And Linc had no doubt that Jacob could turn off all that anger and be professional in the field, be that mechanical firefighting machine. He hadn’t wanted Linc’s apologies, had been, if anything, even angrier than last night. Put some action behind it. Damn it, what was Linc supposed to do? He’d been close to grabbing Jacob, hauling him in for a kiss when Garrick had interrupted, but that would have been just as pointless as his words. Bottom line was that he simply couldn’t give Jacob what he thought he most wanted, and that fucking sucked. For all of them.
The plane made a practice pass, approaching the drop zone, allowing them to recheck the winds, then circling back to drop the cargo away.
“Gotta trust this weather holds,” Garrick shouted as they deployed the cargo.
Something about the way he said trust made the word linger in Linc’s brain. He wasn’t much good at trusting these days. He’d trusted his mom to stick around forever, and then the universe had taken her way too soon. Ditto his brother. Ditto Wyatt. And he had too many years of experience to ever trust a fire. Too many times where he’d done everything right and it still all went to shit to trust anything, let alone something as mercurial as wind conditions.
But you trust Jacob. Unbidden, memories of the night of Jacob’s birthday slammed into him. He did trust Jacob, on a fundamental level that went far beyond the physical. When Jacob had told him it wasn’t his fault Wyatt had died, he’d listened. It had taken months to internalize it, and he still struggled with guilt, but he’d listened far more than he would to any other person. Jacob’s unwavering belief in him mattered.
Maybe you gave your word to the wrong guy? Jacob’s years-old question dug into him as surely as a too-snug piece of webbing, burrowed under his flesh to the places where he’d tried to bury both doubts and longing. And if he had...well, what the fuck was he supposed to do with that sort of misgiving?
“Ready?” Ray’s shout came from behind him before he could come to any good conclusions.
No. Nerves he hadn’t had since before Jacob’s first solo jump careened into him, out of place and totally unexpected. Jumping like this, leaving both too much unsaid and too much aired between them, felt wrong. But there was no time to regroup, no time even to panic, just to—
Trust Jacob. And there it was again. He had to trust that Jacob could handle the jump, that he wasn’t too distracted to pull it off. And then he had to trust himself. Maybe if he could do those two things, everything else would fall into place.
And as he leaped on cue, he summoned every piece of his years of training and muscle memory, and he trusted as they flew out over the ashy sky, smoke stinging even through his goggles and gear. As was often the case, the landing zone was tiny, precision of utmost importance as they descended, aiming for a sliver of a narrow dirt road that they’d later use for packing out.
“It’s your only good way out.” Ray’s voice crackled over his headset. “Creek to the south, but we’re hoping to have you out well before we lose road access. Ground crews are having a devil of a time with this wind.”
“Understood.” Linc was no stranger to situations like this one, with no good plan B. He’d also seen what appeared to be the only option morph and change over the course of hours on the ground, had made hard choices relying on the current plan only for it to change in a matter of moments. So Ray’s words didn’t make him panic, but they did make him think about life and roads and how what looked like a path sometimes wasn’t and how “no way out” could be a personal challenge. Sometimes one got out when they could, other times they waited for a better plan to materialize, and sometimes...
Well, sometimes a guy just fucking made his own luck. Refused to accept defeat. Took the damn creek if that was what it took. Was he really ready to toss Jacob away because there didn’t seem to be a good path forward? Was he going to spend the rest of his life knowing he wasn’t worthy or was he willing to fight for a sliver of a chance that maybe, just maybe he could be? Something had to give, that much was clear, but as he came in for a landing, for the first time he was willing to entertain the possibility of another way out of this mess they were in.
Thump. Bump. Roll. More of that muscle memory kicked in for a safe, if bumpy, landing. The wind conditions meant that they’d landed a fair distance downwind from each other, but it didn’t take long to regroup. And then they were in the thick of it, no more room for deep thoughts, only working quickly at retrieving the cargo, getting their shovels and saws and remaining gear and getting a move on with digging their assigned lines. It was hard, dirty, smoky work that left his muscles burning and his attention focused on the job at hand.
He did, however, keep more to himself, less on Jacob’s case about little details, and something surprising happened. The more he worked that whole trust thing and didn’t nag or rush to do a task for Jacob, the less Jacob dug his heels in and the more he actually listened to him and Garrick when they did speak. Maybe he wasn’t the stubborn kid Linc kept trying to paint him as. And if he wasn’t that—
“Heads up!” Garrick stopped him from letting introspection back in by tossing brush near where he was working. On the comm set, there was a lot of chatter about changing wind conditions.
“Might need you to cut short if the wind shifts again. If the fire heads down the valley, we’ll need to get you out in a hurry.” Ray was back at the base, working with the fire command to determine the scope of their assignment. The priority was to strategically fell several trees, and they moved on to that with renewed haste. The air was smokier now, the risk of raining embers growing as the fire moved closer.
The normally still forest was loud both with the sounds of their work and crashing burning snags in the distance, signaling that the command had been right about the shifting fire. In the air, more planes flew low, both with more jumpers for other drop zones and with loads of retardant to dump on the fire itself.
While working on the second tree, a warning alert sounded on the radio.
“We’re extracting all crews along your line,” the comm set announced right as several almighty cracks sounded.
Linc looked up to see several widowmaker branches headed right for where Jacob was crouched, bringing Garrick, who had been in the tree, down with them.
“Move!” Linc yelled, even as he was already diving for Jacob, shoving him out of the way. And then everything blurred together, a spectacular concert of swift movement and crushing pain.
“Jacob!” he called, but his ears rang too loudly to tell if he’d actually shouted. And had he saved him? Was he too late? Too late for both of them? God, he hoped not, his last conscious thought a prayer that Jacob be okay.
* * *
“Move!” Linc’s shout reached Jacob almost simultaneously with an ominous cracking from above and a godawful yell from Garrick. And then Linc’s body, all his considerable bulk, was crashing into Jacob, shoving him several feet back as pine needles and debris rained down on them, branches and Garrick hitting the ground with sickening thuds.