If I was at home, I’d just have to turn a dial, and the top would glow electric red.
I decide, after five minutes of messing with it, that there’s not enough wood inside. All I have to do is open the little door and put some more wood inside.
Easy.
CHAPTER 14
ROWAN
I’m in my bedroom, still trying to cool down, when I hear the smoke alarm go off.
At first, when I hear it, I’m not quite sure what it is. I’ve grown so unaccustomed to hearing noises like that — so far from the sirens and beeping of the city — that it’s a few seconds before I realize,alarm. And then, a second later,fire.
“Lola!” I call, running out into the hall. Cheese chases after me, barking in the excitement, clearly not sure what the hell is going on. We’re a lot alike in that way.
When she doesn’t answer, I call again, “Lola!”
Did shelight my house on fire? The moment I think it, I know it’s not true. This woman is a lot of things — frustrating and intoxicating among them — but she’s not an arsonist. Maybe my sister would tell me that you can nevertrulyknow if someone is an arsonist just by looking at them, but I know.
“In here!” Lola calls back, after the second shout, and I turn, running into the kitchen, becauseduh. If she’s starting a fire, it’s probably in the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” I ask through the smoke, which only gets thicker the closer I am to her. She has the door to the oven open, and her face is almost comically covered in ash as she coughs, clearly trying to do something with the wood inside.
“I was—” But she’s cut off by the coughing.
I grab her under the armpits and drag her up and away from the oven, then turn back and kick its little door shut with my foot, sealing off the fire and sending the smoke where itshouldbe going — up the oven’s chimney, vented out, and released on the side of the mountain, about a football field away from my place.
Shaking my head, I move to the windows, pulling them open. Lola tries to join me, but she’s still coughing too hard to be much help, so I gesture for her to sit down and for once she listens, dragging the collar of her shirt up and over her mouth and nose. A good idea.
Once all the windows are open, and I’ve turned off the fire alarms, the cabin feels eerily silent, filled with nothing but the sounds of the leaves rustling outside.
“Lola,” I say, shaking my head at her when the chaos is finally controlled. She sits at the dinner nook, turned sideways in her chair, her elbows propped on her knees. “What were youthinking?”
“I was…” She closes her eyes, shakes her head. Her hair is blown back from her face and streaked with soot. Was she trying to stoke the fire in the oven? “I wanted to make you dinner. As a thank you. For letting me stay here while my ankle gets better?—”
Her words cut off, and she starts to cry.
“Hey,” I say, softening instantly, feeling like an asshole for… well, everything. Yelling at her over the bear. Walking away earlier when it must have been obvious to her that I wanted to kiss her. Coming in like this, shouting at her more. “It’s okay, hey.”
But she’s crying too hard to be easily consolable, her face fully in her palms.
“I can’t doanythingright,” she says, her words coming out through great heaving sobs. “I just… I’m not…”
I could keep telling herit’s okay, could stand there and awkwardly pat her back, but it’s not going to help. I think about what my sister would do, then move to the sink, rinsing a cloth with cool water.
When I hand it to Lola, the movement cuts through her heavy breathing, and she looks at me curiously, her gaze skipping from my face to the cloth. So I take it, holding it against her forehead, then laying it over the back of her neck, showing her how it can help.
After that, I go through the motions of making her a mug of tea. I might as well be English for how much tea I’ve made this week, but I’m glad I have it. A warm drink to soothe her.
To make the tea, I have to move the blackened thing on the stove top to the side — whatever she was trying to make us for dinner, I assume. A few minutes later, the tea bag is steeping, and I’m turning back to Lola.
When I do, I realize she’s staring up at me, the wet cloth held limply in her hand. She opens her mouth to speak, but before she can, I start.
Maybe she’s crying because of the fire or because of the incident with the bear cub, but I know me walking away from that kiss has a lot to do with it. That it hurt her feelings, made her think it washerand notme.
I know I have to get this out first.
“My last relationship didn’t end well,” I say, watching her eyes widen. She’s so damn curious —run toward a bear cubcurious — and this information is the first thing that actually makes her breathing start to slow. An explanation for why I just turned around out there, left her standing in the hall, alone.
