“You were a wonder today.” She pulls me in, and I feel six again, crushed against Gram’s cardigan. “Thank you,” she whispers into my ear, then repeats louder, “Thank you both. I think, somehow, this was all meant to be.”
Meant to be. A building they don’t want, a town they can’t bear, a fire that forced all of us here on the same day. I don’t know what any of it means yet, but with Ash at my side and the smell of smoke still in my nose, I have the strangest feeling that, this time, she might be right.
Downstairs, at the back of their unfinished store, Walt stacks a few pieces of wood in the shallow fire table and coaxes to life a small flame that’s a safe, contained echo of the day.
Then it’s just Ash and me, a bottle of wine between us, two camping chairs, and the rising moon. I could do without ever smelling smoke again, but watching it curl and thin into the sky is… different. There’s no roar, just heat and light.
We sit in comfortable silence while exhaustion seeps in. Thoughts of Sharon and Walt, Gram, and the impossible luck of what we escaped drift past. Once they’ve all thinned out, what’s left is a low, steady awareness of the man beside me.
It’s the way his hand felt on my cheek. The way we shoved that downed tree together. The way he squeezed Walt’s fingers at the table. Whatever lives between us has been banked and fed all day, and now it won’t stop glowing under my skin.
After several minutes, Ash breaks the spell. “Sunset was beautiful tonight.”
“Those wildfire pollutants.”
“Beautiful.” His laugh is soft. “Why didn’t you mention it?”
“Same reason you didn’t want to talk about your FIRE.”
“Didn’t feel right,” he says, the same heaviness that drove him to tears edging his voice. “We’re so lucky. I can’t believe the day we’ve had.”
“Feels like a lifetime,” I say, feeling something tug me away from the fire’s crackle and toward him.
“We made it,” he says. “Together.”
The tug is him, certainty that he’s looking at me, wanting something. It’s the same current I felt at the Inskip Inn when I leaned in and he pulled back. Only now…
I look up and catch him staring with a gentle smile on his lips.
A shift in the wind sends a swirl of smoke toward us.
“Of course,” Ash mutters, standing to drag his chair a few feet over. “I never want to inhale smoke again.”
“Can you believe what they went through?” I ask quietly, moving my chair back beside his.
The uneven dirt tilts my chair as I sit, and Ash’s hand shoots out to grab my arm. Once my feet are solid, I wait for a joke, but it doesn’t come.
He’s just… looking at me. Hazel eyes seeing straight through my skin to whomever’s underneath. His hand stays on my arm, and I go still. I can barely breathe with him watching me, like he might kiss me if I don’t spook.
“Unreal,” he says, twisting me up. “I feel like…” He trails off, fingers slipping off my arm as his attention flickers back to the flame. “Maybe Sharon’s right. Maybe the universe made all this happen for a reason. To teach me to live more in the present and stop worrying so much about the future.”
“Must kill you,” I say. “The universe lining up to say that I’m right?”
He laughs, and the sound buzzes across whatever’s between us until it settles, low, in my chest. He’s predictable and kind and funny and, yes, sometimes boring, but somehow it all addsup to more than a crush. It tugs at something deep, something I haven’t let anyone touch.
Before I can stop myself, it pulls words out of me. “I can’t stay under Alistair’s thumb.” It’s way too serious for the moment.
I brace for his comeback, but Ash doesn’t take the bait. His gaze stays fixed on the fire as he slowly nods. Maybe he’s agreeing with something in his head and not reacting to me.
It leaves me wondering if I even meant it. Probably the wine.
Ash lifts his glass toward mine. “To two phoenixes.”
“Kings and phoenixes,” I say, clinking.
We stare into the flames for a while, swallowing words that stack against my ribs:thank you, don’t go, I’m scared, I want you. The pressure builds until I have to look up.
He’s already looking. Something’s shifted, his hazel eyes alive with intent, tracing my glasses and over my face more than once. He looks… hungry.
