Ronan Hale, 52, spent 22 years leading U.S. Forest Service wildfire hotshot crews before a blown knee and his wife’s early death sent him into semi-seclusion on 12 wooded acres outside Missoula. His defining flaw? He’d rather haul 50-pound bags of feed up a frozen hillside in January than ask for help, or let anyone get close enough to offer it. He’d only agreed to show up to the county fire department’s annual chili cookoff because three of his old crew members had showed up on his porch that morning, beer in hand, and refused to leave until he caved.
He’d brought a batch of smoked elk chili he’d simmered overnight, dropped it off at the judging table, and planted himself against the cinder block wall of the community center 20 feet from the nearest crowd, PBR in one hand, condensation dripping down his wrist, frayed ball cap pulled low over his eyes. The air smelled like cumin, burnt wood, and damp fall grass. Kids screamed as they chased each other around the picnic tables, and the county sheriff argued with a local rancher about grazing rights loud enough that Ronan could hear every word from his spot.
He was mentally mapping his exit route when Marisol Torres tripped over a coiled garden hose half-buried in the grass, sloshing a quarter cup of green chili down the front of his faded red flannel. She yelped, fumbling for a crumpled napkin in her jacket pocket, and leaned in to dab at the stain before he could even react. Her knuckle brushed his forearm through the thin fabric of the shirt, and he jolted like he’d touched a downed power line. He hadn’t felt a spark like that from a casual touch in 8 years, not since the last time his wife had grabbed his arm to pull him in for a kiss before he left for a fire assignment.
He was halfway to a gruff “don’t worry about it” when he looked down at her. She ran the mobile vet clinic that had set up shop in the empty gas station on the edge of town three months prior, he later learned. She had a streak of silver cutting through her dark curly hair, work boots caked in mud and dog hair, and a tiny gap between her two front teeth when she laughed at her own clumsiness. She smelled like pine and peppermint lip balm, and her calloused hands—he guessed from lifting large dogs and holding them still for shots—brushed his wrist again as she apologized for the mess.
His first instinct was to step back, mumble that it was fine, and hightail it to his truck before he did something stupid, like ask her name. The guilt hit fast, sharp as a pine needle to the palm: he still wore his wedding band on a chain around his neck, still kept all of his wife’s mugs in the cabinet above the coffee maker, still felt like dating anyone else was a betrayal of the 17 years they’d had together. But she didn’t push, didn’t gush about how she’d heard so much about the retired hotshot who lived up on the hill, just leaned against the wall next to him, close enough that their shoulders brushed every time she shifted her weight, and asked if his chili had won any awards in past years.
They talked for 45 minutes, neither of them moving away. She told him she’d moved up from Albuquerque after her son left for NYU, that she’d been sick of the city heat and the ex-husband who kept texting her at 2 a.m. begging to get back together. He told her about the time his crew had fought a fire outside Yellowstone for 12 straight days, surviving on nothing but trail mix and gas station coffee, about the way pine trees glow bright orange when fire hits the crown, so bright you can see it from 30 miles away. He didn’t mention his wife, not at first, until she asked why he never came into town, why everyone said he was a hermit.
The bonfire lit up behind them just as he told her about the breast cancer that had taken his wife in six months, about how he’d spent the first two years after she died just sitting on his porch drinking too much, too angry at the world to talk to anyone. He expected that awkward pity face everyone gave him when he said it, the one where they mumbled “I’m so sorry” and then scrambled to change the subject. She just nodded, her eyes soft, and said she knew what that kind of grief felt like, that her little sister had died in a car crash when she was 22, and she’d spent a year sleeping on her couch, too sad to even shower some days.
The crowd had drifted over to the bonfire, leaving the two of them alone by the wall. She tilted her head up to look at him, the firelight gilding the edges of her curls, and brushed a stray pine needle off the shoulder of his flannel. Her fingers lingered on the fabric for a beat longer than necessary, and he didn’t pull away. The guilt was still there, quiet now, not screaming like it usually was. For the first time in 8 years, it didn’t feel wrong to want to be close to someone else.
He asked her if she wanted to come back to his place, that his niece had dropped off a fresh apple pie that morning, still warm enough to melt vanilla ice cream into it. She grinned, that gap between her teeth showing again, and said she’d love to, as long as his hound Duke didn’t mind. He blinked, surprised, and she laughed, said she’d treated Duke for a tick bite a month prior when he’d wandered down to her clinic, that he’d tried to steal a peanut butter cracker out of her pocket while she was pulling the tick out.
They walked the three blocks to his truck slowly, their hands brushing every few steps, neither of them making a move to hold the other. Duke was waiting on the porch when they pulled up the driveway, tail thumping so hard the whole porch rail shook when he saw Marisol. Ronan unlocked the front door, held it open for her, and she stepped past him, her hand resting lightly on his waist for half a second before she knelt down to scratch Duke behind the ears.
