Page 29 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

Dani gives up next, mutters something about needing a bed, and disappears up after her. Nolan follows not long after, still talking about the fire, his voice trailing off down the hallway before the sound of a door closing cuts it short.

Reid stretches, groans, and hauls himself off the couch. “I regret every decision that led me to this profession.”

“You say that every fire.”

“I mean it more each time.” He heads up the stairs.

Which leaves Ivy and me on the couch. She's quiet next to me. I ask if Mabel's eaten yet, and she answers with a sound that isn't really a word. A few minutes later her head tips forward. She catches it, straightens.

A few minutes after that, it tips again. This time it doesn't come back up. It settles against my shoulder and stays there.

I go still. Not because I mind. The opposite actually. I look down. She's asleep. Completely gone. The kind of sleep that comes after a day like today. She trusts the couch, the quiet, whatever's keeping her upright, without knowing or caring that it happens to be me.

A few minutes later, Mabel lands on my lap. She circles twice, considers her options, and settles in like she's been invited. Which means I'm pinned between a sleeping woman on one shoulder and a sleeping cat on my legs, with no way to extract myself without disturbing either.

The house is quiet around us. Somewhere upstairs, water runs, then stops. A door closes. Then nothing. It’s just the two of us, the cat, and the settling creak of an old house cooling down for the night.

I should be exhausted enough to fall asleep sitting up. Instead, I'm wide awake, watching the room, aware of the weight of Ivy against my shoulder. She looks peaceful. Unguarded in a way she isn't usually, always half a step ahead of everyone, always working something out. Right now she's asleep, and I'm here, and neither of those facts feels like something I want to change.

I'm not going to pretend I understand everything about that, but I don't move. Not when my arm starts to fall asleep along with everything else. Not when Mabel resettles and digs a claw briefly into my leg. Not for the better part of an hour, until Ivy stirs on her own.

She wakes up slowly, confused about where she is. Then she registers the shoulder under her cheek and sits up fast enough Mabel gives an offended meow at the disruption.

“Did I fall asleep on you?”

“Little bit.”

She looks around, taking in the empty room, the dark windows, the general sense that a lot of time has passed without her permission. “Why didn't you wake me?”

“Didn't want to disturb you.” I glance down at Mabel, glaring at both of us for the inconvenience. “Or her.”

That gets a small, tired laugh out of Ivy, enough to take the edge off whatever embarrassment she was working up to. “Sorry. I didn't mean to just pass out on you.”

“I didn't mind.”

She gets to her feet, stretching out a day's worth of stiffness. I scoop Mabel off my lap, setting her down in the warm spot Ivy just left, and stand up too.

If the cat had been the reason I stayed, I could have moved her an hour ago. I didn't. Ivy doesn't say anything about that.

We stand here a few moments longer in the mostly dark room. There's something different in the air between us that wasn't there this morning.

“Night, Beck.”

“Night.”

nine

Ivy

Russ announced it somewhere between the mashed potatoes and Annie's peach cobbler last night. Saturday had eaten our scheduled day off, and operational needs being what they are, Monday is ours instead.

The whole table reacted like Russ announced a national holiday.

“Alder Lake,” Tessa said, before he'd even finished the sentence.

Nobody argued.

That's how I end up hauling chairs out of the truck bed at nine in the morning, shoulders aching, legs still stiff from a full day of fire line work on Saturday. Everyone else looks about the same. Tessa's moving like she slept wrong on every part of her body. Reid rolls his neck and winces. Even Beck, unloading a cooler, has the careful, deliberate movements of someone whose muscles have filed a formal complaint.