“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…”
