I Hid My Perfect Score novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: His Cabin

I looked straight into the light.

"It's not my model," I said. "It's thirty years of a fire captain's handwriting. I just typed it."

"But you made the call."

"My crew made it home," I said. "That's the story."

Then I walked back into the gym before she could ask anything else.

The clip ran that night anyway.

Nineteen-year-old calls the wind, saves fire crew.

They used the part where I said my crew.

Gavin sent it to me with eleven exclamation points.

Mom didn't send anything at all.

The squad came off the line two days later.

I was waiting in the bay when the brush truck backed in.

Six people climbed down, black from the hairline to the boots, smelling like the inside of a chimney.

Emory was last.

He took off his helmet and looked at me across the bay.

He didn't say anything.

He walked straight to me, and I met him halfway, and he picked me up off the concrete and held on.

He was filthy.

I didn't care.

The crew whistled.

The captain said, "Showers. Now. All of you. You're getting soot on my engine."

An hour later Emory came down the stairs in a clean faded station T-shirt and jeans, his hair still wet.

"I need to see the cabin," he said. "Come with me?"

We drove out Goldstream Road with the windows down.

The air still tasted like smoke.

On the ridge side, the birches were black sticks as far as I could see.

The fire had stopped at the ditch on the far side of the road.

His grandfather's cabin was a hundred yards past it.

One room of gray logs, a tin chimney, a woodpile under a tarp, a window facing the burned ridge.

Standing.

Emory turned the engine off and just sat there.

"Grandpa built it in 1971," he said. "I was going to live here after I graduate. Fix the roof. Start the master's."

"It's still here."

"Because of you." He turned to look at me. "I was standing on that slope, Joss. Right where it went."

"I know. I watched it on a map."

"When the radio came on, I didn't know it was you until you said Tolland." He swallowed. "Nobody in the world calls me Tolland in that voice."

"What voice?"

"Like I'd better listen."

He got out and unlocked the door.

Inside it smelled like spruce and old coffee.

A wood stove. A table with two chairs. A ladder up to a loft under the roof, where a mattress lay made up with a red wool blanket.

The window looked straight out at the black ridge.

He built a fire in the stove without thinking about it.

I stood in the middle of the room and watched his hands.

"Emory."

He looked up from the stove.

"I don't want to go back to the station tonight."

He stood very still.

"Joss."

"I want to stay here," I said. "With you. I'm not your trainee. You're not my field lead. Nobody's grading anything."

"Nobody's watching which side I'm on."

He crossed the room in three steps and stopped right in front of me, the way he had in the airport lot.

"Say it plain," he said, low. "So I know."

"I want you. Tonight. Yes."

His shoulders came down.

"Say it back," I said.

He smiled, slow.

"I want you. Tonight. Yes."

I took his hand and led him to the ladder.

I led him up the ladder with my heart slamming against my ribs.

The loft smelled like red wool and the smoke from the stove below.

He was right behind me, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him through his T-shirt.

I turned at the top and sat back on the mattress.

He stayed standing, bent under the low roof, watching me pull off my boots and my socks.

His eyes didn't leave my hands.

"You first," I said.

"What?"

"Your shirt. Take it off."

His mouth twitched.

Then he reached back and pulled the faded station T-shirt over his head in one motion.

I'd seen his arms a hundred times in the bay.

I'd never seen them like this, in the gray light, with nothing between us but the fact that I'd said it out loud.

"Now you," he said.

"No."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I'm giving the orders tonight, Tolland."

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