Page 112 of The Goat Next Door

He looks hollowed out. Bleak.

“Emmy,” he says. His voice is incredibly quiet, but it doesn’t have that warm, gravelly weight from this morning. It sounds thin. Distant.

“Hey,” I say, holding up the board like a peace offering. “You didn’t text me back. I’ve been sitting in my kitchen for three hours waiting. You told me… you said when you got back…”

“I’m busy, Ember.”

The smile on my face falters.

The contrast between the man who bit my neck this morning and the man standing here right now is so sharp it makes my head spin.

I force myself to keep a light expression, but my voice feels a little tighter now, a little less steady. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Brooks lets out a long, slow breath through his nose, his chest expanding against the fabric of his t-shirt. He looks past me, staring at the line of trees separating our properties, as if he can’t bear to look at my face.

“It means this was a mistake,” he says quietly. “I’m exhausted, I’m running on no sleep, and I let things get out of hand.”

I take a step forward, forcing him to either back up into his hallway or stand inches from me. He doesn’t move.

“Out of hand? This morning, you were… you looked at me and you told me exactly what you wanted. You didn’t seem confused at all.”

For a second, I honestly wonder if I’ve imagined the last few weeks. Maybe I’ve assigned meaning where there wasn’t any. Maybe I’ve been translating a language he was never actually speaking.

He lets out a sharp breath. “I was running on adrenaline. I was being reckless.”

“Reckless,” I repeat. “Is that what you call it?”

“It’s more than that,” he says, his jaw tight. “I was at a fire this afternoon. We were pinned down in the brush, the heat was spiking, and Davis was screaming for a line report. I had the radio in my hand, and for a second—a full, terrifying second—I couldn’t hear him. All I could think about was the way your kitchen felt this morning. I was standing in the middle of a blaze, and I was picturing you. I almost missed the transition call. I almost got us burned.”

The silence in the room feels deafening.

He paces away, his voice dropping low. “Davis caught it. He didn’t say anything over the comms, but when we got back to the station, he cornered me by the engine. Asked me if I’d left my head in a bakery window. He made some joke about the city girl’s farmhouse. He asked if I was getting distracted.”

I actually flinch.

It’s small, involuntary, but his eyes catch it anyway.

I swallow hard, the humiliation burning hot and fast behind my eyes, but I push through it. I want to understand. I need to know where this wall came from.

“So what? Davis is a gossip. Everyone in the valley gossips. Since when do you care what the guys at the station say about your personal life?”

“It’s not about the gossip, Ember,” he snaps. “It can’t happen. I have to be sharp. I have to be safe. I can’t let myself get swept up in how much I want you when people’s lives depend on me keeping it together. I just can’t. That’s how people get hurt. That’s how Tommy died.”

He rubs a hand over his face, his jaw tight.

“My job isn’t a nine-to-five, Emmy. It’s dangerous. I spend half my life walking into burning structures, dealing with flipped log rigs, and making calls that dictate whether a crew gets home in one piece. I already have Sophie at home waiting for me. She already has to carry the stress of a dad who might not walk through the door. I can’t do that to you, too. I can’t ask you to sit across the driveway and take on that kind of weight, and I sure as hell can’t handle the pressure of worrying about what this life would do to you while I’m out on a call.”

I stare at him, my heart breaking, but the unfairness of it makes a flash of hot anger rise up through my sadness.

This conversation feels so one-sided. He’s telling me what’s happening and I don’t seem to get a say.

“Stop doing that,” I shake my head. “Stop deciding things in my place, Brooks. You don’t get to stand there and look at me and decide what I can and cannot handle, or what’s too much stress for me, or how much weight I’m allowed to carry.”

My face feels hot with anger now, but underneath it is something worse—embarrassment. Because somewhere along the line, I stopped feeling like the fun little summer distraction and started feeling stupidly hopeful instead.

“I’m protecting my daughter,” he interrupts, his voice dropping into a harsh, fierce whisper. “I spent years picking up the pieces of my daughter’s life after Lauren started traveling. I am not going to confuse her. I am not going to let her see some neighbor drifting in and out of our house because I lost my head during a heatwave.”

“Drifting in and out?” I repeat, my voice trembling. “Is that what you think this is? I’ve been your stupid little secret, Brooks—hiding in the kitchen, waiting for your texts, acting like I didn’t exist the second you had to put on that uniform.”