Page 9 of Roaring Heat
"I have."
Directness and honesty must be unfamiliar to her. Something flickers across her face—surprise at first, then a flicker of emotion that slips past her guard. Curiosity, maybe. Or something warmer, harder to name. Her gaze holds mine for a beat too long, like she’s turning something over in her mind, weighing it. Testing me.
She stands slowly, equipment gathered in her arms. "So this is what? A neighborly escort? Or are you planning to follow me home and glare at my porch for another hour or two?"
Her voice is light, teasing, but something in it tugs at the part of me that isn’t so easily soothed. I swear my bear perks up at the challenge, keyed in by her tone, her stance, the rise of her chin like she dares me to cross a line. She’s testing me, not because she doesn’t trust me, but because she wants to know if I can handle her sharp edges. And damn if I don’t want to trace every one of them with my tongue.
"Maybe I’m hoping you’ll offer supper or at least coffee."
She huffs a laugh. "You don’t seem like the type who needs much in the way of fuel—caffeine or otherwise."
"Maybe not. But I wouldn’t mind the company—especially if it means another few minutes of watching you try not to flirt with me."
Her expression softens, just a little. "I am not interested in flirting with you."
"Why not?" I ask with a grin.
"You’re intense. You know that?"
Her eyes skim my face like she’s trying to figure out what makes me tick, if the intensity comes from purpose or from something darker, deeper. Her lips twitch like she might smile, then don’t.
I step forward, close enough that the air shifts between us. "Only when it matters."
She doesn’t back away. Doesn’t smile either. Just holds my gaze, steady and unflinching, until the weight of it settles deep in my chest. A single breath passes between us, thick with everything neither of us is saying. Her pupils dilate slightly, and I swear the air tightens. I feel it in the base of my spine, in the way my fingers twitch with the urge to touch, to test how farshe'd let me go before she pushed back. But she doesn’t flinch, and I don’t step away. The moment stretches, quiet and electric.
"Let’s go," she says. "Before you decide to build a barricade outside my door."
"Wouldn’t be the worst idea."
She turns, and we walk together in silence, the ocean wind brushing through the trees as we follow the trail back. My bear stays close to the surface the entire way, ears tuned to every sound. I try to focus on the surroundings to keep my head clear. But all it takes is the whisper of branches or the shift of her shadow beside mine to rattle that control.
Halfway back, I freeze. Just for a second. A sound cuts through the quiet—low, distant, and wrong. It rustles the underbrush to the west like something too heavy to belong. My head tilts instinctively, body taut, breath held. Anabeth halts beside me, every line of her frame tense, alert. Her eyes sweep the trees, sharp and searching, as if she can feel it too—whatever's out there, watching.
"What is it?" she asks, voice low.
I raise my hand, signaling her to stay still. The forest falls into an unnatural hush—no birdsong, no rustle of leaves, not even the usual scamper of something small in the underbrush. Just silence, thick and absolute. My bear tenses, ears laid flat, while a slow coil of tension knots deep in my gut. Every part of me goes alert, tuned to a frequency I can't name but have always known.
Then it passes. Whatever it was either moved on—or it’s watching. I scan the trees, eyes narrowing at the faintest shimmer of movement—too fast to track, too silent to dismiss. A shadow lingers between two trunks longer than it should, and a low crack, like a twig under weight, punctuates the quiet. Nothing obvious. Nothing solid. But enough to make every instinct in me flare. My bear goes still, every sense stretched thin, listening. Waiting.
I shake it off and nod for her to keep going, but the unease stays lodged behind my ribs like a splinter I can’t dig out. This forest has always been alive. But now it feels like it’s watching—calculating. Not just aware but interested.
Whatever’s lurking in the trees isn’t half as dangerous as the pull between us. It’s taut and simmering, waiting to snap. And when it does, it won’t be the forest that burns.
CHAPTER 4
ANABETH
The woods behind me lapse into a held breath after Beau and I return from the clearing. He gives a single nod and slips through the dense treeline, the branches parting for him as if they know him. I watch his outline dissolve into the thick undergrowth, swallowed by the woods as if the forest itself had claimed him.
The place where he vanished stays etched in my mind, a hole cut clean from the moment. My breath catches in a way I don’t expect. A strange weight tugs at my chest, not panic, not grief—something quieter, something like loss dressed in uncertainty. I climb the porch steps with my recorder gripped in my palm, trying not to watch the exact place where he vanished. The hush that follows is not relief. It is a pressure that settles over the yard, the cottage and my skin, an invisible hand that tests for weaknesses I would rather not admit I have.
I tell myself I wanted this. Space to think. Room to breathe without his presence rewiring every thought I’m trying to hold steady. But now that he's gone, the quiet feels like a hollow echo, and neither the space nor I seem to know what to do.
I unlock the door, enter and push it shut behind me, already inside by the time the latch clicks into place. The cottage meetsme with small domestic sounds. The low tick of the wall clock near the kitchen. The soft settling of the wood in the fireplace as embers lose their glow. The compressor on the split unit hums once and goes still. The room is the same as it was this morning, but the scale feels off; it is as if a picture frame has been hung a fraction of an inch crooked, and the eye cannot stop noticing.
And yet, the walls seem farther apart, the ceiling higher, like the space has grown too big for one person. Even so, I pretend that space was what I needed. Air that belongs to me alone. The words sound practical in my head, but still it tastes thin, as if someone opened a window and let something necessary escape.
I try to catalog what changed. My heart finds a slower rhythm, yet my body hums with alertness. The contradiction feels like standing on a dock while a powerful tide pulls beneath the pilings. I had not realized how easily I had begun to time myself to his pace, how quickly I had leaned into a steadiness I did not have to earn. Now that steady center has gone quiet, and the quiet draws attention to itself.
