Chapter Twenty-Four
Her lungs burned. The backs of her legs. Her arms. Her head hurt when she opened her eyes, so she kept them closed.
Let the fire come. She couldn’t do anything about it. She was defeated. She just wanted to close her eyes and burn in shame.
The smell of smoke was everywhere, deep in her hair and her skin. She hurt so much. She rolled her head to the side, trying to get away from the bright light of the flames.
But the light didn’t shift. She couldn’t make it go away.
And although her skin felt hot, there was something cool and soothing on her hands.
She was on her back but her head was propped up. Everything felt soft. She opened her eyes a crack, afraid of what she might find.
The light wasn’t the hot orange of fire. It was fluorescent and white.
She blinked her eyes all the way open. She wasn’t in the woods anymore. That softness was a pillow. The things on her hands were bandages. She was lying in a bed. She was in the hospital.
Holy fuck. She was in the hospital.
She had been floating, somewhere between passed out or asleep. But now it all came back. The memory of where she had been rammed into her chest and she started coughing uncontrollably, hard, painful racks that made her spit up something thick and black.
The coughing brought everyone running.
Doctors, nurses, strange faces hovered over her bed, checking her vitals, asking if she felt okay as if “okay” was anywhere near the same time zone as how she felt. She felt the word “Tyler” forming somewhere deep inside her, but she couldn’t get it out.
She mumbled something about water and a woman held a glass for her with a straw, but it hurt to swallow and soon she fell asleep.
…
“But she’s going to be okay, right?”
Abbi awoke to voices at the foot of her bed.
“She’s very weak, Mr. McCall. But she’s lucky you found her in time.”
“I’ll take care of her,” he told the nurse. “I promise.”
Immobile in the bed, Abbi tried to protest. The way they were talking about her, it was as if she wasn’t even there.
“I’m fine,” she heard a voice croak, raspy and raw, and couldn’t believe she sounded that way. She had to say it again before they’d stop conferring about her long enough to hear she was awake.
The nurse came to one side to check her vitals. Tyler immediately rushed to the other. She wanted to protest that he didn’t need to worry, but she was so flooded with relief to see him by her side, she was blinking back tears.
Tyler, misinterpreting, stroked her hand and told her not to exert herself.
“You’re coming along nicely, Abigail,” the nurse said.
“Am I going to need surgery?”
“Most of the damage is from smoke inhalation. You managed to run uphill enough to get away from the worst of the flames. You have some burns, but there should be minimal scarring. When you’re ready, I’ll have the doctor come in to discuss your options.”
She squeezed Tyler’s hand. “Now,” she said. “Bring the doctor in now.”
The nurse hesitated, saying she should rest, but Abbi didn’t want to spend any more time lying flat on her back than was absolutely necessary.
“Baby,” Tyler said when they were alone. “You can wait. You don’t have to rush. You’re allowed to take some time.”
“No use just sitting around,” she said, then fell into a coughing fit that didn’t subside until Tyler helped her breathe through an oxygen tank by her bed.
“You’re not making a convincing case for fine,” he said as he held the mask to her mouth.
“It’s okay,” she said when she could breathe again. “Seriously.” She tried to smile. “I assume I have you to blame for landing me in this hospital bed?”
Tyler must have left his joking bone out in the woods. He looked pained and his words came out too fast, tripping over themselves in his fear.
“I was so worried about you, Abbi. You can’t imagine it. I was looking and looking for you, and when I found you, I—” He choked, emotion all over his face.
“I know,” she said as tears slid down her cheeks. “I was so scared. All I could think about was you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry I let you run off on your own. I kept thinking about how terrified you must have been, and I didn’t for one second want you to think you were alone, that anything bad was going to happen to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there sooner, I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry if I let you down in any way.”
It should have been exactly what she wanted to hear. When she’d let herself hope she might make it out of those woods, she’d imagined him running to her side like this. She’d tell him she loved him, she wanted to be with him, and everything would magically work out in some perfect fantasy world where there were no more problems, no more fears, and nothing standing between them.
But this didn’t feel that way at all. She was lying on her back, weak and feeble as he towered over her. The helplessness made a knot tighten inside her. He kept going, a string of apologies, and she closed her eyes as the words slammed into her, each promise to take care of her another rope lashing her to the bed, squeezing her tight.
The only thing that made it bearable was the realization that none of the words were for her. The more Tyler begged for forgiveness, the more she knew who he was really talking to.
This wasn’t the declaration of love she’d been hoping for. These were his words for Scott. All the things Tyler had never gotten to say. All the things he still felt bad about. The mistakes he was so sure he’d made.
“Tyler.” She opened her eyes. Her head was throbbing. She hoped she wasn’t about to start coughing. But she swallowed and managed to contain the twitch in her throat.
“Please, Tyler. Stop. It’s over. I’m okay. I—”
“You’re not okay!” he cried out, and she flinched. Who was this man shouting over her bed?
She’d been so sure that if she ever made it out of the fire alive, the first thing she’d do was fall into Tyler’s arms and say that she loved him. There was no reason to wait for a better time that might never come.
But she thought of Cash and the lies he’d made her believe. That she needed him. That she was helpless on her own. She couldn’t stand the thought of Tyler treating her the same way.
She wanted to tear off the bandages and get the fuck out of there, to show him she was just as capable as ever. But she barely had the strength to protest. She closed her eyes. She had to get them on a different subject, make them stop talking past each other like this.
“I don’t understand what happened,” she said, trying to get them back on firmer ground. “Do you know what caused the fire?”
“Abbi, you don’t have to worry about that. You just need to focus on getting better.”
But of course she had to worry. It was the only thing in this whole mess she could wrap her head around. Something she could deal with even as she lay flat on her back. And it was a conversation they could have that wasn’t just him apologizing and making her feel worse.
“It can’t have been lightning,” she said. “I would have seen something. Was it hot enough for a spontaneous burn? I didn’t think that would happen with the winds on that ridge. Is the fire contained? Is it still spreading?”
Maybe Tyler was right and she wasn’t well enough to handle this, because just thinking about the fire still raging so close to Gold Mountain was enough to make her heart beat too hard in her chest, where everything felt tender and bruised.
“It’s under control,” he assured her. “They sprayed retardant and are bringing in water. They evacuated the houses closest to the road, but that was an extra precaution. As long as the wind remains steady, it’ll stay contained. Another day pumping water up there and everything will be fine.”
But nothing about that helped Abbi relax. It was just a reminder of how wrong she had been.
Abbi may have worried that Tyler was too wrapped up in his grief to really have feelings for her. She may have thought, too, that she couldn’t be with someone who thought his main role in her life was to fix her, to save her, as though she wasn’t strong enough on her own.
But that was nothing compared to how awful it felt to be wrong about something she’d worked so hard for, something she really thought she’d understood.
Tyler’s words twisted a hard knot inside her, right in the place deeper than where the smoke got, more painful than any of her burns.
“The firebreak,” she said. “I thought for sure it was unnecessary. I was willing to stake my career on it. Hell, I was willing to stake the safety of this whole town.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But you were right. We can’t predict what’s going to happen, and it’s not fair to gamble with people’s lives. I’ll withdraw the endangered species petition and all of my objections. The hiring committee can find an outside candidate with more experience and better leadership. I’ll back down and stay in this same position. Just—” She blinked back tears. “Tell my boss I’m sorry, and tell Walker and Chip to ignore what I said.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt deflated. She’d rather run through a hundred wildfires than ever have to feel this small again.
“I know it’s hard,” Tyler said. “But the firebreak is going to help a lot of people. We’ll get it built quickly, and you’ll see it’s not even that bad. Then everyone here will have more peace of mind.”
She sighed. “Not even that bad” wasn’t much of a selling point, but maybe Tyler was right. Maybe she should let it go.
But there was something still bothering her, and nothing Tyler said made her uneasiness go away.
“It just seems crazy that there’d be a fire right there, so close to the proposed site,” she said. “We’d assumed a fire would start farther in the backcountry and get closer to town. But this? I don’t get it. Don’t you think it seems like a big coincidence?”
She expected some explanation about wind, temperature, the kindling along the ridge. Something Tyler could offer that would help this all make sense.
But he looked away, and she narrowed her eyes. What was going on?
She wished she could sit up. Stand. Not that she’d be anywhere close to his height, but it would make this whole exchange feel a little more equal. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d imagined the first words to come out of her mouth would be that she loved him and wasn’t going to waste another second holding it in.
But that was a lifetime ago. It was an Abbi who hadn’t been in that fire, hadn’t been hurt and come through it. And it was Abbi imagining a Tyler who genuinely wanted to help.
Now, though, instead of giving reassurances, he could barely meet her eyes.
“Just tell me,” she said.
She knew he didn’t want to. It was written all over his face. But he must have known she wasn’t going to let this go, because he said, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
“What?”
“I think it was Russ.”
“You’re shitting me.” Now she really wished she could stand. Tear off her bandages. Run out of here and punch something solid and satisfying.
Preferably Russ.
“Abbi, I don’t want you worrying about it right now.”
“Either tell me what’s going on or get out of here.” She didn’t have patience for anything else.
Finally, Tyler relented. “Russ came into the office telling me he’d been up on Ridge Line Road and thought he saw something. He said he was doing a roof job, that he wasn’t anywhere near the woods. But I don’t know. He’d have to have damn good eyesight to see something from the road that no one else noticed until the blaze had already grown. And when I told him you were out there—Abbi, he tried to act like it was nothing but when he realized it wasn’t, he freaked.”
Abbi took a deep breath—or as deep as she could, under the circumstances.
“You’re telling me Russ set the fire.”
She bit her tongue. Hard. She wanted to rip the tubes and bandages from herself and scream. But all she could do was lie on her back and taste blood.
“I told the police,” Tyler said. “They’ve already picked him up. As far as I know, he’s being investigated right now.”
“No,” she said. “No, no, no.” Her heart was racing. She was starting to sweat. How could she have woken up feeling gratitude for this man?
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will herself back to sleep so she could wake up again and do it right this time. Tyler was going to rush to the side of her bed and tell her he loved her. She was going to take his hand and tell him she loved him back.
But she opened her eyes, and he was still telling her not to worry, still insisting she didn’t have to deal with Russ because the police would take care of everything. The life she’d thought they might be able to figure out together?
It was gone.
“I know it’s fucked up,” Tyler went on. “I understand you’re angry. But Russ is never going to—”
“I’m not talking about him!” Abbi cried. “I’m talking about you.”
Tyler stopped mid-sentence. “What?”
She couldn’t believe it. “Were you just going to let me sit here and think I’d been wrong about the firebreak? Watch me bawl my eyes out second-guessing myself while you got your agenda pushed through? You’re telling me this was arson specifically set at the firebreak site—not at all the kind of event it’s intended to prevent. And yet you were still going to say nothing and use it to your advantage.”
“But it would help,” Tyler said, looking aghast. “It doesn’t matter what causes the fire. It burns through here anyway.”
“And you get what you need for your resume, with the added bonus of keeping me in line.”
“Jesus, Abbi, that’s not what I mean! Why won’t you listen to me and let me take care of this while you rest?”
“No.” She struggled to sit up. But instead of helping her, he pushed her back down.
“You need to stop obsessing about what happened. Just lie still or the bandages will get messed up.”
Who could think about bandages right now? Who could ignore the bullshit he was spewing at her? “You just said the fire was caused by Russ and able to be contained with traditional methods. That’s not a case for a firebreak.”
“But in the future—” he started.
“In the future, Russell Young won’t be walking around starting fires for who knows what fucking reason, because that really is too batshit crazy for me to think about right now.”
“You’re injured, Abbi. You’re recovering. We shouldn’t even be talking about this now. Let me handle what you need. You focus on getting well enough to go home.”
“Don’t you dare,” Abbi said, the horror of days of bed rest filling her head while Tyler ran around playing superhero. Was he even listening to what she was saying? Or was he just another Cash, making her feel helpless and indebted so he and he alone could step in?
“Are you even listening to yourself?” he cried, staring at her. “You’re making me out to be the enemy when I’m the one keeping you safe.”
“By lying to me in the name of protection?”
“By doing whatever it takes!” His shout was so loud it seemed to suck up all the noise in the room, so that after the echo of his voice faded a hard silence fell, punctured only by the whirr of the machines attached to Abbi, the beeps and clicks that said she was alive.
When she finally opened her mouth, it was only years of practice holding back tears that kept her steady enough to speak.
“You think I’m not thinking clearly, Tyler, but I am. Probably for the first time since we’ve met. You want someone you can take care of, someone you can rescue, someone who’ll take away your guilt about Scott. But I’m not that person. I’ve got my life here, a job I care about, a town I’ll do anything to protect. That’s why I’m not going to go bulldozing just so you can have an extra gold sticker on your resume. I take back what I said earlier. I do know what I’m talking about. And I’m putting the report through.”
She closed her eyes. She wouldn’t let herself cry, no matter how much everything hurt. She was done with men who only saw her as someone to take care of. Who were, at the end of the day, only thinking of themselves.
“You’re just saying that,” Tyler started, trying to sound gentle even as that edge to him was clear. But Abbi shook her head.
“I’m grateful you saved my life. But you can’t replace Scott with me and think now everything works out perfectly. And you can’t turn me into someone who just lies here while you make all the decisions. You come in here sure you know what’s best, no matter what I tell you about my actual life or the town that I live in. Do you get how fucked up that is?”
“You’re making excuses,” he started. “You’re just looking for any reason to—”
“I don’t need this, Tyler,” she said, before she lost her nerve. “And I don’t—” She swallowed, choking on the words, and then forced herself to say it. “I don’t need you.”
She thought he was going to reach for her hand, try to talk her out of this. She almost wanted him to, so she’d have an excuse to change her mind.
But instead he pulled away.
“You don’t even know what that means,” he said, running both hands through his hair.
“See? All you know how to do is say that I’m wrong. If it doesn’t fit in your neat little world where everything is fixable and always makes sense, then it must be because I don’t know what I’m talking about. And if it’s something that directly affects me, like, I don’t know, say how this fire got started? You make the unilateral decision that I don’t need to know what’s going on. All you care about is your agenda. Your perspective. I may as well not even be here.”
She’d never wanted to be so wrong in her life. For him to prove that she didn’t have his number completely. That he wasn’t trying to control the uncontrollable. Fix the unfixable. Ease his guilt the only way he knew how.
But she wasn’t wrong. That was the problem. Because no matter that she was crying and in pain, in a hospital room surrounded by balloons and flowers and get well cards but still, fundamentally, alone.
No matter that she needed him now more than ever. Tyler McCall looked at her lying in that bed, wrapped in bandages, and rather than tell her yet again how wrong she was, he went ahead and proved her right. He became that man she’d met at Mackenzie’s, the one who barely said more than a few words in a row and gave her nothing of himself to work with.
That night, it had been enough. But it wasn’t anymore. She didn’t just want a good time and a way to forget. She wanted to matter. She wanted to be loved.
Not for a night, not as a joke, not as part of some big lie they’d told themselves they needed to concoct in order to look good on the job. But it wasn’t going to happen, because Tyler, that bastard, took one, slow look at her and walked away.
At the doorway, he stopped.
“You don’t think you need anyone. You’re so fucking sure you’ve got this on your own. But all that means is that you’re missing something. Something big.” He tapped his finger on the doorframe, as though thinking. “I feel sorry for you, Blue. You don’t believe someone can care about you without having some kind of ulterior motive. You can’t even recognize what love is when it’s holding you in its arms.”
“At least I know what love isn’t,” Abbi hissed. But it didn’t come out very strong.
“Yeah, I know. You’ve got it all figured out.” He waved his hand, dismissing her just like that. But then he looked at her as if for the last time. “Just tell me one more thing. What’s this stuff about cash?”
Abbi jerked so hard she felt the bandages scrape her skin. She tried to keep the trembling from her voice when she asked what he meant.
“You were repeating it as I carried you out. You kept saying no, and I thought it was about me. But then you started saying cash.”
In the woods, as she’d run for her life, she’d thought that maybe, if Tyler loved her, he’d find her and tell her everything was okay. That she was okay. Neither of their past mistakes had to define who they were now, or who they wanted to be in their futures.
Just another way she’d been wrong.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”
He shook his head. “You were never going to let me in, were you?”
But Abbi didn’t have an answer to that. She turned her head to the wall and closed her eyes until she heard the click of the door, and he was gone.