Chapter 1 – Smoke That Won’t Clear
Pike
Dinner was quiet.
Not silent—forks scraped, chairs creaked, Barrett cracked a joke about Juan’s appetite that normally would’ve earned a chorus of groans. But tonight it just fizzled out, his laugh clipped by the cough he couldn’t shake since the fire.
Someone muttered Colton was lucky. “Lucky it didn’t hit the heart.”
Colton’s only answer was a grunt. His jaw locked as his hand curled into a fist against his thigh. He shifted wrong, just slightly, and pain rippled across his face before he forced it down, forced his mouth into something almost like a smile.
Lucky.
The word crawled through me like ash under my tongue.
The town had been called lucky too. Lucky the fire shifted. Lucky the wind bent north instead of east. Lucky the line held. We’d been called lucky—Barrett and me, one breath away from cooking alive in that canyon. Clay and Jace, dragged out of smoke and flame. Will, coughing like his lungs might give out but still on his feet.
Lucky.
No. The word was wrong. Like spitting blood into dirt.
I chewed slow, eyes on every man around the table. Jace sitting stiff, shoulders tight, movements small and deliberate, like he was afraid his ribs would give if he breathed too deep. Barrett grinning too big, too loud, until his cough choked him off and he leaned back, swallowing it like pride was stronger than his lungs. Will’s voice still hoarse when he spoke, Liz’s hand circling Clay’s knee when he thought no one saw, grounding him, steadying him. And Colton—Colton biting through each shift, each lift of his fork, jaw clenched, sweat beading at his temple.
Every man here was alive. And every man was still bleeding in ways we couldn’t see.
And I hated it.
Dinner ended fast. Chairs scraped back, dishes stacked. No stories. No bickering. Just half-smiles, soft words, and then scattering. Porches. Beds. Silence.
Grace lingered.
She always did. Sometimes she helped Liz with dishes, sometimes she just sat in the quiet. Tonight, she fell into step beside me as we left the house. No words. Just her presence, steady.
We reached my porch. She tilted her head, voice soft. “Coffee?”
I nodded. Couldn’t trust my voice to hold.
Inside, I moved like muscle memory. Cups. Kettle. Steady hands, steady motions. Inside? I was burning. Every image crowding in—the fire’s roar, the silence when we thought we’d lost Clay, Colton gasping for air, Barrett and me nearly left in a canyon grave. The smell of smoke still lived in me, crawled up the back of my throat no matter how I tried to forget.
Grace sat at the table. Watching. Always watching. She didn’t press. Didn’t speak. Just saw me. And she saw too much.
My hands gripped the counter, knuckles white. The kettle hissed, but I didn’t move.
Because something in me cracked.
All the control, all the walls, all the soldier’s discipline—gone.
For weeks I’d forced it down. The grief. The anger. The terror that we’d come within seconds of burying half the men I called brothers. I could see Colton’s hand tightening into a fist, Barrett swallowing pain behind a cough, Clay pale as death with Liz holding him together. And beneath all of it, the truth ripping at me—how close I’d come to losing them all.
I couldn’t bury it anymore.
Grace’s eyes were still on me, steady, quiet. Like she knew. Like she’d been waiting.
And in that moment, in the silence of my kitchen, with the weight pressing hard enough to split bone, I felt the last thread of control snap.
I was done holding back.
