The rain has returned with a vengeance, hammering the roof in sheets that rattle the windows. Thunder rolls across the sky like God clearing his throat before a lecture, and the storm builds with the kind of intensity that makes the cabin walls feel paper-thin.
Oscar and Konnor retreated looking half-drugged by the weather—something about rain on a roof and horizontal surfaces being an irresistible combination.
I envy them. Thunder has never lulled me to sleep; it keeps me wired, alert, waiting for the next crack like my nervous system expects bad news to arrive via lightning bolt.
And then it's just me and Jake, the dying fire, and a silence that feels different from before.
He adds another log to the flames because the humidity has turned the cabin into something resembling a damp sponge, and the fire fights back against the moisture creeping into everything.
He refills his whiskey without asking if I want anything, which is fair since I've been declining alcohol for days.
The amber liquid catches the light as he pours, and shadows dance across his face in ways that make him look both older and softer than I've seen him.
"You're staring," he says without looking up.
"You're interesting to look at." The words leave my mouth before my filter can catch them. "That came out wrong. I meant your face does interesting things in firelight."
"My face does interesting things." His mouth twitches. "That's what you're going with."
"I'm tired and my brain-to-mouth filter has officially clocked out for the evening." I tuck my legs beneath me on the couch, pulling a worn blanket over my lap. "Feel free to ignore anything I say for the next hour."
"Noted." He settles into the armchair across from me, whiskey in hand, and the fire crackles between us like punctuation. "Though for the record, your brain-to-mouth filter seems pretty functional. You managed to maintain a fake identity for almost a week."
"Bird was a moment of panic genius, and I stand by it."
"You saw a bird through the window."
"Under duress and with a head injury, I'll remind you." I pull the blanket higher. "Also, Sanders isn't exactly exotic. You don't get to judge."
"Sanders is my actual name."
"Which is exactly what someone with a fake name would say."
He almost smiles—not quite, but close enough that I count it as a victory. The fire pops, sending sparks dancing upward, and the silence that follows feels less awkward than it should.
"Can I ask you something?" I venture.
"You're going to regardless of my answer."
"True, but I'm trying to develop better interpersonal skills." I wait until he nods before continuing. "Your daughter. Lily. You mentioned her once, and then never again, and every time anyone comes close to the subject, you get this look like someone's pressing on a bruise."
Jake's hand tightens around his glass. For a moment I think I've pushed too far, crossed some invisible line I should have respected.
"She's fifteen," he says finally, voice rougher than before. "Smarter than me, funnier than her mother, and going through that phase where she thinks I'm the least interesting person on the planet."
"Sounds like a normal teenager."
"She is. That's the problem." He takes a long drink of whiskey. "I see her every other weekend when I'm lucky. Less when I'm not. Her mother moved to Portland three years ago—good job, better schools, all the sensible reasons people uproot their lives."
"And you stayed."
"I stayed for the job." The words carry a weight that tells me he's said them before, maybe a hundred times, like a prayer or a penance. "Fire captain doesn't transfer easy. I'd have to start over somewhere else, work my way back up, and by the time I got there, what would I have missed? Her first boyfriend. Her first heartbreak. Her figuring out who she wants to be."
"You're missing that anyway." I say it gently, but his flinch tells me it landed exactly where I aimed.
"Yeah." He stares into the fire. "Sometimes I wonder if I made the wrong choice. If I should have followed them, taken the hit to my career, been there for the everyday stuff instead of the every-other-weekend performances."
"Performances?"
"That's what it feels like sometimes. Like I'm auditioning for a role I already lost." He drains the rest of his whiskey. "I show up, I try to be fun and present and whatever she needs, and she looks at me like I'm a stranger wearing her father's face."
The rawness in his voice makes my chest ache. I know that feeling—the desperate scramble to connect with someone who's already decided you're not worth the effort.
"My father looked at me my entire life like I was a disappointing quarterly report," I hear myself say. "Every conversation was a performance review. Every milestone was never quite enough. I graduated summa cum laude from Stanford, and he asked why I didn't do it faster."
Jake's eyes meet mine, and there's recognition there—two people speaking a language they wish they'd never had to learn.
"I don't know how to do this differently," I continue, my hand drifting to my stomach without permission. "The pregnancy, I mean. Every parenting model I have is terrible. My mother outsourced affection to nannies and boarding schools. My father treated children like long-term investments with uncertain returns."
"And you're afraid you'll repeat the pattern."
"I'm terrified I won't know any other way." The admission costs me more than I expected. "What if I look at my child and only see obligations? What if I become exactly the kind of parent who made me feel invisible?"
Jake leans forward, elbows on his knees, firelight catching the silver threading through his dark hair. The exhaustion beneath his stoic exterior is visible now—the weight of saving lives while losing pieces of his own, the cost of being strong for everyone else while quietly falling apart.
"Maybe that's exactly why you will," he says softly.
"Will what?"
"Do it differently." His steel-gray eyes hold mine. "You know what it feels like to be that kid. The one who's never enough, never seen, never quite what they wanted. You carry that with you every day."
"That's supposed to be encouraging? Because it sounds like trauma with extra steps."
"It means you'll recognize it." He stands, crosses the small distance between us, and sits beside me on the couch. Close enough that I can smell whiskey and pine and something distinctly him. "You'll see it coming when you start to repeat those patterns, and you'll stop yourself. Because you remember how it felt to be on the receiving end."
"That's a lot of faith in someone you've known for a week."
"I'm a good judge of character." His hand finds mine beneath the blanket, rough and warm and steady. "And you're not your parents, Kelly. You're someone who crashed a car in a storm, accepted help from strangers, and spent a week pretending to be a tourist named Bird because you needed time to figure out who you want to become."
"That's a generous interpretation of my recent life choices."
"I specialize in generous interpretations." His thumb traces circles on my palm, and I feel it everywhere. "Ask my ex-wife. She'll tell you I'm pathologically optimistic about people who don't deserve it."
"And I don't deserve it?"
"Jury's still out." But he's almost smiling again, and the firelight makes his face look like something worth remembering. "I'll let you know when I reach a verdict."
The air between us shifts—thickens with unspoken need and the intimacy of shared losses. Two broken people finding each other in the dark, both carrying guilt they don't know how to set down.
Then he kisses me.
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