Page 16 of Hemlock Firestorm (Black Timber Peak Hotshots #3)

TWELVE

COLE

I stand outside the medical tent, my back pressed against the cool fabric, but it’s doing nothing to stop the heat building inside me.

The chaos of the base camp surrounds me, but it all feels distant, like I’m watching it through a fogged-up window.

My mind keeps replaying the image of Jo inside that tent, her body trembling as the medical team worked on her, their questions barely cutting through the overwhelming silence that had settled between us.

I want to go to her. I need to go to her.

But something stops me. Maybe it’s because I can see that she’s already breaking down, and as much as I want to hold her, to tell her it’s going to be okay, I know deep down that she needs to feel all of this herself.

She needs to deal with it. The walls she’s been holding up for so long are finally crumbling, and I have no place in that moment, no right to interrupt it.

I try to give her some semblance of privacy.

I closed the curtains around her cot as gently as I could, hoping it would give her the space to break without feeling like she was being watched.

Without feeling like she needed to be strong for everyone around her, when all she’s ever done is hold everything in.

But as I stand there, an uncomfortable truth settles over me.

I’m doing the same thing. I’m holding everything in, just like her.

All this time, I’ve been pretending like the loss of Rick hasn’t eaten me alive.

I’ve buried it, stuffed it down deep, because who am I to fall apart?

But I’m not. I’m not holding anything together.

I’m just pretending to, like some kind of damn coward and my past rears its ugly head every chance it gets.

The thing is, I know what happened. I know how I failed Rick.

He died, and I was left behind, carrying a weight I couldn’t even begin to explain.

I didn’t even have the guts to tell anyone the truth— not to Jo, not to the team.

I’ve kept that guilt buried, because I can’t bear the thought of facing it.

Can’t bear the thought of admitting that I let a man die under my watch.

And now here I am, telling myself that Jo needs space to deal with her own shit, when I can’t even deal with mine.

I need to face it. I need to talk about it, let it out, stop pretending like it doesn’t haunt me.

If I want to be there for Jo, truly be there for her, I can’t keep running from my own demons.

Maybe she and I aren’t that different after all.

We both hide from the things that hurt us.

I lean my head back against the tent again, exhaling sharply, trying to settle my thoughts.

I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know what I feel.

Anger, confusion, and guilt all swirl together, a nasty cocktail I can’t swallow.

She didn’t tell me about her brother. Hell, she let me think he was dead.

And yet, I can’t help but feel this aching, hollow pity for her, because I know — I know — that this is eating her up inside.

She never wanted to hurt me. She never wanted any of this.

I rub my hands down my face, trying to shake off the frustration.

When I saw Jacob, her fucking twin, my chest tightened with a mixture of emotions.

I didn’t expect him to look the way he did.

Jo hadn’t downplayed his injuries even if she hadn’t told me he was alive.

The man was scarred badly. I didn’t expect him to carry that kind of weight, either.

But now, seeing her, all I can think about is how this all makes so much more sense, in the worst way possible.

She’s afraid of losing the people she cares about. Just like the rest of us.

My thoughts are interrupted when a shadow falls near me. I look into eyes that carry the same weight as Jo’s.

He hesitates for a second, like he’s unsure how to approach me. He probably doesn’t know what to expect from me, and frankly, neither do I. My jaw tightens as I meet his gaze. I’m not mad at this man. Fuck.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" he asks, his tone polite but with an edge of urgency.

I hesitate. The tension in my gut tells me this conversation is coming whether I’m ready or not. "Yeah," I say, trying to clear my throat. "Sure."

He steps closer, lowering his voice just enough that I’m certain no one else can hear us. "I know this might be strange. We don’t know each other. But Jo is falling apart right now. Is her breakdown because of my being here, or does it have something to do with what is going on between you two?"

I blink, caught off guard. "What do you mean ' between you two'?" My voice comes out harsher than I intend, but Jacob just nods, unfazed.

"I’m not blind," he says. "There’s something between you two. Some kind of tension. And I need to know, how can I help her through this while you two work whatever it is, out?"

I stand there for a moment, unsure of what to say.

It’s a question I didn’t expect from Jo’s brother.

Not because he didn’t care, but because I didn’t expect him to understand enough of what was going on to ask.

Frankly, as of a few hours ago, I didn’t think he was even alive to ask questions.

I try to take in his words, but it’s like the whole situation is bigger than I can handle right now.

"I," I begin, running a hand through my hair, unsure of how much to tell him. "She is likely falling apart due to both of us." I sigh. "I care about your sister but I don’t even know if I can help her. I’ve been trying but she’s got walls up that I can’t break through.

And I thought—" I stop myself, feeling the words hang in the air like an accusation.

"I didn’t even know she had a brother who was alive.

" My tone is so bitter I can almost taste it.

"So I may not be the one to ask about how to help her. I’m clearly failing. "

Jacob’s expression flickers with surprise, and I can see a flash of something, maybe pain, before he quickly masks it. He takes a step back, his gaze shifting for a moment, like he’s processing what I just said.

"Yeah," he says quietly, his tone tight. "But you’ve got to understand, Cole, Jo doesn’t talk about her past. About any of this." He gestures toward his face, part of it twisted with thick scars. "Did she tell you I was dead?" There was a deep sadness in his gaze.

"Not in so many words but she insinuated–"

Jacob held up a hand. "Because I told her I was."

I nearly reared backward at that. "What?" A sickness swirled in my stomach.

"Jo and I had a bad fight the night she announced that college wasn’t in the cards for her.

She wanted to be a Hotshot firefighter, and she didn’t care at all what her family had to say about it.

Our mother was torn apart after everything we’d gone through after the fire.

" He pauses for a moment. "Did she tell you about the fire? "

"Yeah." I say, my throat dry.

"Well, we lost our home. I was in agony and fighting for my life for a while.

Then we were separated for such a long time while I went to the west coast for treatment with our mother and our dad stayed with Jo to try and rebuild our life in our small town.

I survived all the needles, scalpels, bandages and pain, with the thought that I was glad it was me and not my sister.

You know what? I would do it all over again for her.

She grew distant after that fire and I mean more than just by physical distance but I have a feeling you know. "

I see the tears forming in the man's eyes before he sucked in a deep breath and continued. "She’d spent her teenage years with our dad at the firehouse, but the night she told all of us she would be throwing herself into fires on purpose with the Hotshots was my worst nightmare. I felt"

I nod slowly, taking it all in.

"I felt like everything I had gone through meant nothing to her. So, I told her if she was truly going to go through with it, then I may as well have died that night because I wouldn’t watch her die in a fire.

I told her to forget about me completely.

Like a coward, I tried to protect myself by cutting her off from my life.

" A look of shame crossed his face and he looked down.

"Oh." I swallow thickly. There was a lot to unpack. "Man to man, have you ever asked her why she chose to jump into the fires?"

He sighs. "No. Honestly, I didn’t feel like her reasoning mattered because it was reckless, stupid and incredibly selfish of her. "

That made my back straighten as my muscles tensed for an argument. "Jo is anything but selfish. She risks her life for others and every decision she makes, she has reasoned out."

A small smirk twitched at his lips but then he sobers again.

"I haven’t heard from my sister in years because by all accounts I was dead in her mind.

I made sure I was dead to her. So, don’t blame her for not telling you I was alive.

I can see you care about her." He pauses, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"And call it twin intuition, but she cares about you and whatever bullshit is going on between you two is probably stupid in the grand scheme of things. "

I nearly choke on a laugh. Oh the irony. "Pot calling the kettle black?" I say with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes, very much so."

I take a sharp breath, feeling the walls inside me start to crack.

The truth hits me harder than I expected.

I thought I understood Jo. But I hadn’t known half of what she’d been through, what she’d kept buried.

And now, I’m realizing I hadn’t even known about the most important part of her life.

All the people she’s been keeping at arm’s length.

"Look," Jacob continues, his gaze steady, "I don’t know you. And I don’t know what’s going on between you two. But if there’s a chance you can tell me how to help her, or you can help her?"

"You want my help? Then you need to tell your sister what you told me. Tell her how you felt and then stop talking. Let her tell you why she made the choices she made. Let her tell you what jumping," I clear my throat, "what jumping specifically means to her."