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"It's not working. It's smoking. I've got four people on it and I'm one of them, and you've been on this festival since Thursday." He said it flat. "You trained me for exactly this. Let me do it."

I looked at the barn. I looked at the corn. I'd never once walked off a scene before it was cold, in fourteen years, and every part of me that had built this department wanted to stay until the last board quit steaming. Then I looked across the field, and Molly was standing by the engine.

"Call me if the wind shifts," I said. "Call me if it so much as thinks about it."

"Yes, Chief."

I peeled off my gloves and tucked them in my belt. Smoke still hung low over the field, and Molly was on her feet, pushing the loose hair back from her face with shaking, sooty hands. My heart was pounding, and I walked toward her.

Chapter 9

Molly

Ishould have been halfway back to the green by then. I'd planned my escape while I wiped soot off my glasses: snap the kit shut, thank the crew, and walk away before anyone could see me cry.

Then the crew went quiet, and I looked up, and he was there.

Grayson stopped six feet away. Soot streaked his face, his neck, and his forearms, and his T-shirt was black across the chest. He'd shed his jacket, and all I could think about was how those arms had felt under my hands while he thrust into me.

Behind him, four firefighters were coiling the same length of hose with enormous concentration. Silas was studying the sky.

"Molly." His voice brought me back.

"You're covered in soot." It was the only thing I could come up with.

"I know." He scrubbed the back of his wrist across his jaw and made it worse. "I didn't want to wait to wash up."

"Grayson, your whole crew is standing right there."

"I know that too."

His voice wasn't loud, but it carried anyway, because nobody was breathing.

"I want you, Molly MacKenzie," he said. "In any way you'll have me."

My face was already hot. I could feel the color climbing, up my neck and over my ears, and for the first time in my life I didn't care.

"The woman in the red dress?" His mouth tipped. "She's you, Molly. She was always you." He took a breath, and I watched his hands open at his sides. "You've been the best part of my day for two years. You're the first person I look for in any room and the last person I think about when I close my eyes at night. I want my best friend. And I want the woman in the dress, every chance I get to bring her out. I'm not picking one. I want all of you."

Somebody behind him dropped a coupling with a clang.

"Come home with me," Grayson said. "Lights on. No masks."

I couldn't breathe. "You're not supposed to say things like that in front of your crew," I managed.

"I'm saying it in front of my crew, the world, whoever the hell wants to listen."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not hiding it anymore." He didn't move. "And because you can say no in front of them, too. Your call. Same as always."

"On Thursday," I said. My voice shook, but I didn't try to hide it. "When I told that man I wasn't interested in anybody. I meant anyone who wasn't you."

Grayson went still, his eyes darkening.

"Two years, Grayson." I was looking at him straight, with no mask, no fogged glasses, nothing between us but a few feet of smoky air. "I've wanted you for two years. I stopped counting because the number was embarrassing."

Nobody by the barn made a sound. Behind him, a hose slid off somebody's shoulder and hit the grass, and one of the younger firefighters sniffed. I thought for one terrible second that I'd said it too loud, and then I thought, good.