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.
