I wake up with a start.

My heart is thudding in my chest, making me wonder if I was in the middle of a bad dream.

The room is hot, dark. Shane is beside me, sleeping on his stomach, one arm draped across my chest. I’m surprised he can’t feel how fast my heart is going, that it’s not waking him up.

I take in a deep breath and will myself to calm down.

After my mother and I came home, I stole away to Shane’s place, seduced him like I was some sort of goddess. I can’t explain it. I just wanted him so badly, wanted to give myself to him in the event that it was our last time.

Was that our last time? I think, staring at him, how beautiful he looks when he’s sleeping, the soft curve of his full lips, the plane of his nose, his strong jaw. He has such a classic face, the ones you see in the old paintings, then later on Hollywood actors who could say a thousand words with just a glance, the last of a dying breed.

Shane feels like one of the last true men. Someone honest and true, shooting straight like an arrow every time. He’s alpha when he needs to be and vulnerable when doesn’t. There’s no pretention when it comes to him, no front or façade. He’s like a motherfucking cowboy legend, drinking whisky, fighting off bears and telling the woman he loves that he’ll move mountains for her. He’ll move them all for me.

If I stay here with Shane, I’ll be beyond lucky.

I know this.

And maybe that’s why I keep thinking about leaving.

Because I have to.

This whole entire time I’ve been holding back, guarding my heart like a stray dog guards his food. I know I could let go but I also know I have to leave.

I haven’t lost my job yet. I worked so hard for it and, yeah, maybe the longer I’m here the more I realize that it doesn’t feed my soul. Neither does the condo, or the nightly dinners with friends who only talk about fashion and celebrity gossip and getting the most likes on their Instagram posts, nothing from their hearts. Neither did Samuel or any of the boys I dated. None of it fed me. It kept me alive but it didn’t give me a lust for life.

A lust for love.

Shane does that.

He was part of my past.

Now he can be part of my future.

If I take that leap and leave everything I worked for behind.

Shane and I were young and in love.

I thought we were unstoppable, as those who are young and in love do, believing it’s enough to weather any storm.

Now we’re older and…

I sigh, feeling like I can’t get enough air. I slowly pick up his arm and lift it off my chest, then get to my feet.

Flash.

The room turns a shade of white.

Lightning.

I go to the window and look out.

The wind is picking up, blowing in the curtains, the air dancing with the smell of electricity and change.

Thunder follows with a long, loud bellow, like God is shouting across the land.

There’s a reckoning afoot.

I slip on my underwear and one of Shane’s t-shirts and I run out of the house, like I’m being drawn outside, a magnet to the storm.

It’s fucking unreal.

I throw my arms out and laugh as the sky dances with more lighting, flash after flash, fork lightning over the town, over the river. Thunder rumbles and shakes and I feel like I might just fly away from here, spread my wings and become the storm itself. Swirling, tumbling, twisting – all that power.

I run a bit further, the tinder dry grass hot under my bare feet until I can see everything perfectly. The dark clouds roll in, obscuring the mountain range on the other side of the river, though they bring no rain.

The wind blows my hair behind me and I can’t stop smiling.

I pretended to be a goddess earlier but I feel like a goddess now.

This is real.

And my heart is shocked alive when I realize Shane’s love for me is as real as it comes.

As real as this storm and the lightning and this land.

As real as it’s ever been.

Changing, churning, becoming and yet always staying true.

It’s never too late, the words flit across my head, never too late to start again.

I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.

To fight my demons, to fight for love.

I’m going to stay.

Lightning fills the sky, my skin and hair buzzing as it strikes the ponderosa pine by the road.

I jump, let out a yelp.

“Holy shit!”

The tree goes up in flames immediately and I stand here, staring, trying to realize that this is also real, my nostrils filling with the smell of charred wood and smoke.

The lightning strikes again and my world goes white.

I’m vibrating, every cell in my body jumping like I’m being hit with resuscitation paddles.

With hair standing straight up and out, I whip around in trance to see where the lightning hit.

Behind me.

The worker’s cottage.

Where my mom is sleeping in her bed, drugged on pain medication after her surgery.

Oh fuck no.

I scream and start running up hill to the cottage as it starts to burn.

“No!” I yell. “Mom! Mom! Wake up! Fire! Oh my god, oh my god, fire!”

I keep running toward the building, my heart trying to leap out of my throat, my arms waving in the air even though there’s no one to see me. The lightning struck at the back of the cottage, where the kitchen is, and the orange flames already start licking the roof, spreading down the sides.

“Help!” I scream and my words barely travel over the lightning and the thunder and the flames and I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m not about to stand and watch.

I run right inside the house, heading for her bedroom.

I stop and scream.

The kitchen is completely on fire and even standing in the middle of the house for a second I can see the flames travel along the ceiling, eating way at the dried-out wood and spreading like greedy red fingers, consuming everything in sight.

“Mom!” I cry out, the smoke already filling the rooms. Jesus, help me, this house is going to be completely gone in a few minutes.

I run to her bedroom, just as flames reach out to grab me.

I scream, my skin so hot I might ignite and start looking for something to cover me.

“Rachel,” my mom croaks through the smoke. Alive!

“I’m getting you out of there, can you get up?” I yell back.

My mother starts coughing loudly and I can’t even see her in her bedroom, the smoke is so thick.

“Rachel!”

I turn around to see Shane standing at the door in his briefs, staring at me wide-eyed. “Get back!” he yells, running in and grabbing my arm, pulling me away just as flames leap across the doorway.

“Shane, please,” I plead, tears streaming down my face while smoke fills my lungs. I try and tell him I need to see my mother but the words are buried by a coughing fit.

“Vernalee!” he yells into the bedroom. “Stay where you are, I’m coming.”

He starts to pull me out of the house and I’m fighting him, needing to help.

“Rachel please,” he says, pushing me out onto the grass. In the distance, the fire from the ponderosa pine is spreading along the grass toward the barn. Sirens ring through the air, coming from town. But none of it matters, none of it sinks in.

I have to get to my mother. I have to, I have to.

We’ve come so far, it can’t end now.

“Listen to me, Rachel.” Shane is in my face, shaking me back to him. “Go into the house, wake up dad and grandpa, get the hose, buckets of water, get as many thick and big blankets as you can get.”

I shake my head, swallowed by panic. “I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving my mom.”

“I’m getting your mother out, okay? But it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to hurt. Do you understand?”

“Shane, please,” I cry out.

“I’m getting her out. I promise you that. Now go, now!”

He yells at me and then turns, running back into the inferno.

I can’t even move. I’m just staring at him as he goes, disappearing into the burning building without even any clothing to protect him.

“Rachel!” Hank’s voice rings out from behind me, barely audible above the flames. “Jesus, the barn! Dad, call 911, get the hose.”

I can’t even turn around. I can’t breathe. My lungs feel closed up with soot and the heat from the cottage is growing deeper and deeper until it feels like my hair is burning.

I stumble backward, right into Hank’s arms.

“Rachel, is Vernalee in there?”

“Yes. And Shane’s in there,” I gasp. “He went to get her.”

“Oh dear god. Oh god,” he cries out. He looks at me. “We need a first aid kit, blankets. Under the sink.”

I blink at him, my eyes are burning.

“Rachel!” he yells in my face. “Do it!”

I snap out of it. A jolt to my heart.

Everything I love is at stake.

Everyone I love.

I start running toward the house just as Dick is running out of it, moving fast for his age.

“I called 911, they were already on their way,” he says, heading for the hose by the barn.

There’s too much to do at once. I know that no horses are inside the stable right now but even so, Dick has to protect it and get that other fire under control. Meanwhile Hank and Shane are trying to get my mother out.

I grab the heavy-duty first aid kit from under the kitchen sink, then pick up a stack of thick quilts that Jeanine made ages ago, stacked along the backs of the couches, and start running back.

The sight nearly ruins me.

The whole cottage is up in flames and rafters and pieces of the room are starting to fall down, sending sparks up into the dark sky. Against it is Hank’s silhouette and only Hank’s.

He stares at the building and I know what he’s thinking, what he fears.

In the distance, the sirens get closer.

I manage to walk forward until the heat blasts me like opening an oven. I drop the blankets at my feet and go to Hank, grabbing onto his sleeve, holding on for dear life.

“What do we do?” I croak. “What do we do?”

“We pray, sweetie,” he says to me, his voice choked. He puts his hand over mine and presses down. “We pray that they’ll make it out.”

How can this be happening?

How can everything I love possibly be gone in a second?

I hold onto Hank and watch and wait as the flames jump into the sky, as the seconds tick down, as it looks like they might never come out.

They might never come out.