“Fine. But if we plummet to the earth and create a tandem crater in a cornfield, I will never forgive you.”
She let out a little squeal and launched herself into my arms. She may have knocked me back a step, but I still managed to catch her, holding her so her feet dangled off the ground.
Her mouth crashed into the side of my face and she gave me a loud kiss.
“You’re not going to regret this. I promise.”
I was busy regretting every single thing about the day, starting with the decision to get out of bed, when a guy in cargo shorts casually rolled up the flimsy door in the plane’s fuselage.
“It’s time,” Lina said in my ear. We were straddling a bench that was bolted to the floor. I was hog-tied to her with a series of nylon straps that didn’t look like they would hold Piper, let alone a full-grown man.
Every cell in my body screamed for me to cling to the bench. Instead, I stupidly forced myself to crab walk toward the gaping hole in the side of the plane. This was by far the dumbest thing I’d ever done for a woman.
“Are you sure about this?” I yelled to her over the rush of air.
“I’m positive, hotshot.” I could hear the smile in Lina’s husky voice.
We balanced in the opening, each gripping a handle on the inside of the door, and I made the mistake of looking out and down.
My knuckles went white on the handle.
“You can let go. Trust me, Nash,” she said.
So I did. One finger at a time. I hoped Knox wouldn’t put something stupid on my headstone.
And then Lina was tilting us to the right and we were falling into nothing.
I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the panic, but it was too late for regrets. The wind buffeting my face, the drop in my stomach like an endless downhill of a roller coaster, told me that.
“Open your eyes, hotshot.”
I didn’t know how she knew I had them closed. Just another bit of her magic.
“I don’t want to see myself die,” I yelled back.
I felt her laugh against me, and her amusement had me prying one eye open and then the other.
My heart did a slow roll in my chest.
We were suspended above the earth. Autumn rolled out in a carpet of reds, oranges, and golds that went on forever beneath us. Ribbons of river, grids of roads, the smooth rise and fall of mountains all formed a patchwork quilt of nature and civilization thousands of feet below.
It didn’t feel like we were careening to our deaths. It felt like we were suspended in time. Like gods surveying the world they’d created. Above it. Apart from it.
A bird’s-eye view. The big picture. There was nothing between me and the entire world, and it was fucking breathtaking.
The world wasn’t dark and terrifying. It was beauty unfolding all around us.
“Well?” Lina demanded in my ear, her hands squeezing my arms.
I gave the only answer I could.
“Holy shit.” My roar of laughter was instantly swallowed up by the wind.
“I knew you’d love it!”
I wrapped my hands around hers on the straps and squeezed. “This is fucking amazing. You’re fucking amazing!”
Lina whooped triumphantly into the wind.
I followed suit, reveling when the sound was snatched from my throat.
“Ready for the best part?” she asked.
“What’s the best part?” I yelled back.
I’d barely gotten the words out when the free fall stopped abruptly and we were jerked up and back. One second, we were flying, belly down, and the next, we were suspended like marionettes as a bright red parachute billowed into being above us.
The rush of the wind in my ears stopped instantly, leaving nothing but an unearthly silence.
We were so far from everything that seemed so important on earth. Up here, we were removed from the minutiae of daily life. Here was only silence, peace, and beauty.
Emotions that I’d thought long dead welled up inside me, clogging my throat, making my eyes sting behind their goggles.
“I wanted you to see this. To feel it,” Lina said.
I could have missed this. I could have died that night. I could have chosen to give up on her, on us. I could have said no on the ground. But instead, everything had led me to this moment. To Lina Solavita.
I was awestruck.
“This is… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad you didn’t have sex with me this morning.”
Her laugh was music in the silence.
“Wanna know a secret?” she asked.
“You have more?” I quipped.
“I don’t jump for the rush. I jump for this. Everything makes sense up here. Everything is always beautiful and quiet. And I remember that, even after my feet touch the ground.”
I got it then. Really got it.
I loved her. I wasn’t using her as some crutch to avoid the world. She was reintroducing it to me one experience at a time.
My heart belonged to this woman and I was going to go buy her the biggest fucking ring I could find.
FORTY-SIX
BLAME THE CANDY PENISES
Lina
“You didn’t kick him in the balls for that?” Sloane demanded. She was sitting cross-legged on Naomi’s living room floor, stuffing pouches of flower seeds into mini burlap bags.
In an attempt to be a better, more vulnerable friend, I was recapping my relationship drama for Naomi, Sloane, Liza J, and Amanda during what appeared to be the lamest bachelorette party in history.
The rehearsal and ensuing dinner were over. In less than twenty-four hours, Naomi would be Mrs. Knox Morgan, and Nash and I would hopefully be having tipsy sex in a closet during the reception.
But for now, we were putting the finishing touches on the guest favors and watching the bride panic about last minute RSVPs in her living room. Piper and the rest of the dogs were outside running off the evening crazy with Waylay.
“I couldn’t,” I confessed. “He was already hurting and that made me hurt. It was basically horrible. Why people do relationships is beyond me. No offense,” I said to Naomi.
She grinned. “None taken. That’s how it was with Knox. I knew he was struggling with something I couldn’t fix. Not even with a kick to the testicles.”
“What did you do?” I asked, closing one of the burlap bags with a rust-colored ribbon. I’d arrived in town post-breakup, mid-fallout, and didn’t know the details.
“He ended things so abruptly, my head spun. I already knew I loved him, but he had things to work through on his own. I couldn’t force that. And I also couldn’t wait around for him to come to his senses.” She glanced down at her engagement ring and smiled softly. “Thankfully, he came around before it was too late.”
Sloane blew out a breath that fogged up her glasses. “I don’t think I have that gene in me.”
“What gene?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. The ability to take a punch to the gut without swinging back. I can’t just forgive someone for the baggage they’re lugging around. Especially not after they bash me over the head with it.”
“Someday, with the right person, you’ll get there,” Amanda assured Sloane.
“Yeah. Hard pass on that,” Sloane said.
“My boys are stubborn as the day is long,” Liza J said. “Knox always tried to distance himself from every single problem while Nash got in there and tried to fix everything. He always wanted to make things right, even when there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about them.”