Wildfire Read online

  WILD

  fire

  By Allison Martin

  ©2019 Allison Martin

  Edited By: Jolene Perry, Theresa Paolo

  Cover Design By: Allison Martin

  Images ©:

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  BRIGGS

  The wind already knows he isn’t coming for us. The realization settles across me as the cold mountain air whistles down the creek bed chasing the storm South. A gust spirals through the clearing in the trees, dancing along my exposed skin, mocking my hope–laughing at my love for him. I tuck my arms tighter around my waist, holding onto my elbows as if pieces of me are about to be carried away in the breeze.

  If I blow away, I want to be taken whole. I wish every bit of me to be picked up and taken away from this place, never to return. I never want to see them again. That’s what I told my mother. The last thing I screamed at her before she swiped her truck keys from the counter and stormed off in the heavy fall rain.

  I don’t know how long I stand at the edge of our creek, waiting for him, breathing in the damp earth, watching the clear water rush over the smooth rocks. The sound of tumbling current mesmerizes me, lulls me into a trance.

  One little leaf whips by spinning and bobbing down to God-knows-where, and at this moment I’ve never related to anything as intensely as I do this leaf.

  I rub my stomach with an absent affection, something I started doing almost immediately after I found out that the parts and pieces of me I wish to blow away in a strong southerly wind doesn’t all belong to me anymore. That slowly, bits and parts of a new life form inside me while my outsides slowly erode away.

  “He’ll show up,” I whisper the lie to my belly, pulling my fingers across the damp fabric of my best Sunday Dress that clings to my legs with familiar desperation. A dress that good, wholesome girls wear, not irresponsible girls like me who love boys like him.

  I never take my eyes off the creek, I never take my heart off of him, and I never take my mind off the truth.

  He isn’t coming for us.

  A sob gets stuck in my throat, but I don’t let it out. I won’t add my tears to the raindrops clinging to the rocks and leaves and strands of soaking hair stuck to my cheeks. The unnatural buzz of my cellphone amid pristine wilderness tears through the moment, and I startle.

  They know, I think as I stare down at the name. I let it go to voicemail, but immediately it rings again. This time my heart buzzes in sync, and the cold air becomes frigid. The world instantly shifts in shape and color like the cardboard kaleidoscope I had as a kid, everything tainted with abstract dread.

  “Hello?” I whisper, shivering uncontrollably.

  “Get home right now,” my father commands, but there’s something else woven through his tone that brings all my fears to the surface. “There’s been an accident.”

  Chapter One

  BRIGGS

  Ten years later...

  The last time my body ached like this, I was summiting the rocky peak of Copper Mountain with my daughter—not on all fours digging rotted hydrangeas out of a thirty-foot long flower bed.

  I stab the trowel into the earth with an exhausted huff and wipe the sweat from my sticky brow, leaving a trail of dirt to flutter down into my eyelashes. This is precisely why I prefer Old Bess—the motorhome I bought when I was twenty. Old Bess is, I’m sure, smaller than the garden that stretches out along the back yard of my childhood home. Sitting back on my heels, I examine my handy work. It appears like I’m in the business of murdering any flower I come in contact with, but in my defense, they were dead to begin with, thanks to my father.

  This flower bed, along with the six other gardens and massive greenhouse, belonged to my mother. My father hasn’t watered a single plant in his life, but he’s almost religious about not giving them a single drop since Mom’s death. The ladies from church, those nosy gossips, came to plant the flower gardens for Dad this year to brighten up the place. I’m sure it didn’t take long for them to get tired of Dad’s crusade to destroy all things flora and fauna.

  “Je veux qu’ils partent, Brigitte,” he had said, stamping his crutches on the porch steps when I arrived back home a couple days ago. “All of them gone. You can help me, or I will do it myself.”

  Coming home to Raston, British Columbia was a predestined event even before my dad was hit by a car during a routine traffic stop outside of town, but that does not mean I'm happy to be back here. Small towns like this are a tiny dot on a map but a big looming black hole on your soul ready to suck you back in at a moment’s notice.

  My notice came two weeks ago as I sat on a sunny beach in Manitoba, trying to figure out how my life got so messed up, so quickly.

  After the doctor called about Dad's accident, I convinced myself I need this small and hidden existence right now anyway.

  I’m getting tired of looking over my shoulder, continually waiting for the moment all my choices catch up with me. What better place to hide than the place you swore never to return to?

  My father and I hadn’t spoken in six years, and suddenly he needed me as if fate allowed me this grace. Now I'm back in town not to hide with my tail between my legs but to help my father as a good diligent daughter. No one needs to know the real reason I’m back or the trouble that follows me around like a shadow.

  “Are you sure you don’t need anything?” Dad calls from the shaded porch of our three-story farmhouse. An expansive house that’s useless to him now. Not only because Mom died ten years ago and he let the whole place fall to shit but because of the cast that covered his right leg from the tip of his toes to above his knee.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Tense and awkward are probably great ways to describe my life, but I force a smile across my lips. I will play nice and pretend to care. I’ll behave myself. That’s the mantra I chant as I glance over to my old treehouse at the far end of the expansive yard. In that treehouse is my compass and guiding force.

  Small feet dangle from the edge of the tattered treehouse as my daughter lays on her back and watches the wind chimes sing and dance in the breeze that always funnels in from the West Valley. I set up tho
se chimes as a kid, always fascinated by the wind and how it was in constant motion. I went from envying the wind to living like it.

  I scoop up a handful of decaying petals and wonder if I could create a line of pendants out of this? Some sort of morbid gothic-inspired limited-edition necklaces or charms?

  A small chuckle ripples up my throat at the absurdity. Morbid Goth isn’t exactly the target audience for my jewelry company, Wild & Free Designs...try overworked housewife who is so busy driving her kids to practice she’s forgotten that nature is always the best remedy.

  These women don't want my dead mother’s decaying flowers. They want dew drops from Niagara Falls, river stones from Yukon, and wild crocus petals from Saskatchewan. They want to wear a beautiful slice of North America on their body to remind them that they don’t get outside enough.

  These sweet women don’t like change, and they aren’t afraid to let me know when they’re unhappy. At slightly under one million followers, the hate mail is frequent enough now that I hired a Virtual Assistant from one of my fan groups to filter my email and moderate my comments. Sometimes these cruel things get through, and I see them because Leslie is only human and can’t be everywhere at once.

  It doesn’t feel great to hear you’re a talentless bitch that must be too ugly to show her face online as if my physical appearance should somehow dictate my skill as a jewelry designer. Luckily, I have a whole crew of dedicated crusaders that defend my honour online. Or maybe not. The joy of it all fizzled out a long time ago. I used to spend my nights scrolling Instagram being inspired by my small but loyal following. Then a celebrity decided they liked my work, and everything exploded. I’m still overwhelmed by the demand for my limited-edition pieces.

  “Brigitte,” Dad calls from the porch, and I realize that my fist is clenched tight around the dead petals. I loosen my fingers and let the bits fall back to the earth.

  “What’s up?” I stand and dust my loose quick-dry pants, the color of a windstorm, and cut like khakis. The sun peeks out over the jagged snow-capped mountains behind the sprawling acreage, and rays of golden warmth hit my skin. For a flash of a second, I feel the peace that used to occupy this space when Dad would read on the porch while Mom tended to her tree nursery, and I climbed the thick branches at the edge of the property. When life was easy, I thought I understood what it meant to be happy. I thought love was simple and kind before I fell for a boy I had no business loving.

  Dad speaks a few words into his phone and then hangs up, focusing his attention back on me. “That was Jethro. He’s coming out this afternoon to give me an estimate.”

  My thoughts flutter to my feet like the bits of dried flowers that fell from my fingers. “Jethro Ryker?” I ask, taking long strides with my short legs to the steps.

  “That’d be the one,” Dad answers going back to reading the news on his tablet.

  “Why is he giving you a quote? I thought I was helping you?” My voice raises a few octaves higher, and Dad doesn’t miss it. He pinches his light brows and sets his mouth in a hard line while he studies my growing anxiety.

  “How on earth are you going to do all the repairs around here on your own?” Dad gestures to the many things that require a two-person fix right here on the porch. A collapsing eaves trough, a missing step, a paint job that will take me two years to do with a hand roller.

  “Isn’t there anyone else in town?” I can’t hide my desperation. I don’t even try. Anyone but a Ryker.

  “I’m not happy about it either. I swore to never let a Ryker boy set foot in my driveway after that mess you got yourself into with Alexander.”

  Fury replaces my anxiety in a flash, and I point to the treehouse across the windswept grass. “Do you mean that mess? That living, breathing, beautiful mess I call my daughter?”

  Dad pauses for a moment, I’m assuming he realizes his colossal fuck up, but his cop face is hard to read.

  “I mean, how you trusted a Ryker to do right by you.” His stern words steal my breath and replaces it with fitful memories of the night I was abandoned by the creek in a rainstorm by the boy I loved. The same night my mother hit a moose on the slick winding road between Raston and home.

  “Can’t we get someone else? Someone from Morleau?” I ask.

  “You knew this was coming.” My father’s lack of vocabulary infuriates me, but I learned to interpret what he meant in the spaces around his limited words over the years. Of course, I couldn’t come back here and expect not to see Xan.

  “I’m not ready.” My voice wobbles. It’s only been two days. I need more days.

  “What would make you ready? You needa wear a certain blouse or something?”

  Dad’s mocking me, but it’s laced with the harsh truth. I’ll never be ready to face the father of my daughter. Because it’s one thing that he rejected me...that I can live with. What I’ll never forgive is how he rejected her.

  Chapter Two

  XAN

  Pain sears across my body like flames crawling across the forest floor, the hangover gripping my brain and my gut in a way I can’t ever remember feeling. I take a long drink off my pint of IPA hoping for the ol’ hair of the dog to help the two painkillers I popped back on the way into the bar. The buzz of my phone cuts through me like a chainsaw blade and I see a flash of the time.

  I’m supposed to be in a therapist’s office right now. I’m supposed to be talking about my feelings. Instead I’m sitting in a bar at ten fifteen in the morning, drinking.

  The phone rings again, vibrating against the worn wood of the bar and one of the regulars gives me a slanted look of annoyance. I tip my beer in his direction letting him know that I’m with him. Turning the fucking thing off would be smart but sometimes I wonder if there isn’t a sick side of me that likes the irritation. That maybe I like being hounded by the therapist the department hired to assess my wellbeing and determine if I’m fit to return to my crew. Every time she calls it reminds me of why I deserve this.

  “Answer your damn phone, Xan,” the bartender—who happens to be my little sister, Delilah–huffs at me and rolls her big silvery eyes the same way she did when she was six. “You know this is the only way to get back on the job...and outta my frickin bar.”

  It’s been ten months since I last worked a fire with Wildland Fire Management crew. Ten months since the Creston Ridge Fire that took one of my team before the fire was harnessed. Ten months since the suits in charge told me that I couldn’t come back to work this season until some pointy bitch who’s never seen a flame bigger than a candle asked me questions about my feelings. Some woman who doesn’t know me at all holds the fate of my career in her hands. She has no idea that I was Alexander Ryker. The trash of Raston, the troubled kid that did a stint in Juvie for beating the shit out of his own father in middle of main street, the man who raised my siblings when my mother was too high on Jesus to do it herself.

  I can fucking handle myself. That’s the last thing I said to Miss Uptight before she scribbled unfit to return across my file and told me we’d reschedule for the fifth time.

  The buzzing starts again, and I’m admittedly impressed by her tenacity—my sister not so much. Delilah snatches my phone and jumps back out of my reach. The sharp movement makes my stomach lurch and my temples throb.

  “Hello?” Del says sweetly, like only she can. In a flash of a moment her face twists into confusion and then she bursts out laughing. “Oh hey, Jet. Yup, he’s here being a stubborn asshole like usual.”

  Del tosses the phone to me and shakes her head, going back to shining the old bent up silverware before the lunch rush starts.

  “Hey,” I say, polishing off the last of my beer and hopping off the bar stool. “I’m just heading over.”

  “Dude are you drunk? It’s like ten in the morning.” Jet’s voice sounds muffled through the haze of my brain.

  “I’m not drunk...anymore.” I heave the heavy wooden door open and the sun cuts through my vision like a freshly sharpened axe blade. Using my hand as
a shade I let my eyes adjust to the light. It’s one of those perfectly clear days with barely any wind. I fucking hate the wind. My gaze is drawn to the opposite side of Main Street and a woman standing with her three kids outside the grocery store. I know it’s Nicole. I know she’s back in town. I know I should go talk to her but what the fuck would I say? I’m sorry your husband is dead. I’m sorry I didn’t go back for him. I’m sorry. I’m just fucking sorry.

  “Weren’t you supposed to head into Kelowna today?” Jet’s voice fills with understanding but that’s as far as he’ll take it. Jet sighs, which is all he ever really does. Not a chatty guy to begin with. He’s the closest to me in age, a little under a year between us so he knows the deal.

  “Nicole’s back with the kids.” She glances across the street and we lock gazes, her mouth hardens and my stomach lurches. I heard she was back last night when I came in for one beer.

  “Yeah I heard,” Jet answers his own tone dipping low into that way I’ve come to hate. All my siblings talk about Gus like this now. Hushed and tentative like talking about him around me is like breathing too hard around a house of cards.

  “Are you at the office?” I change the subject, slipping into my truck like a coward, and a silent awkwardness fills the line.

  “Nah, man. I’m at the Marchand Acreage. Just pulled up to check out a job.”

  “For Lucas? No fucking way.” I huff in disbelief, turning the engine of the truck. “Wait? Do you need me out there?”

  There’s this moment before walking out in front of a blazing forest fire where all my energy collects in my chest and my heart works overtime to pump the hyperawareness throughout my entire being, charging my brain and body with adrenaline fuelled nerves.

  The thought of having to go out to the Marchand Acreage has the exact same effect. Because standing in front of Lucas Marchand’s burning hatred of me is a very similar experience to a forest fire. The man spoke less words than Jethro but it’s never hard to understand that my simple existence is bothersome to him.