Chapter Nine
Apparently the fact that they were preparing dinner together didn’t mean they had to speak to each other.
Tyler was used to camping with Scott, who’d tell jokes even after Tyler told him to shut up already. Now he would have given anything to hear Scotty raise his plastic cup and announce, “Lettuce eat!”
This wasn’t the comfortable silence of two people who’d been around each other forever, watching the clouds thread over the stars. This was the kind of strain that reminded Tyler of living with his father, his dad focused on his new job, new house, new family. Focused on anyone but the kid who could have used someone asking how his day went.
He almost wished they were back in the office, or even at the farmers market again—anywhere where all those watchful eyes at least made her talk to him. Made her face light up, even if the smile wasn’t real.
“I don’t do the silent treatment,” Tyler finally said when he couldn’t take it anymore. They were heating water on a camping stove for dinner. Packets of dehydrated lasagna weren’t going to win any culinary awards, but it was light, easy, and Tyler had definitely had worse.
Abbi looked at him in surprise. Had she really expected him to camp with her but not address the fact that they hadn’t spoken all afternoon?
“I’m not ignoring you,” she said, brushing a hand through her hair. He wondered if she’d reapplied the dye last night because in the darkening light it looked brighter, deeper than before.
Had she done it to look even hotter to go camping? Or was it her way of telling him to fuck off?
Or maybe it had nothing to do with him, and he should stop hoping she thought of him in that way—in any way—at all.
He couldn’t get a read on her. He’d thought she never wanted to see him again, and then she showed up to do this whole walkthrough together. It made him want to come back for more, to push and prod until she opened up whatever she was concealing underneath that bright hair and sharp tongue and the way she moved so fast he could barely keep up, no matter how in shape he was.
“You haven’t spoken to me for hours,” he said.
“We’ve been working. I was thinking. I didn’t mean for it to be a big deal.”
“Oh.” Tyler sat back on his haunches. “I thought you were mad at me.”
“For being a pawn to the Forest Service and not publicly stating that this firebreak isn’t going to accomplish what people want it to? Yeah, kind of.” She licked rehydrated sauce off the back of her camping spork and made a face. “But I’m not planning on ignoring you all night because of it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Gee, thanks.” He paused. “Maybe we should talk about something else.”
“You mean not wildfire strategy?”
“Where’d you grow up?”
Abbi laughed. “Are you serious?”
“We’re camping together. We’ve had sex. Our entire office thinks we’re madly in love. Is it so crazy to actually talk?”
So over soggy noodles and too-salty sauce, he asked Abbi about her childhood, her family, when she knew she wanted to become a naturalist, and why.
“Grilling me,” Abbi corrected him when he said he just wanted to ask her some questions. “You’re grilling me.”
“What are you, CIA? What do you have to hide?”
“Okay, here’s the rundown. Childhood in Seattle. Some time in New Hampshire and a few points in between. My father’s a cardiac surgeon. My mother’s a psychiatrist, which I still find hard to believe. I’ll have you know that both of them are perennially disappointed in me.”
“Really?” Tyler couldn’t hide his surprise. “How could you have possibly disappointed them?”
Abbi held out her left hand. “Do you see a ring on this finger?”
“Ah,” Tyler said. “So the fact that you’re single-handedly saving the spotted owl in the state of Washington doesn’t impress them?”
Abbi screwed up her face, and this time it wasn’t the effect of rehydrated lasagna. “Now you’re just making fun of me.”
“Am not. I swear.” But he smiled, because even if he was, a little, the truth was that he knew what spotted owls looked like, and he liked them. The costs to their habitat weren’t enough to stop him from taking the job. But it wasn’t like he didn’t care.
“No changing the subject,” Tyler said. “Siblings?”
“Three, all older.” She went through their spouses, occupations, and kids. “If you met them, you’d think I’d been brought by aliens. Or dropped on my head. Or both.”
“I think that anyway,” Tyler said, and Abbi mimed throwing her spork at him. “Don’t worry, when you meet my family you’ll be running for the hills.”
As soon as he saw Abbi’s expression, he realized the slip.
“I meant that if you met my family, you’d run. Don’t look so appalled. I’m pretending to be your boyfriend, not your husband—remember?”
“I should have known that stunt would only make Russ madder at me. I wasn’t even thinking about the office, my job, any of that shit when I went along with it.”
“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry it made such a mess. Are you really sure he’s not trouble?”
Tyler didn’t like when Abbi didn’t answer right away.
“Ninety percent sure,” she finally decided, and he frowned into his bowl.
“I’m not crazy about that last ten percent.”
“Is this, like, your thing?” Abbi asked.
“Huh?”
“Fight the fire. Save the town. Rescue helpless women at the bar.”
“You weren’t helpless,” Tyler said.
“I know that. I wasn’t sure you did.”
“Come on, admit you had fun.” He grinned, and Abbi flushed. No matter that she’d run away from him at the gazebo, or that she’d promised just last night to dump him. That he was sure she really had been avoiding him this afternoon.
She couldn’t deny that she’d enjoyed every tremble as she’d come undone.
Just the thought of it made him shift uncomfortably on the log he was sitting on. Here they were outside again, darkness falling, nothing but the wind in the trees, the sounds of nocturnal animals beginning to wake. The two of them, alone again.
Fuck. Clearly he was going to spend the entire night yelling at his dick to stay down.
“So what about your family?” Abbi asked, which at least helped get his mind off that track.
“Wow, a question in return?” Tyler feigned surprise. “It’s like you actually want to get to know me. My dad’s a lawyer who lives in Palo Alto with his wife, who by the way used to be his secretary. They have twin girls, starting at Berkeley in the fall, and my mom’s in—” Tyler frowned. “North Carolina? South? She moves around a lot, it’s hard to keep track.”
“So then yeah, that’s why you got into wildfires,” Abbi said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t your whole job to save people? If you’re always needed, it’s like you’re never alone.”
Jesus Christ.
Was this what he’d wanted? To tell Abbi all his dirty little secrets, how no one in his family had wanted him? How he’d become a firefighter precisely so he’d never be that little kid again?
Of course he knew it was true. Aidan was the one who’d first called him out on it, worried Tyler might not take care of himself.
“Risking your life isn’t going to bring anyone close to you,” Aidan had warned.
And Tyler had dutifully said, “Of course not,” and, “That’s not why I’m here,” and hoped Aidan wouldn’t ask again about when he’d last lied.
How had Abbi found his sore spots so quickly, when other times he hid them so well?
But it wasn’t Tyler’s only secret. It had nothing to do with Scotty, how his best friend had run into the fire when Tyler should have been calling him back. When it was Tyler’s fault Scott had been in the blaze in the first place.
He turned, looking away, and Abbi might have thought it was because of what she’d said. But no matter what did—or didn’t—happen between them, there were some things she didn’t need to know.
…
Abbi waited for Tyler to go on. Wasn’t he the one who’d started this whole getting-to-know-you routine in the first place?
But just when it seemed like he was opening up, she watched him shut down right in front of her eyes.
She wanted to reach out her hand. She wanted to ask what was wrong. But he wasn’t her boyfriend. And he was leaving in six—no, now it was five weeks. Which meant they needed to stop playing twenty questions right now. Sex with no strings attached meant no family talk, no secrets, no whispers in the dark. No hopes. No fears. No getting to the truth of who they were.
She could tell him about the easy things, even mention boarding school and New Hampshire. But he didn’t need to know that underneath her clothes and hair and all her talk she was just some mousy kid from Seattle who’d cried herself to sleep the whole first year in the dorms.
Who’d cried, alone, until someone came along to save her.
She stood up. This conversation was over. They cleaned up in silence and hung their supplies to keep food away from bears. Then Abbi grabbed her things from her tent and stepped away to get ready for bed.
It wasn’t late, but it was dark, clouds had rolled in, and she was exhausted from the early start and the grueling day. She brushed her teeth, popped a squat, and made her way through the dark to the tents.
She heard him rustling about and gave him a minute to settle in first. Running into each other before bed seemed like a bad idea. Ask him something about the firebreak, she goaded herself, to be prepared in case she had to see him with his hair disheveled, T-shirt off, sleepiness in his eyes. Anything to remind them both why their quiet talk in the darkness couldn’t be real.
She was steeling herself against having to see him again when she heard a clatter and a loud curse, followed by a groan.
Instinct kicked in, making her run to him.
“Tyler?” she called. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
She shined her flashlight in the vicinity of the cursing. The light picked up the face of Tyler just as she’d imagined it—messy hair, sleepy eyes, twelve more hours of stubble on his jaw.
It also showed her tent, the top bending to the side like a broken limb hanging off what used to be a sturdy frame.
Now it was her turn to run through a litany of words that would make her mother blush. “What the hell happened?”
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I was going back to my tent and didn’t turn on my flashlight. I wasn’t paying attention and I tripped right over your stakes.” He paused. “I guess my night vision isn’t as good as I thought.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed at the reminder of what she’d asked him their first night.
“Are you okay?”
“Me? Yeah. But your tent, not so much.”
She inspected the damage. It was too bad Tyler was a giant. The pole that ran up the side had crumpled under his weight. The one that arced over the top, holding the entire thing up, was so bent it no longer fit in place. The fabric draped uselessly down the side. “What’d you do, tackle the poor thing?”
“I didn’t expect it to be so flimsy,” he said sheepishly.
“You’re a two-hundred-pound firefighter. If we see bears, remind me to hide behind you.”
Tyler laughed. “Like you’d hide behind anybody.”
“Bears?” Abbi said. “For that one, I’d let you go first.”
“Take my tent,” Tyler said. “I’ll sleep outside.”
She clucked her tongue. “And women say chivalry is dead.”
But as they were swapping out their sleeping bags, she felt a drop on her head, and then another. She held up her palm. Of course the one time they got rain had to be tonight.
“Are you still standing by that offer?” she asked.
Tyler groaned. “I’ll take the crappy tent. It’s my fault it’s messed up.”
“You can’t sleep in there. It’s the smallest size tent they sell—I bet your feet won’t even fit in.”
“I’ll be cozy,” he said.
“And the rain tarp isn’t going to latch on with the frame bent like that.”
“So we’re back to my original plan,” he said. “You sleep in my tent.”
“And you?” she asked.
“I sleep in my tent, too.”
Abbi had to raise an eyebrow at that. “Are you sure you didn’t bust my tent on purpose?”
But the rain was picking up. She could hear the patter on the leaves, feel the cold seeping through her clothes, suddenly embarrassingly thin.
What could she do but say yes?
Tyler’s tent was larger, but there wasn’t room for two sleeping bags side by side. They decided to unzip them, spreading one on the ground and the other on top as though making a regular bed.
Albeit more like a twin bed, on the hard ground, with a shirt balled up as a pillow and everything damp and heated in the close quarters of the tent.
Some nights, Abbi wondered why she did this. It wasn’t for the money or prestige.
But then Tyler crawled into the tent, leaving his boots under the rain flap, and she wouldn’t have traded this moment for a night at the Ritz. Unless Tyler was also there, muscles outlined in his clinging T-shirt, shaking droplets from his hair.
She slid over, wishing her shirt wasn’t so see-through and wet. She’d had to change outside in the rain, sliding on shorts and a fresh T-shirt. And the lacy underwear. It was in her pack, so she should use it—right? Like she could really pretend it was just to sleep in clean clothes and had nothing to do with the tent she was now in, or the person she was sharing it with.
“I don’t bite,” Tyler said in the darkness as he lay down.
“There’s no room.”
He pulled back the top sleeping bag so she could climb in. “Unless you’re planning on sleeping sitting up,” he said.
She got under the blanket. There was no place to go but up against his rock-hard body, warm and wet from outside.
She knew she shouldn’t be doing this. The darkness didn’t change anything between them.
But all she could think as she lay on his chest was that she hoped the rain was going to last all night.