Chapter 25

CHAPTER 25

Ayen

For the next week, everything went the same way—me avoiding Jackson like the plague and him keeping his distance from me.

There were no more midnight rendezvous, no more quiet meetings when no one else was looking, no more subtle brushes of our hands together as we walked back from the training area and parted ways at the mess hall.

I felt the void of him in everything that I did. From sunrise to sunset, my body hurt from how hard I was punishing it in order to keep my feelings tamped down far enough to numb me from the inside.

I kept a rotation of partners during our training, keeping myself preoccupied and not giving it up to fate or chance that I'd be randomly placed with Jackson and Roxy.

Nothing felt right.

My soul ached.

And there was fuck all I could do about it.

"Can you get your fucking head on straight, Gonzalez?" Barker hissed while tossing a large pack at me.

I stumbled back, catching it in the chest.

"You know, when you said you wanted to be my partner, I didn't know you were going to be fucking useless."

The words barely stung. He was all bark, anyway.

Quietly, I set the pack down and looked through the contents, ignoring Barker's huffing as he repacked his own the way he wanted it. Judging by the contents, we were most likely heading out to the fire that was burning a few miles east from here.

The call had come in late last night, all of the firefighter's radios blaring with the emergency signal. So far, the fire hadn't spread rapidly, but it was burning enough to keep the property's firefighters set up as reinforcements.

Mac had suggested for us to head over there this morning and using it as a learning opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime deal at seeing how a real forest fire was dealt with. The excitement had been palpable among the rest of the inmates, excluding me, who were more than ready to actually put some of this training into action.

Now that we were all here and successfully piled off of the bus that'd brought us, Mac was explaining something that I tuned out completely. Even with us being a mile out from the fire, the air was hazy with smoke and the smell of burning wood.

"You coming or what, Gonzalez?" Barker said, throwing his pack over his shoulder. His fire-resistant coveralls bunched up at his shoulders, making it difficult for him to straighten out the straps of his bag.

"Make sure you keep within the radius of the firefighters," Mac called out. "If any of you stray off the path, use your whistle to call out and one of us will come find you. If you start to feel intense heat or thick smoke, fall back immediately and use your whistle!"

I sighed and zipped my bag up before tossing it over my shoulder and working my arms through the straps. It was heavy on my back but not to the point where it would slow me down. Luckily, we were only going to be getting close enough to observe from a distance and take some pictures that we would later observe back at the property.

There would be no heroics going on today, thankfully.

Just as I was about to follow Barker over to where our group was gathering, something grabbed my bag from behind me and made me halt in place. Without me even getting a chance to look behind me, something tugged at one of the loops at my waist, hooking something on it.

I darted my gaze down, spotting a familiar radio now clipped there.

My heart stuttered when I looked up again just as Jackson was moving around me and heading back toward the rest of the group, Roxy following closely behind.

What?

Ghosting my fingers over the radio and ignoring the way my chest suddenly tightened, I quickly followed after Barker who had our camera looped around his neck. In a wide formation, we started in through the tree lines at a slow pace.

I wasn't sure what the hell we were supposed to be taking pictures of, having completely checked out by the time we'd climbed onto the bus, but now I was regretting not paying attention. Especially, when Barker started to hiss at me once more.

"Can you keep up? I want to get good photos."

"Why?"

Honestly, what was the point?

It wasn't like we were receiving extra credit for any of this.

"Does it fucking matter?" he snapped back and kicked his way through a tall bush.

We were moving a bit of a distance away from the rest of the group, though I could still see them through the haze. The reflectors on their jackets helped with their visibility to me, becoming even more pronounced when I pulled my goggles down over my eyes to keep them from watering.

"I was just wondering," I said.

"Well, if you have to know, I want to get as close a picture as possible. I overheard Browne talking about bringing some of our accomplishments to the Warden and getting us special privileges when we get back. We're apparently the best group they've had so far."

Somehow, I doubted that, but hey, if living in a little fantasy world kept Barker happy, then who was I to spoil it?

All I wanted to do was keep my mind off the very obvious thing plaguing it.

I brushed my hand over the radio again in disbelief.

Why had he gone out of his way to give it to me?

Setting me up to be caught with it was a possibility, but even Jackson couldn't be that cruel. There would be no reason for him to do that when we were already actively avoiding each other.

He hadn't even looked at me, either. Just gave it to me and dipped.

I hated how much that man haunted me.

"Woah, Gonzalez, look!"

Breaking out of my thoughts, I stumbled and ran right into Barker's back, causing us both to fall into the dirt.

"Jesus, fuck! Watch it," he spat out.

I grunted and slowly pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, watching him do the same out of the corner of my eye. The haze had grown thicker in the time we'd spent walking this way. Even through my coveralls, I could feel the telltale signs of heat.

I grabbed at the scarf hanging around my neck and pulled it up over my nose.

"What I was trying to fucking say before you fucking shoved me," Barker went on, getting to his feet again. "Was that I think I see fire."

"Fire?" I lifted my head. "We should head back then."

"No way. Shots this close up are gold. I'm not passing that up."

Getting to my feet, I brushed the dirt off of myself. "We're not getting caught up in a damn forest fire, you idiot."

"We'll be fine." He waved his hand. "We're too high up for it to get us."

"What?"

What the hell did that even mean?

"Did you not pay attention to any of the demonstrations? The air is thick up here because of the smoke rising. That means the fire is down farther. I bet there's a hill we can stand on to see it."

"We're not getting that close." Turning to glance over my shoulder, I realized I couldn't see jack shit. Not even the subtle reflections from the other inmates and firefighters' coveralls.

Shit, we'd gone too far away from the group.

"Barker, come on. Let's just go back. You'll get your shots when we're back with the group."

My anxiety was already rising from potentially being this close to a wild fire. That shit was unpredictable and I wasn't about to get caught in something I had no idea how to get out of.

He ignored me completely and set off in the direction of the thick smoke, the reflectors on the back of his coveralls slowly disappearing from view. Panic flooded me, my mind being torn in two different directions of wanting to go back to try and find our group or follow after Barker to make sure nothing bad happened to him.

The guilt would eat at me if I went back to the group and left Barker behind to potentially run into trouble without any help. He was being an idiot, true, but no one deserved to go out like that.

Quickly darting through the trees, I caught up with him just as he was coming up to a small overhang. The heat was intense the closer we got to it, and soon, flames were dancing wildly among the dry brush.

My hand shot out to instinctively grab at the back of his coveralls. "We need to go back."

He raised the camera up to his goggle-covered eyes and snapped a few pictures. "Damn, this is so cool. You ever see anything like this?"

"No," I admitted. "And I don't really want to. Come on, let's go."

I tugged at him and tried to force him to come back with me, but all it really did was get him to tell me to ‘fuck off' while he snapped more photos. My skin felt like it was melting inside of my suit, the heat intense enough for sweat to trickle down my back.

Barker pulled himself out of my grasp in order to move along the overhang, bypassing a tree that was half-rooted out of the soil and hanging over the empty air of where the fire was. He grabbed a hold of one of the branches down close enough for him to reach, using it as a way to swing up onto the bend in the tree's trunk.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Shut up," he said, lifting the camera again. "You'll thank me when we get extra time out in the yard?—"

Beneath him, the tree gave way from the overhang and crumbled to the ground.