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The sound of my breathing is loud through my mask, echoing in my ears. The heat from the fire presses in on all sides, like a too-hot hug nobody asked for.

“X?” Peter, another firefighter, asks from in front of me, his voice muffled and staticky through our coms. “You right behind me?”

“Right here!” I call back, turning and blasting water at a vent in the corner of the room, focusing on it to make sure the flames die away before turning back to the rest.

This house—a little two-story on Main Street—clearly belongs to a family. We passed them on the front lawn, our chief confirming no people or animals were left in the house before we got in.

The walls and supports are licked with flame.

A basket of folded laundry sits on the end of the couch.

One sock hanging over the side is on fire, and the basket itself melts and folds in, wilting like a flower without water.

I raise my hose and blast the basket, putting out the fire and scattering the items inside.

As we work, I can’t stop myself from thinking this fire is a hell of a lot easier to deal with than what I’m used to.

We make our way through the house, calling to one another, listening for the collapse, and putting out the fire before the walls come down around us.

There’s not much left, but when the site is cleared, the family might be allowed back in to collect the things that remain undamaged by the fire and water.

“Clear,” Peter calls, turning and sloshing through the water on the floor, his boots kicking aside a floating doll. We meet with the others and push out the way we came, stumbling out onto the lawn, taking off our helmets, and breathing in the charred, smoky air.

A blond woman cries on the sidewalk, pulling her children close to her, like she’s worried the fire might still try to reach out and take them.

Where I’m from, it actually might.

“Good work, Sorel,” the chief says, clapping me on the back and swiping his hand over his face, which leaves a smudge of black from his eyebrow to his hairline. “Take the engine back to the station with Pete? We’ll hang back and finish up here.”

I nod, tuck my helmet under my arm, and turn toward the engine, heading for the driver’s seat. We’re all licensed to drive it, but I’m the only one who really enjoys it. The other guys won’t say it, but I know they hate turning the thing.

We may just be in the suburbs of Chicago, but the roads are impossibly tight in a lot of places. In a city known for its great, historical fire, being a firefighter comes with a nod of acknowledgment from almost every person on the street.

“Rough for the first call of the day,” Peter says, swinging into the seat next to me and pulling on his seat belt. Two guys climb in the back, and we head back toward the firehouse, sirens and lights off.

“Always feels weird after a call like that,” one of the guys from the back says, and though I don’t say it out loud, I agree with him. It’s hard to go back to the station and feel like everything’s normal when you’ve just faced death like that.

These guys more than me—humans are a lot more delicate when it comes to a typical fire.

The smoke will kill them before the heat or flames ever do.

I’m lucky that my lungs are stronger, and my entire body can regenerate faster than theirs.

The wolf inside me sends cues, helping me follow my instincts and avoid accidents at a site.

They continue chatting as we make our way back to the firehouse, and the moment we do, one of the guys peels off to check on the meat he’s had sitting in the cooker since this morning, making a joke about the firehouse smelling smoky.

“Hey, man, you got a second?”

I turn to find Peter waving me down, and I stuff a sigh down in my chest. Peter is the kind of guy who wants to know everyone, and I’m the kind of guy who would rather listen than talk. That, unfortunately, means that Peter is constantly trying to learn more about me.

So far, all he knows is that I’m from Colorado, and no, I am not visiting my family for the holidays. Luckily, when he tried to press more on that, we had a call, and I was able to avoid that particular topic.

Swinging around, I face Peter, meeting his eyes and waiting for him to go on.

He claps me on the shoulder and says, “I’m having a party at my place when we get off tonight.

You should come. My brother is gonna be in town—he’s a firefighter over in Galena, actually.

A lot of us guys there. What do you think? ”

I think there’s no way in hell I’m going to his party.

I think even the word brother brings up unpleasant memories that I’m doing my damnedest not to think about.

But even the fact that I’m halfway across the country from my family doesn’t stop the tension from leaking into my shoulders, making my muscles go rock-solid under Peter’s hand.

“Just let me know,” he says, pulling his hand back and turning in the direction of the kitchen.

Over his shoulder, I can see a TV, the words thick and black across the bottom of the screen: Colorado wildfires continue to blaze.

For a second, I want to follow Peter, get closer to that TV and see exactly what it’s saying. But I already know that watching that shit just gives me bad dreams, so I shake it out of my head and go the opposite way.

The hallway is long and lit by fluorescents, and my room is at the far back, shades already drawn.

None of the other guys are napping or in their rooms right now, so it’s fairly quiet.

Typically, I only need about four hours of sleep.

If we have some rough calls or I use a lot of energy, I’ll need more, but my body usually craves it in the middle of the day as short naps rather than all at once at night.

The guys are so used to my daytime naps, they know not to bug me unless we have to go out on a call. Now, I pray the red lights don’t flash as I roll into my bunk.

Instead, something buzzes against my hip, and I pull the damn thing out to find a text from Kalen, the only brother I haven’t blocked.

Kalen: Hey, man, spoke to the estate lawyer today

Kalen: He said the house is going to be up for grabs if you don’t communicate with him about the will

Kalen: End of the month, X

My thumbs hover over the screen, the phone above my face, blazing into my retinas. I should just block Kalen. If I want to leave Colorado—and Silverville—in the past, I need to cut off the rest of my ties back there.

But Kalen has always been different. Softer. And I’ve protected him—from bullies, from our brothers, from our uncle. Now, I find myself wondering how he’s surviving on his own out there. How he’s still asking and prodding me to come back to town, despite me making it clear that I never will.

When I’d decided to leave, I begged him to come with me. He said he had to stay. That he would wait for me to change my mind and come home.

I’m just about to shove my phone back into my pocket when another text comes through.

Kalen: Looks like the house is going to Declan if you don’t show

Something rises up inside me—the urge to protect. To come back and take care of everything, eliminate problems one at a time. To take the house, take back my father’s legacy. To return to Silverville and try to pull the town out of the hell that it’s descended into.

But I can’t go back. I don’t want to see my brothers and uncle. Don’t want to face the grief over my dead parents.

And more than that, I know that the second I pass by that welcome sign, I’ll be haunted by the mistakes I made as an idiot teenager. The person I hurt most. The town I’ve been trying my hardest to leave behind.