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And Travis Raines, who went back into a burning truck three times, has hands that are shaking when he touches my cheek.

“Travis,” I whisper.

“Give me a minute,” he says. “Honey. Just give me one minute.”

I give him a minute.

I put my hand over his and keep it there while he breathes. In and out, slowly, like he’s counting.

Up front, Rob adjusts the radio volume and looks out his window. He doesn’t say a word.

Outside, the wind is roaring across the meadow, shaking the truck hard enough that I can feel it through the seat. Somewhere south of us, three hundred yards off, the fire is working on the barns.

“I was so scared,” I say.

“I know.”

“I was so stupid. I shouldn’t have come out here. You told me not to stop for anything, not even the roses, and I didn’t listen, and I came out here anyway, because I wanted to see our initials one more time before I called her. And it was so dumb, Travis, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry⁠—”

“Lindsey.”

“—and you could have gotten hurt coming after me, and Rob, and⁠—”

“Lindsey. Stop.”

I stop.

He takes his hands off my face. He takes my hands in his. He looks at me in the back seat of Brush 1, with the wind going over us.

“Your timing’s terrible,” he says. “A red flag day. Fifty-mile wind. Out here alone.” His mouth tugs up. “I’ll give you that one.”

“I know.”

“But a power line came down. That part’s not on you.” He squeezes my hands. “And once you were in it, you did everything right. You didn’t drive through it. You went to the black. You went to the stone house. You stayed on the phone. You stayed calm.”

“I was not calm. I said shit about forty times.”

“You were calm enough. You waved at me.” His thumbs move over my knuckles. “Half the guys I served with wouldn’t have kept their heads that well.”

From the front seat, Rob says, “For the record, I heard at least twenty of those shits over the radio.”

I laugh, and it turns into a cough, and Travis holds my hands while I cough. When I stop, he’s still looking at me.

And there it is.

It’s that look, the one from the station bay at Halloween, quiet and stunned and full of something.

“Travis,” I say. “I meant it. The text.”

He waits.

“I know I said it in a text like a teenager,” I say, “and I know it was a dumb way to say it, and I was waiting for a sunset or a song or something, and instead I said it to you while you were working a red flag day. But I meant it. I love you. I’ve loved you since you fixed my furnace igniter with a headlamp in your teeth. Maybe before. Maybe since the morning you came down those stairs in your boxers to yell at me about Dolly Parton.”

“I wasn’t in my damn boxers.”

“It was close enough.”

His mouth curves.