Most wildfire fighters were temporary. This job was exception to life rather than life itself.
College kids or maybe local’s fighting fire near where they live only to never pick up a hose again.
Jasper was as married to his job as I was to mine, and that similarity had bonded us faster than I wanted to admit.
So I left before it had time to turn into something harder to walk away from.
Picked up my shoes and walked away.
* * *
Less than a week later, the weather finally turned. From afirefighting perspective anyway. The wind dropped and rain moved in, clearing the air.
With the improved forecast, camp was reducing staff, which meant I was already looking for my next assignment.
There was no shortage of fires this year. Low snowpack over the winter, followed by hot weather, had made sure of that.
My eye caught on one particular location.
Lillooet.
I’d been there before.
A glacial lake sat there, bright and unnaturally cold, surrounded by land that turned dry and almost desert-like by mid-summer. Heat settled in and stayed. Fire there wasn’t an anomaly, it was part of the landscape.
It was St’át’imc territory. You heard about the old burns, the way people had once worked with the land instead of chasing fire after it sparked. These days it was helicopters and crews like mine, but not everything old had disappeared. More and more, the goal was to get ahead of it instead of just running it down.
All of it was interesting history.
What struck me was how close it was to Springwood, where Jasper lived. If I took this assignment, I could go see him.
The question was whether I wanted to.
Chapter Fourteen
Jasper
Getting back to reality was going to be a bitch.
Summer was a busy time in Search and Rescue. Hot, dusty days filled with missing and injured hikers. One eye was always on the weather and the fire risk.
Search and rescue didn’t fight fires but we could be called on to help evacuate or find missing people in a fire zone. It had happened not long ago to our dispatch operator, Emily’s daughter.
There were fires in a few areas around Springwood. Nothing close enough to be on high alert about, but the smell of smoke was in the air and the potential for a flare-up was there.
I arrived at the station the morning after flying home trying to switch my brain back to what I did best.
“How was the trip?” My coworker, Aaron, asked me, slapping me on the shoulder as he sank onto the wooden bench beside me. He pulled off his sneaker and slid his foot into hishiking boot.
“Good,” I said vaguely, digging through my locker for my own boots.
He cocked an eyebrow and I met his blue eyes with my dark brown ones. “That’s it? Nice views? Good food? Hot bridesmaids? Details, man.”
“Yes, yes, and yes.” I joked.
He laughed. “Gatekeeping all the fun, huh? Well, I’m going on vacation in a few weeks and I won’t be telling you shit.”
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. Wren hadn’t been far from my mind even though I knew we both had a very short-term view of relationships. “Can I ask you something?”
