Zach stood there in his jeans and someone’s firefighter jacket, opened so that she could see he was still as grimy as she’d been only a few moments ago. It didn’t matter. One minute she was holding on to the door and the next moment she was holding on to him.

“Brooke,” he murmured, his hand fisting in the towel at her back.

She pulled away to look into his face. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

“Your house?”

“Not so much.”

“Oh, Zach.”

“Aidan’s putting me up at his place, but I needed to see you.”

“I needed to see you, too. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I am now.”

“I feel sick about Blake.”

“Yeah.” Zach blew out a breath. “They found a stack of wire-mesh trash cans in his garage. The chief is saying he was always a pyromaniac, that this job was just a cover to be near fires, that his illness got too much for him so he started setting fires to put them out. Then I started stirring it all up, which made it worse, and he went crazy.” He shook his head. “He was one of us, Brooke. How the hell did this happen to one of us?” He turned in a slow circle. “And there’s something else bugging the hell out of me. How did Blake manage to order the properties demolished? He didn’t have that kind of pull. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

She just shook her head and hugged him again, closing her eyes to breathe him in. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters right now. The rest of the questions will get their answers later.”

His eyes cut to the stack of boxes. “You’ve been busy. Did you take the offer on the house?”

“Not yet.”

“Where will you go?”

“I—I’m not quite sure.”

“You probably have lots of choices,” he said quietly, still looking at the boxes.

“I don’t know. I like this coast, a lot.”

He turned back to her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She swallowed past a lump of emotion the size of a basketball. “There’s lots of coastal cities hiring EMTs right now.”

“Including Santa Rey.”

“I know.” Brooke ran her hand over his sooty chest. “I have a tub filled with hot, bubbling water. Interested?”

“As long as you’re in it.”

“That could be arranged.”

They ended up draining the tub so he could shower the grime off him first, then filling it back up. Then they climbed in together, her back to his chest, his legs alongside of hers, his arms surrounding her, cast carefully out of the water. For a long moment he just pressed his jaw to hers. “Rationally, I knew you weren’t going to die today,” he murmured. “But I’ve found I’m not always rational when it comes to you.”