Chance. Possibilities he didn’t control.
That realization was so heavy, so hard for a man like him to grasp, that he slowed to a stop about a hundred yards into one of the rows. As if they’d been made specifically to lock together, she walked right into his arms, her nose flattening against the side of his neck in such an endearing way, such a trustful way, it took him a moment to speak.
“Being in the vines reminded me of the fire. Until we went picking together. Now when I look out at them, I just think of you,” he said, watching, fascinated by the way one of her curls looped around his finger. “Were you in St. Helena when it happened?”
His stomach was already plummeting like an elevator with a snapped cable in anticipation of her answer. He’d barely be able to stand it if she’d been scared, let alone in danger. Especially knowing he had been in town at the time.
“My grandmother and I drove south. We stayed in a motel and watched the news for five days straight.” She pulled back and searched his face. “You stayed behind.”
He nodded, hearing the distant crackling of burning wood. “My father and I did what we could to prepare. Evacuated everyone, moved equipment. But they said . . . fire officials told us we had six hours before the fire reached us. And it happened in one. One hour instead of six.” He could still remember the way that stolen time had choked him, the way denial unzipped him straight down the middle. Time was supposed to be absolute. A foundation for everything. For the first time, it had betrayed him. “My sister was in one of the larger sheds when it happened—she’d been loading wine stock into a truck. Just an ember carrying on the wind, they said. The whole thing was up in flames in a matter of minutes. I was acres away when it started. By the time I’d run to the building, it was engulfed. We were the only ones here, so no one heard her screaming. I almost didn’t get her out.” He didn’t want to think about that, so he moved on briskly. “I’d never had an—”
“Wait. Go back.” Was she shaking? “How did you get her out?”
“I went in,” he explained.
“You went into a burning building to rescue your sister. I’m just clarifying.”
“I . . . Yes. She needed help.”
“You saved her life and she still brought you to this terrible wine tasting,” Hallie murmured, shaking her head. Despite the joke, however, she appeared almost shaken by the story. “I interrupted what you were going to say. You’d never had a what?”
He rarely said the term out loud, but this was Hallie. “An anxiety episode. As a child, I had them, but not since then. Not as an adult. My schedules didn’t make sense in the context of the fire. We were supposed to have six hours, and, suddenly, we’re driving through smoke just hoping to escape with our lives. Time wasn’t safe anymore. My sister wasn’t safe. I didn’t do well with it.” He paused to gather his thoughts, wiping the perspiration from his palms down the sides of his pants. “I hated that feeling. That locked-up feeling. And you might think the fire would have acted as some kind of immersion therapy and I’d loosen my grip on time, realizing it can’t be controlled, but I doubled down instead. I lost time. Completely. I just sort of went numb, Hallie. For days. My family was trying to salvage the winery, and mentally, I wasn’t there. I did nothing to help them. All I could do was sit in a dark room and write lesson plans. Lectures. I remember almost nothing from the days after the fire.
“That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to stay away from you. Anything that threatens this control I have . . . I’ve been seeing it as the enemy. When it gets ahold of me, I don’t recover quickly like Garth. It’s something to avoid at all costs. But I can’t do that with you anymore, because you’re worth burning for. You’re worth turning and driving straight into the fire.”
“Whoa,” she whispered, the gray of her eyes swimming and starlit. “I don’t know which part of that to address first. The part that maybe you’re a hero for saving your sister, but you can only focus on a dark moment or—or . . .”
He stripped off his jacket and tossed it behind her onto the ground, only sparing a fleeting thought for the dry cleaning. “The part when I said I’d drive through fire for you?”
She nodded, her eyes locked on his fingers where they were unknotting his tie, then shoving the balled-up material into the right front pocket of his dress pants. “Yeah, that part.”