Tara would have skipped to the trainees clustered on the lawn, but her body felt like lead and every muscle ached. But she was ecstatic with her time and curious what the fastest times were overall. She proved to herself she could do it and enjoyed showing off her capability to a certain smokejumper.
Reed Cameron had been impressed. “You should be on a hotshot crew,” he’d said after weighing her pack.
While waiting for the buses to arrive, several of the hotshot crew members clustered around, congratulating Tara. She stood tall, relishing her accomplishment. She couldn’t have done it without Dad pushing her to hike all those steep forest slopes around Missoula, while carrying heavy weight in her day pack.
After the congratulations ended, she wandered over to sit on the grass.
Liz was the first one to her. “You smoked that track like a chipmunk on speed. How the hell did you do that?”
“Guess how many pounds. Go ahead, guess,” gushed Tara. She could barely contain herself. “Sixty-five.”
“You’re insane! You could have killed yourself. Why did you do that?”
“To see if I could.”
“What did the instructors say? Have you told them?”
“Not yet.” She couldn’t wipe the silly grin off her face. Her gaze shifted to Ryan, standing at the finish line talking to the test monitors and her blood raced through her veins.
Ryan made his way to Reed Cameron, who was busy dismantling the scale and gathering equipment.
“Hey Reed, the woman you were talking to—the redhead? What was her post-test weight?”
“Sixty-five.”
Ryan’s chin dropped. He furrowed his brows. “She carried twenty extra pounds? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Told her she should be on a hotshot crew.”
“Thanks, Reed.” Ryan’s mouth hung open and he clamped it shut. What the hell?
“No problem.” Reed piled equipment into a golf cart.
Ryan spied Tara sitting on the lawn with Liz and the other trainees and headed in her direction. “Waters, you beat the hotshots. Thirty-eight minutes. Impressive.”
She rose to her feet, grinning up at him. “Thanks. I’m pretty pleased. Did you hear what I carried?” She stood to the side, one stunning leg turned out.
“Yeah. About that. Can I talk to you for a second?” He removed his sunglasses and walked a short distance away.
Tara followed and Ryan waited until she caught up to him.
“Why did you carry extra weight? You could have washed yourself out.”
She gave him a prideful look. “To prove I could do it. I wanted to see if I could carry sixty-five pounds under forty-five minutes. And I did.”
“Why the hell would you risk it? People have suffered cardiac arrest during pack tests carrying the normal weight. That was reckless and you endangered yourself.” His words blasted her like the recoil of a gun.
“I’m twenty-eight. I have a healthy heart.”
“People younger than you have had heart attacks during pack tests. Age doesn’t mean shit.”
“I’m in fine shape and I’ve worked hard at it. I’m fit as any hotshot or any smokejumper, for that matter.” Anger crept into her tone and her voice grew louder.
Ryan glanced around and lowered his voice. “I understand you wanting to qualify for a hotshot position, but you didn’t need the extra weight.”
“Aren’t you impressed that I even did this? Why are you shooting down my accomplishment?” She scowled at him.
“Tell me the real reason you added the weight.” He pinned his gaze to hers.
She didn’t blink. “I told you. For a personal best.”
He took off his baseball cap and narrowed his eyes. “No. That isn’t it. You’re overcompensating. You think you have to outrun and outdo everyone else to make up for not saving that man in Montana. Stop punishing yourself. It leads nowhere, fast. Get counseling instead.”
“Why do you keep bugging me about counseling and what does this have to do with my pack test? Since when are you the expert on what makes me tick? You hardly know me.”
“I thought yesterday changed that a little.”
“Because you kissed me?” She shot it at him like a bullet.
He glanced around making sure no one overheard. “More than that…I wanted to know you better.” There was so much more he wanted to say, but pride wouldn’t let him.
“But why did you kiss me in the first place, knowing we’d have to work together? With all due respect, Ryan—what the fuck?”
“You’re the one who suggested we pretend it never happened, remember?” His fingers combed the top of his head. His frustration level was mounting.“Look, you changed the subject.”
Tara folded her arms and gave him a defiant look. “No. You're avoiding the subject! You’ve twisted what I did into—you know what? I can’t…” She unfolded her arms and raised her hands in surrender. “I can’t talk about this anymore.”
She heaved her pack to a shoulder and hurried to the bus, leaving him standing there like a doofus, gaping after her.
Way to go, douche. He meant his advice as a good-will gesture, but she took it as him being heavy-handed. He wanted to explain why he nagged her about the importance of talking to a therapist about her line of duty death experience. He wanted to tell her how he knew. But there wasn’t time. He had a training class to run.
Ryan swung into the front seat of the bus. He glimpsed Tara in the visor mirror, two rows back, scowling at the window. Sadly, he understood all too well why she’d added the weights.
The line of duty deaths five years ago in California still cowed him. He still battled depression. He viewed his helplessness at preventing the deaths as a failure in himself. He would have bailed out of firefighting, had it not been for Gunnar. The therapy sessions had helped, but he stopped going. Instead, he atoned by overcompensating. Hell, that’s how he wound up in jump school—to erase the crushing
