REED: Date night in or out?
HAILEY: In… by the fire. Eyes orHair?
REED: Butt. You?
I snicker when I find her shaking her head at her phone.
HAILEY: You’re such a rebel. Good thing you have really nice eyes.
Suddenly we’re inching toward dangerous territory. But I can’t stop now.
REED: You do too… and lips.
HAILEY: Watch it! Your driver is my father, remember?
It’s a tease of a warning. A reminder that this thing—whatever it is between us—can’t cross a line, even if we both want it to.
REED: Oh, I haven’t forgotten. Neither has he.
She sits up straighter, holding the phone closer to her face.
HAILEY: Did he say something to you?
I don’t want to worry her.
REED: Nothing I can’t handle.
I catch her gnawing on her bottom lip.
HAILEY: Casual or serious?
For some reason this question makes me think of Teddy. I never used to be a casual guy. But after her… I’m afraid to be anything but. Even if the idea of Hailey and I together as more than casual makes my heart beat faster, I lie to her.
REED: Casual. You?
The three dots show up and disappear several times. I’d watch her reaction through the window, but we take a left turn, and I can’t see her face when the text finally comes through.
HAILEY: Call me the queen of casual.
My eyebrows lift. The buggy takes another sharp turn, and a burst of color fills the back window. I don’t have a chance to reply when my vision glasses over at the sight before me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
REED
Aplume of smoke billows into the sky, thick and gray. A stretch of yellow caution tape surrounds a metal grate. A fire ten times the size of my first burns the ground. My father’s voice, distant and choppy, is all I hear.
Reed, what have you done! Why can’t you be more like your brothers?
The memory serpents around my windpipe, but the feeling only lasts a second. Several miles off the main road in a remote area it’s clear. We’ve made it to the White Horse Campground.
Two engine crews with long hose lines draped over their shoulders control the scene. They’ve established an anchor point near the road and are drenching pine trees with arcs of water. The engine crew captain and incident commander trail up and down the south side as Jack pulls our vehicle up next to them.
“Good to see you again, Hart. This is Captain Sparrow.”
The incident commander introduces Hart to his counterpart—a guy with a beard halfway down his chest. A pirate joke lingers on the tip of my tongue, but we all remain quiet in the back seat as we listen to the report.
“We’ve got fire at the timber. Moving uphill. Rapid rate of spread. Ten-miles-per-hour winds from the southeast. We need your crew to plug into the right flank and work north toward Salmon River.” He turns his head to the side, his voice catching on the wind. I hear nothing but “Good luck out there.”
