when he wasn't brooding about his ex-fiancée or his ranch or whatever else occupied that head of his.
"Go!"
I surged forward, dragging the charged line up the first flight of stairs. The weight burned through my shoulders, my thighs, my lungs. Good. Pain was simple. Pain made sense. Pain didn't sit across from you in a courtroom and try to take your sister away from you—and hand her back to a psycho.
Second floor. Third. The smoke thickened. Theatrical, harmless, but my body responded anyway. Heart rate up. Breathing controlled. Eyes scanning for the orange glow of the prop fire we were supposed to find and suppress.
I hit the fourth floor thirty seconds ahead of the rest of the team.
Cal was waiting at the top, stopwatch in hand, that assessing look on his face that meant he was cataloging everything—my time, my form, the fact that I'd pushed harder than necessary for a routine drill. He didn't say anything. He never did, with me. Just watched and evaluated and probably wondered why I treated every evolution like my job depended on it.
Because it did. Because everything depended on everything else, a house of cards I'd spent two years building, and one wrong move would bring it all down.
The crew filtered up behind me, breathing hard. Owen caught my eye and gave me a small nod. Respect, maybe, or just acknowledgment. I nodded back. That was the extent of our communication most days, and I preferred it that way. Owen didn't pry. Owen didn't ask about the phone calls I took in the apparatus bay with my back turned, or the days I showed up with shadows under my eyes so dark they looked like bruises.
