I can't count; animal shenanigans; just three more weeks of Night and Day!

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Hey, amazing ones!

Counting: 2, Rachel: 0

Last week I said I was sending you chapter fifteen of Night and Day, but it was actually chapter fourteen. So, the actual Chapter Fifteen is at the bottom of this email. Don't worry, you didn't miss anything, but I just wanted to clarify that the chapter below is the new one. I made a similar mistake when I was releasing chapters of Undertow, so it's obviously best if no one relies on me to count past single-digit numbers. I'm not qualified.

The horses and I had a fun weekend away. I was gone two whole nights, which didn't seem to bother my husband or kids, but made the chi-poo (or at least, that's what the animal shelter said he was; we think of him more as a gremlin) despondent. He has been glued to my side even more so than usual. This morning, I had to sit next to his food dish in order for him to eat.

While I was gone, I had terrible cell phone reception in addition to just being really busy caring for and preparing both horses for their events. That meant I was more or less offline for two days. By remarking that I actually found my time away from social media and email refreshing, I apparently tempted fate. I left my phone in a friend's vehicle at the show and didn't realize it was missing until we'd already gone our separate ways! So now I'm partially offline not by choice but by necessity until I get it back. The FOMO is real! But so is the increased productivity. It's not even noon and I've already hit my ambitious November word-count goal for the first time!

What I'm reading

Continuing my enemies-to-lovers reading trend, I had so much fun with the new duet by Keira Andrews, Wed to the Barbarian and The Barbarian's Vow!

Several months ago, I caught wind of the fact that Keira was writing a fantasy. I was ecstatic; Keira is a favorite author and I love fantasy romance too. I couldn't wait to see what she came up with. I wouldn't have thought I could be any more excited than I already was, but then I saw the covers! As a longtime romance reader, I adore the callback to an old school illustrated cover, but with a modern (and mm!) bent.

What's one of your favorite book covers? Or, when was the last time you made a decision whether to read a book based on its cover alone?

What I'm writing

It's week two of National Novel Writing Month, and I'm chipping away at my goals. I don't know if I'm going to write quite as many words as I set out to (100,000!) but I am definitely on track with my primary project, which is As the Tallgrass Grows, book 4 of the Wild Ones series.

If you've read the first three books, you know that there's a lot of family history where the Chases are concerned, and while each character knows one piece of the puzzle, none of them have the whole story yet. I've enjoyed the challenge of filling in a few blanks with this book four, as well as introducing new questions to be answered in later books.

Not everyone enjoys series with an overarching story that spans multiple books, but I always have. So many of the books, television shows, and movies I've loved have a dynastic or family saga aspect. I honestly didn't set out to incorporate that into this series, but an author's own interests seem to find their way into a story whether they meant to put them there or not.

I realized on Friday that there are probably just three more chapters to go of Night & Day! Can you believe it? Remember that if you'd like to read ahead, you can find Chapter Sixteen over on Discord, and I'll be writing Chapter Seventeen there on Friday morning.

Have a great week.

xo,

Rachel

find me in more places

Website | Rachel's Party Barn on Facebook | Instagram | Discord

my books

Long Winter | Signs of Spring | Burning Season | As the Tallgrass Grows

Jaywalking | Sleepwalker

***

NIGHT & DAY

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

When Ty’s phone went off the first time, he was so deeply content and soundly asleep, he only registered that it was making noise, and wondered why his alarm would have the audacity to go off when he was having a dreams-do-come-true night tucked against Jonathan’s broad, perfect, warm body.

Then it went off again, and he realized that he was hearing a ring tone, not the dull peal of an alarm. He disentangled himself from Jonathan, who rolled over with a sigh, stirring but not yet fully awake. Ty fumbled for his phone in the pocket of his jeans, which were in a tangled heap on the floor along with the rest of his clothes.

By the time he found it, he’d missed the call. And it wasn’t the first, or second, call that he’d missed—it was the third. He recognized the number as belonging to Corinne, the woman who'd lived across the street from his house for as long as he could remember. She’d sometimes watched the girls for him when they were little. He couldn't imagine she'd be calling for no good reason, especially in the middle of the night, and a chill rushed through him as he dialed her back.

"Ty?" Jonathan murmured from the bed behind him; Ty was still crouched on the floor next to the pile of clothes where he'd extracted his phone.

"I think something's—" Ty began to answer, then interrupted himself when he heard Corinne’s voice.

"Hello?"

"Corinne, it's Ty. Sorry I missed your calls. What's going on?"

"Oh, honey." Her voice, always rough as a consequence of her two-packs-a-day smoking habit, was even more strained than usual. "You had better come quick. Your house is on fire."

"What?" Ty almost fumbled the phone, his hands shaking as he tucked it between his ear and his shoulder and dove for his jeans, dragging them on in the dark. "What do you—what?"

"There's smoke, and all," Corinne rasped. "Flames in the upstairs window."

One of the two street-facing upstairs windows led to Sam's room. Ty could hardly find his voice for a second, and he needed his other hand to get his shirt. He needed a light on. 

"Do you know... is Sam...?" He couldn’t get the question out.

"You'd better come quick," was all Corinne said.

Ty gave up and ended the call, his heart pounding so hard he felt like it could leave his body. The light on the nightstand came on. 

"What's happening?" Jonathan's voice was sharp and wakeful now. He swung his feet over the side of the bed while Ty was still blinking, his eyes adjusting to the light, his whole body still reeling from the deeper shock. Why wasn't he dressed? Why wasn't he already tearing through the city toward home? Why wasn't he home in the first place, where he could have stopped this from happening at all?

"I have to get home," he said, knowing that he wasn't making much sense, putting his shirt on and foregoing socks as he strode out the bedroom door. He'd left his shoes in the foyer. He just had to put them on, and he could— 

"Ty, wait," Jonathan said, somehow right beside him and catching his arm, stopping him short. "What happened?" 

Ty barely registered that he was repeating a question Ty hadn't answered. And he didn't have time to answer. He yanked his arm away from Jonathan. "That was our neighbor. There's a... fire." He stumbled through the words; saying them aloud put a fresh chill in his veins.

"I'll drive you," Jonathan said immediately.

"I don't have time." Ty shot Jonathan an unfocused glare as he continued out of the room, focused wholly on getting to his shoes. Then out the door. Then across town to Sam. From a distance, he recognized the absurdity of his own panicked plans. There was no bus this late, and it would take forever to get there on foot. But up close all he had was the urge to run into whatever danger Sam was in and pull her out of it, literal flames be damned.

Jonathan's longer legs made it easy for him to stride past Ty and in front of him, stopping him with the wall of his body—his naked body, Ty registered with faraway surprise—and hold Ty by the upper arms. 

His eyes were stern. "I'm going to get dressed, and get Isabel. Then I'll drive you. That will be much faster. While you wait for me, you're going to call emergency services and report a fire, if they don't already know. Then call your family. Got it?"

Jonathan's calm demeanor made Ty suddenly furious. How could he be calm when Sam could be hurt? But also, when he laid out the first steps toward getting to her in sequence, even Ty's flailing mind could register the logic. He nodded, and Jonathan gave his arms a final squeeze and stepped away. 

Ty dialed emergency services. By the time he got done explaining that he hadn't seen the fire himself, but it had been reported to him by a neighbor, and then called up Corinne's information in his phone to give it to the dispatcher, Jonathan was dressed and tucking a cranky Isabel into her carrier.

"Ready?" Jonathan asked him. Ty paused to shove his feet into his shoes and they went out into the night, Ty's heart frozen as he held his phone to his ear after dialing Sam’s number. The phone rang and rang with no answer.

Neither of them said anything in the car. For the first time, Isabel's cries were only noise in Ty's head. He didn’t have room in his thoughts for the urge to soothe her. He kept his phone to his ear, redialing Sam again and again. By the time they were halfway across town, Jonathan driving efficiently but carefully, the baby had settled back to sleep, likely lulled by the late hour and the swaying motion of the car.

The next time Ty redialed Sam, the call went straight to voicemail without a single ring. He put his phone back in his pocket and leaned forward to press his face into his hands.

"Hey." Jonathan stroked a hand down Ty’s bent back then returned it to the wheel. "Hang in there. We're not far away now."

They'd crossed the river, and the car was bumping over the rough surfaces of the smaller side streets Ty had roamed as a kid younger than Sam. Only the headlights illuminated them from one curb clotted with fallen leaves and stray bits of trash to the other.

The wail of a siren made Ty's blood run cold all over again, and Jonathan had to ease the car out of the way of the big engine, which made its way ponderously past on the narrow street, its lights seeming to bounce, afloat, as it hit the potholes and grooves in the crappy street and weaved past the cars parked on the street.

Ty must have made some kind of a sound, because Jonathan said, "Take deep breaths," in an alarmed tone of voice, and reached out and squeezed his leg, then left his hand there just above Ty’s knee.

The touch anchored Ty enough for him to mutter half-breathless directions for the last few turns. 

When they rounded the final corner, Jonathan didn't need Ty to tell him where they were going anymore. The house stood out in its row of lookalike neighbors tonight; it was completely aflame, like a giant torch.

He was vaguely aware of Jonathan saying his name before he wrangled himself free of the seatbelt that Jonathan had insisted he buckle, found the release for the automatic lock on the passenger door, and tumbled out into the street from the slow-moving vehicle, somehow managing to keep his feet.

Ty didn't bother to close the door behind him and he didn’t look back as Jonathan called his name. He only ran, straight up to what looked like a hastily erected barricade that wouldn’t be difficult to slip through. The firemen were hard at work. 

He was about to step over the tape slung between two stanchions when he was intercepted by a member of the fire crew, but not in firefighting gear, only a regular, heavy coat and a helmet.

"Kid, what the hell? Stay back," the guy exclaimed, holding Ty fast by the arm.

Ty fought furiously and ineffectively, but the guy’s hand wouldn’t budge. "That's my house!" he shouted. "My sister lives there."

"The house has been cleared," the guy said.

"What?"

"Yeah. There were two adults inside, and they appear to be fine." He nodded toward an ambulance parked at the edge of the fray, where Ty could clearly see the “two adults”—his worthless parents—wrapped in stiff navy felt blankets and looking dazed.

"You didn't get my sister!" Ty shouted, and tried unsuccessfully to dodge the guy and get around him to the burning house. "My little sister!"

The man grabbed him by both biceps, and Ty struggled so hard, his feet left the ground for a second. 

"Hey!" the fireman shouted. “Cool it, kid!”

Ty stopped fighting him, cognizant of the fact that even though he was more than willing to run into the fire for Sam, he wouldn't get very far. "You have to go in and get her!" he insisted.

"I already told you, the house is clear!"

Before Ty could argue further, a familiar voice interrupted them.

"Ty?"

His mother was walking their way, wrapped in her blanket, but where it gaped at her neck he could only see skin. He could only imagine what kind of a state his parents had been in when they ran from the house—or were brought out by the firemen. And now here she was, just blinking at him, like there was nothing to be worried about.

"Sam isn't inside," his mother went on. She wiped a hand across her eyes, which were red and swollen, probably from the smoke. She seemed eerily calm even as she looked past him at the conflagration.

"Then where is she?" Ty asked through gritted teeth, caught somewhere between relieved and a new kind of alarm.

His mother gave him a quizzical look. "How should I know? But she's not here. Hasn't been for days. I figured she was with you."

Ty took a step back from the house, and ignoring his mother and the new thoughts collecting in the back of his mind, he gave the guy in the fire department coat a long look. "You're sure they cleared it?"

The guy nodded, looking tentatively relieved, but also ready to pounce if Ty made another try at getting past him. "Yes. Before it was nearly this bad, they checked it top to bottom. And the occupants confirmed they were the only ones inside."

Without another word to his mother, Ty turned and walked away, his panic taking a new shape. Sam wasn't in a burning building. But where the fuck was she? He'd start with her friend's house. Friend, singular, because outside of her siblings, Sam had exactly one. Then…

Jonathan.

He'd almost forgotten him, somehow, but there he was, standing directly in Ty's field of vision. He'd gotten out of the car, and he was holding Isabel, but didn't seem to want to bring her any closer to the action around the house. That made sense. She shouldn't be here.

Neither should Jonathan.

Jonathan was watching Ty carefully, the baby against his shoulder.

Despite the chaos in his head, a few felt certain to Ty. Clearer than they’d been while he was fooling himself, playing house with Jonathan like he wasn’t responsible to anyone but himself. This was Ty's life—his sisters, especially Sam. They were his family and his most important responsibility. A responsibility he’d neglected so badly, he didn’t even know where Sam was in the middle of the night. 

He would get where he needed to just as fast on foot as he would by dragging Jonathan and a baby from one corner of the neighborhood to the other. He didn't have time to explain everything to Jonathan, but he had time to say the one thing that he suddenly realized had to be said.

The words formed as the single clear thought in his head, the only thing that felt certain in the chaos that had gripped him over the past half-hour.

He walked to Jonathan before he could lose his nerve, and even though it broke his own heart to say it, he met his eye and spoke the words anyway. "You should go. I have to find Sam. And... I have to quit."

Jonathan's lips parted. His long fingers curled more snugly around Isabel's blanket-wrapped shoulders. For some reason, the sight of those long, smooth fingers made tears prick in the back of Ty's eyes, stinging worse than the smoke. "Ty..." He began, his voice rough with protest.

But Ty just shook his head, looking away and blinking hard. "I can't. I'm sorry." And he turned and broke into a run, going where Jonathan couldn't follow.