Chapter Fifteen
XAN
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I sit on the smoothboulder we’d both occupied days before, but it feels like weeks have passed. Twirling the flowers in my hand, I suddenly become self-conscious of the wild blooms I’d stopped along the highway to pick for her. The purples and yellows and bright green stems feel garish and I almost toss them into the stream to wash away the evidence of my weakness for her.
The cracking of branches and rustling of trees hold me capture and when she steps out from the tree line calmness washes through me. I stand quickly, striding over to her with an intense need to make things right between us.
“I’m sorry I’m a dick sometimes.” I hold the stems out to her, and she takes them hesitantly. With a gentle touch she strokes the bright yellow petal of the flower and her demeanor is forlorn. She lifts the bouquet to her nose and inhales as she walks around me to sit on the boulder jutting from the rocky ground.
The sky is an explosion of color and the light softened everything around me, even her.
“Thank you, Xan,” she says laying the flowers across her lap. I sit next to her knowing I’m too close but her shoulder against mine feels right.
“I get, I don’t know, caught up sometimes. I think you’re doing a great job with Millie. From what I see she’s just...” I get stuck on the words, rotating through all the different things I could say about my daughter. “She’s fucking perfect.”
Briggs smiles, but she feels distant. Something is happening inside her head and I know it. That unfocused gaze and way she spins the little ring on her finger.
“Are you okay?” I ask, like I did earlier that day. Something is bothering her and it’s driving me crazy that she isn’t talking to me. She used to talk to me about everything, almost to the point of annoyance and once she’d circled back two or three times to repeat the same stories in different words I’d scoop her up and put my lips to hers and then the only sounds she made were ones I gave her.
“I’m fine. I’m just really overwhelmed by all of this. I don’t know how to navigate it all.”
She’s lying, but I play along happy that she’s at least talking.
“We don’t have to have all the answers. We do however have to communicate, Briggs. We can’t keep secrets from each other now.”
She finally meets my eye, her eyebrow lifting slightly.
“I’m not the only one with secrets,” she says and even though the tone isn’t accusatory I’m certain she’s calling me out.
“What do you mean?”
“Del told me you aren’t working fires this summer. Something about an assessment? She clammed up and refused to talk after that. It was sort of obvious that you’re dealing with something that isn’t light?”
Her words are soft and even, as if she’s debating each one as it rolls from her tongue.
My heartbeat makes it tricky to hear what she’s saying but the way she watches me as she asks the question is enough to erode my defenses.
I cannot fall back in love with this woman, I scold myself.
“It’s protocol,” I start, the words hurt to push out. “There was an accident at a fire last year. Winds changed without warning; mistakes were made.”
Briggs waits for me to finish but I can’t. That’s as many words as I’ve ever spoken about that day to anyone else.
Her warm fingers tuck their way in between my clenched fist, and I relax my hand. She threads her fingers with mine and it’s like coming home. Her hand in mine is what I’ve always been missing but until this minute I’d never have admitted that.
“I’m sorry, Xan,” she says squeezing my hand.
“I go Monday morning to meet the therapist.” The words don’t carry the volume or the command I want them too. “I have to be deemed mentally fit to go back to work.”
“Are you?” She asks. “Mentally fit?”
“I dunno,” I reply. The honesty frees me and for a brief moment I’m able to breath. She tilts her head to rest on my shoulder and I don’t dare move for fear of her realizing her closeness.
We stay like this for a long time, watching the water bubble and gurgle over rocks and for a moment it all feels simple. Easy.
But nothing with Briggs and me has ever been easy.