Page 59 of Ink and Ashes

Colson

W e pull up to the old Welland Ranch to find what’s left of both the house and the barn on fire, along with the surrounding forest, engulfed in flames.

I’m out of the truck before Travis has even put it in park, heading straight for the house.

“Caldwell, wait up!” Campbell calls out.

“Search the forest. I’m checking inside,” I call back, not stopping for a minute.

A lot of the house burned in the original fire thirty years ago, and what was left of it has taken a beating from the elements over the years.

It’s an absolute death trap, and there aren’t many places Holland could be.

But there’s a reason Whitlock chose this location for one of the fires, and my gut is telling me it’s because she’s here.

I pull my oxygen mask on as I rush inside, the smoke thick in the air.

Flames shoot at me from every direction, making it easy to lose track of where in the house I am.

I’m not surprised by how large the fire has grown in the thirty minutes it took us to drive out here, considering how structurally unsound the building is.

But it does send my heart sinking straight to my stomach.

Holland is stuck here.

She has to be here.

“Holland!” I call out as I start making my way deeper into the house. “Holland! Call out if you can hear me!”

No response.

I keep walking toward the back of the house, the flames getting hotter with every step I take. I check every room I pass, but it isn’t until the last room on the top floor that I see someone inside.

“Holland!” I shout as I rush over to the body, but when I bend down to roll them over, Pierce Whitlock stares back at me.

Son of a bitch .

He coughs as my ears begin to ring. “Caldwell, help me,” he rasps over the roar of the flames. “Please.”

Everything around me freezes as I process his words. This bastard is the very reason for this fire, yet he has the nerve to ask me for help. As if he thinks for a second that I’d ever choose saving him over saving Holland.

I don’t know what the hell he’s still doing here. But I do know that so long as I have a say in it, he won’t be making it out.

“Caldwell,” Whitlock pleads again over another cough, the flames closing in on us.

I’ve never been the kind of person to leave someone behind in a fire.

But after the hell Pierce Whitlock—or should I say Joseph Welland—has put us through over the past few months, this feels like a full-circle moment.

His family died in a fire, then he started setting them, and now he’ll die in one too.

There’s a reason he didn’t make it out before the house went up in flames, and I’m not going to interfere with the powers that be.

Which is why I don’t think twice as I stand from where I’m crouched beside him, leaving him lying on the floor.

“Go to hell, Welland,” I say, then turn and walk out of the room. I tune out the sound of him calling out for me, shutting the door behind me .

I exhale deeply as I continue my search for Holland. I refuse to let Joseph take her down with him. If he’s still here, that means she has to be too.

She has to be.

Some of the crew calls out from behind me, looking for both me and Holland, but I still don’t stop. I won’t stop until I’ve found her.

“Holland!” I continue calling as I walk through what was once the kitchen, and that’s when I see the doorway.

There’s a basement.

I take a deep breath through my mask, then over my radio, I say, “Upstairs is clear. Come to the back of the house. I’m heading to the basement.”

Not thirty seconds later, Beau and Dom flank either side of me. The stairs haven’t yet fallen from the fire, but they hook me up to the ropes anyway in case they do. I grab my Halligan, then with a swift nod from each of them and a, “Be quick,” from Beau, I make my way down the stairs.

They’re nowhere near safe, so I proceed with caution as I head down. A few are broken or missing entirely, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’ll fall soon. When my feet hit the floor a moment later, I blow out a breath.

The flames aren’t as bad down here yet, but candles are burning in every corner, and I can smell the gasoline. I don’t have much time before this whole house goes up, and if I’m not quick, it’ll take both me and her with it when it does.

I crouch low to feel for her as I continue calling out her name, tears stinging the backs of my eyes.

“Come on, baby. Where are you?”

I search the perimeter of the room and shove open every door, hoping for any sign of her. But when I find nothing, I start to wonder if I was wrong. If starting this fire was another decoy to draw all our attention here.

“Caldwell, anything?” a voice calls through the radio, but I don’t bother with a response.

She has to be here .

I head down the furthest hallway and push open the last door, prepared to come up empty there too. Except it doesn’t budge. There’s something blocking the door.

Holland is blocking the door.

I use my Halligan bar to force it open, and that’s when I see her. Curled up on the unfinished bathroom floor with duct tape over her mouth, her arms shackled to an open pipe.

“Holland!” I rush over to her, peeling the tape off her mouth and wrists. She’s unconscious, so I lift her carefully, carrying her back out to the stairs. “Come on, baby. Stay with me.”

“He’s got her!” Dom calls the moment he spots us. The flames have spread more, and the stairs are nearly fully engulfed by now. Dom uses an extinguisher to slow them a bit, and without another moment’s hesitation, I rush through them, holding onto Holland as if my life depends on it.

Because it does.

No fire I’ve ever fought has burned me quite like Holland Rhodes. But she’s become a blaze I want to face every day for the rest of my life. She’s the one I want to wake up to in the morning and lay my head next to at night. I want all her smiles and all her tears and every moment in between.

I want it all. And I want it with Holland.

I never expected to find love again after Ellie—I never wanted to, because Ellie was it for me. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. I’m not so sure about that anymore.

I wish I could bring Ellie back. I wish every day that she didn’t have to die.

But everything that’s happened over the past few months has taught me that maybe Ellie was just a one along the way who was sent to teach me how to love; my for-now, for the time we’d been together. Who knows what would’ve happened with us had she survived.

I’ve spent years blaming myself for Ellie’s death, building my walls so high that it would take only the strongest person to break them down.

A person like Holland—and that’s exactly what she did .

Maybe Ellie was the one who sent her to me for that very reason.

I’ll always cherish the time that Ellie and I spent together. If it hadn’t been for how well she loved me, I wouldn’t have half a clue about how to love someone else. I wouldn’t have a clue how to love Holland. But I do, and I have Ellie to thank for that.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over how she died.

Part of me will always wonder, if I’d been just a little bit faster, would she still be alive?

But the other part of me, the one that came back to life under Holland’s touch, finally feels closure.

Ellie wouldn’t have wanted me to live miserably or keep myself guarded, afraid to let love in.

She would’ve wanted me to be happy. To allow someone to love me the way she once did.

So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Because Holland? She feels like the one.

Like my forever.

I need her to make it out of this.

If she doesn’t, I’m not sure I will either.

I make it through the rest of the house with Holland in my arms. The team is on my heels every step of the way, using the hoses to clear a path in the flames for us.

The moment I make it past the front door threshold, I call out for Cassidy. She and Sam are already waiting with a stretcher, which I place Holland down on.

“We’ve got her,” Cass says as she places two fingers on Holland’s neck, feeling for a pulse. “She’s still alive, Colson. We’ll get her back.”

I jerk my head, stepping back to let them work. Holland has ligature marks on her wrists from where they were shackled to the pipe, but the rest of her looks okay.

I just pray she’s okay internally too.

“Col, you coming with us?” Cass asks as they begin to roll the stretcher to the ambulance.

I don’t hesitate for a second.

Minutes turn into hours in the hospital waiting room while I wait for news about Holland. Cass and Sam have been here with me since we arrived, and my mom and dad are now too. Once the team finishes putting out the fires at the house and does another sweep, they’ll also come.

“Baby, come sit down,” my mom says, but I can’t.

I’ve been pacing the waiting room nearly the whole time I’ve been here, unable to relax.

The doctor came out once to give us an update, but I haven’t been able to see her yet.

I don’t know what’s taking so long, but every minute that passes that I don’t get to see her causes another ounce of worry to race through me.

According to the doctors, Holland has minor burns from the heat of the metal pipe she was tied to, and due to the amount of smoke she took in, they suspect she may have carbon monoxide poisoning.

They have her on high-flow oxygen, but she has yet to wake up.

The doctors haven’t said it outright, but knowing what I do about fire injuries, I can tell they aren’t sure if she’ll wake up at all.

“What the hell is taking so long?” I mutter under my breath.

My dad comes to stand beside me. “Colson, you need to calm down. You’re going to walk a hole in the floor. I’m sure the doctors will be out any minute.”

I shake my head, unable to take a full breath. I won’t be calm until I know Holland is okay.

I keep my eyes trained through the window leading back to the ICU rooms, willing the doctor to walk through them. Instead, the rest of the crew walks through the waiting room doors.

“How is she?” Dom is the first to ask. I tune them out as my parents fill everyone in. Once they have, Beau and Dom move toward me while the rest of the team takes a seat.

“Colson,” Beau says as he approaches, and I already know what he’s going to say. That they found Welland’s body in their sweep, even though I’d told them the house was clear .

I wish I could find it in me to feel bad about that.

My jaw flexes, but I don’t tear my gaze from the hallway as I ask, “Did he make it out?”

I see Dom shake his head in my periphery. “No. He’s gone. It’s over.”

I should feel relieved hearing those words, but the tension in my shoulders doesn’t dissipate.

“It won’t be over until Holland wakes up.”

Beau taps me on the shoulder, and I know this conversation isn’t finished. But he knows better than to try to have it now, so with that, the two of them turn to sit with the rest of the crew.

A few more minutes pass before I catch sight of Dr. Jeffries through the window. He spots me immediately, and I try to read the look on his face. He looks solemn, but he always looks like that, so it’s hard to tell if he’s coming to deliver bad news or not.

That doesn’t stop me from asking, “What’s wrong?” the moment he pushes through the doors.

Jeffries holds up his hands. “Nothing’s wrong. She’s still not awake, but her vitals are improving.”

A collective sigh sounds from behind me.

“Can I see her now?”

Jeffries tilts his head down slowly. “Yes. You can come see her.”

I waste no time following him back through the doors. He leads me down the endless hallway before turning into a room on the right.

I see her, and my heart stops. She looks so fragile laying in the bed, so different from the Holland I’ve come to know and love so well.

She’s hooked up to the machines with a cannula in her nose, a steady beeping the only sound in the room. But that beeping is what lets me know she’s still here, so I’ll listen to it for as long as it takes for her to come back to me.

“I’ll give you a moment,” Dr. Jeffries says from behind me. “Call if you need anything.”

I jerk my head, then make my way deeper into the room .

I stand at the end of her bed, watching her chest rise softly with each breath. I exhale shakily each time she does, that small movement giving me hope.

There’s a chair sitting in the corner of the room, so I pull it over beside the bed and take a seat. Then I gently place my hand in hers, pressing a soft kiss to the top of it.

“I’m so sorry, Hol,” I say. “This never should’ve happened to you.”

I swallow roughly as I keep my gaze trained on her face.

“Welland is dead. He got trapped in the fire, and he’s gone,” I tell her, hoping like hell she can hear me. “We won, Red. It’s over. You can wake up now.”

I shake my head, trying to hold myself together.

“I need you to wake up, Holland. I’ll never be able to forgive myself if I lose you before telling you that I love you.

” I squeeze her hand tighter, my knee bouncing.

“And you can’t leave without telling me ‘I told you so’ once more,” I add, hoping maybe a bit of humour will do the trick, but it lacks conviction.

I release another shaky breath, resting my forehead against her hand.

“Please, baby,” I beg, because that’s how far gone I am for her. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself if she doesn’t make it through this. “Please.”

A tear sneaks past my waterline, and at the same time, her finger twitches.

I snap my head up to look at her. “Holland,” I say, rising from my chair.

She doesn’t open her eyes, but her hand twitches again, and she swallows. Then finally, she speaks.

“I told you so,” she rasps, and the moment I hear those words, every ounce of anxiety vanishes.

“Oh, thank God,” I breathe, then I lean down to press my lips to hers. She kisses me softly, and when I pull back, she’s looking up at me through her chocolate brown eyes.

“Water,” she says simply.

I release her hand to pour some from the jug on the table into a cup, then hold the straw out to her. She takes slow sips, wincing as she swallows. When she finishes, I place the cup back on the table, lean over her again, and brush her hair behind her ear.

“Hi, Red,” I croak, another tear slipping past my waterline. But this one isn’t out of fear or sadness—it’s pure relief and happiness.

“Hi, Lieutenant,” she says, keeping her gaze locked on mine. Then with a smile, she adds, “I love you too.”