Into the Blue (A Wild Aces Romance) (3 page)

I read over Becca’s message three fucking times Monday morning before my flight, not to mention all of the times I read it between getting the message and landing back in Oklahoma on Sunday afternoon, trying to decode it and coming up short every single time. She hadn’t reached out to me in ten years, and now this . . . Did she want me to respond? But if she did, why hadn’t she sent me a friend request? My finger hovered over the “Add Friend” option, and then I pulled back.

Shit.

I seriously contemplated messaging Burn and his wife, Jordan, to get a female opinion on this, needing someone to sanity check my next move, but I did a quick mental calculation and realized that with the time difference it was the middle of the night in Korea, and I figured there’d be no end to the shit I’d get from the guys if it got around that I was this pathetic.

Flirting with women had never been this difficult. It was Becca who always made me feel like I came up short.

I could respond, but with what? It wasn’t like she’d left me much—
any
—room to maneuver. And I didn’t want to get into some awkward pen-pal relationship with her—talk about rubbing salt into the wound. But that was the problem. I didn’t know what I fucking wanted from her.

I stared at her profile picture, my heart clenching at the sight of the smile that had made me feel like the luckiest guy in the fucking world every single time it came my way.

My finger hovered over the “Add Friend” option again, telling myself she wouldn’t have sent me the message if she completely loathed me. I mean, yeah, she’d said the line about the date, but I’d sort of skimmed over that part, preferring to focus on the fact that after nearly a decade of silence, she’d reached out to me. Maybe this was her way of telling me the ball was in my court.

I clicked the button, watching as the message, “Friend Request Sent,” appeared on the screen.

Fuck.

I raked a hand through my hair, sliding my phone into my locker, removing my patches, and putting my combat name patch on my left arm. I slipped on my G-suit, then my harness, affixing my lineup card to my right knee, grabbing my helmet, and slipping it into the helmet bag. I draped my earplugs around my neck, grabbed the bag with my flight pubs and in-flight checklist, swung it over my shoulder, and walked to the vault to get my classified materials.

I left the vault and made my way to the step desk to get my step brief, the tension and anticipation building inside me as I got ready to fly, Becca temporarily pushed from my mind.

Time to go to work.

I downed my fourth cup of coffee for the day, cringing a bit as the lukewarm liquid hit my mouth. Definitely a Monday.

I flipped through the case file again, skimming the words contained there. The First Appearance was scheduled for later in the week.

Our circuit bled right up to Columbia, so we occasionally got some students who lived in between the two cities, taking advantage of lower-cost housing in exchange for a slightly longer commute. This case was a DUI, a college student who’d driven home after a night of partying too hard and throwing back too many beers. He’d been pulled over and failed both his field sobriety test and a Breathalyzer. He was a kid, but he was a kid who’d made the same mistake one too many times, and since this was his second offense, we were going after a harsher sentence than he would have received as a first-time offender.

Luckily, he hadn’t injured anyone—or worse.

A lot of the cases that came across my desk were difficult reads. I’d seen more of the horrible things people could and would do to one another than I’d ever imagined before I started working at the Solicitor’s Office seven years ago. The ones with children were the worst. I’d lost count of how many times I’d cried in private reading about some heinous act that had been committed, how many times the anger burned inside me, hot and bright.

It wasn’t supposed to be personal; I understood the reasons behind it, at least, but sometimes nothing gave me greater satisfaction than watching someone pay for the evil they’d wrought.

This case wasn’t the worst, not by a long shot; on its face it was mundane, even.

Just not to me.

I wanted to scream at this kid that he had no fucking business getting into a car after he’d been drinking. None. I couldn’t, of course—
it isn’t personal
—but God, I wanted to.

I wanted to ask him if he thought the seven beers he’d consumed were worth the damage they could have caused, weighed against a life.

I was ten years old and my parents were driving back from a wedding in Columbia when a drunk driver heading in the opposite direction crossed over the median and hit them head-on. My dad died at the scene, my mom a few hours later in the hospital from injuries sustained at the accident.

The driver survived with little more than a few scratches.

I’d gone to bed that Saturday night, my head full of my parents’ promise to take me to the beach for the day the next morning, dreaming of sun and waves, wondering if I could convince them to take our old Labrador with us. I’d woken up to tears and the stark reality that there would be no more family trips anywhere, because one person’s careless mistake had taken my family away from me.

I’d gone to live with my mom’s elderly mother, moving from a house full of laughter and love to a quiet space where our grief swallowed us up.

The driver received ten years in state prison and a twenty-two-thousand-dollar fine for what the court called a felony DUI, also known as killing both of my parents. Five years and eleven thousand dollars per parent. He was out in six.

I went to law school.

Twenty-one years later, my grandmother long gone, I was still angry. Maybe I should have been forgiving. Maybe that
would have been a sign of my growth. But forgiveness had never come easily for me, so I stayed with angry. I couldn’t right the wrong done to my parents, but I sure as hell could do everything in my power to protect others from the same thing happening to them. There were hard cases, ones we lost that we should have won, times justice eluded me, but for the most part I genuinely felt like I helped people.

My e-mail pinged, adding to the seventy-five unread e-mails filling my box, and I groaned, already reaching for the bottle of pain relievers I kept on my desk.

My hand froze midway as I read the words on the screen.

Eric Jansen has sent you a friend request.

Oh, holy hell, I definitely should not have sent him that message.

I’d spent all day Sunday obsessing over why he hadn’t answered, whether I wanted him to answer, whether I
should
want him to answer, and finally concluded that he had realized it was opening a can of worms and he was being the wise one, whereas my judgment had clearly failed me.

He’d sent me a friend request. That one was a game changer.

I stared at it for what felt like an eternity, wondering if accepting would be a sign of personal growth or enabling my crazy. It had taken me years to get over him, years to get to the point where the sound of his name didn’t send a dagger through my heart. Why would I risk that again?

Adulting was fucking hard.

I picked up my cell and hit the first number on my speed dial.

Lizzie had been my best friend since we were kids who’d bonded over our disdain for naptime in pre-K. She’d been
there with me throughout the totality of my relationship with Eric and, more importantly, had held my hand—and occasionally, my hair—as I’d struggled to move on from the devastation he’d wrought in my life. She was happily married now with a little boy, and if there was anyone whose opinion mattered, it was her.

She answered with a weary sigh and yelled, “Dylan, do not stick the action figure up your nose. Dylan . . .”

I grinned. My six-year-old godson was a little terror, and I meant that in the best possible way. I babysat frequently so Lizzie and her husband, Adam, could go on date nights, and I had quite a few gray hairs that hadn’t been there before thanks to Dylan’s antics. Of course, he always ended the night cuddled in my lap, his expression that of a perfect angel, so he pretty much had me and all the females in his life wrapped around his finger.

“Okay, I’m back. Sorry. I cannot
wait
until Adam comes home.”

“Daddy!” Dylan yelled in the background.

“Yes, Daddy is going to come home soon and you should
definitely
show him all of the tricks you learned at your Aunt Caroline’s.”

I grinned again. Adam’s younger sister was notorious for teaching Dylan pranks that drove Lizzie nuts every time she babysat.

“Okay, I’m really back this time. He can run in circles around the yard for a while and burn off steam. Mama needs a break.”

I winced. “I shouldn’t have called you during the day. I know you have your hands full. Sorry. It was stupid.”

“Please. It was a break from pulling little green Army men out of my son’s nose. You calling is pretty much the best thing that’s happened all day. What’s up?”

I took a deep breath. “He friend requested me.”

There was no need to explain who
he
was. I’d already told Lizzie all about my awkward run-in with Eric and my stupid message.

“Ohmigod.”

“Yeah.”

That was the best thing about our friendship—we might have been in different places in our lives, but she was always right there when I needed her, and she always understood how big things were for me. She’d been the one to hold my hand through my parents’ funeral, even as we were both children struggling to deal with our grief. Lizzie’s mom took me shopping for my prom dress; she taught me how to do all the things my mom would have shown me if she’d been alive.

“What are you going to do?”

Lizzie was also the best because she didn’t pass judgment, even when she probably should have.

“I don’t know.”
Liar.
“Accept it, I guess. I mean, I have to, right? It would look petty if I didn’t.”

“You want to.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.”

“Where do you think this is going to go?”

“I don’t think it can go anywhere. He lives in Oklahoma. He’s in the Air Force. Who knows where they’ll send him next? I’m here and I have no intention of leaving.”

I’d worked hard to become a deputy solicitor—essentially South Carolina’s version of an assistant district attorney—and I loved my job. All of the reasons I hadn’t wanted to give up my career to follow Eric around the world still remained. Except there were moments . . . moments when I cuddled Dylan in my arms and wondered if I’d made a mistake going with my head over my heart. I was thirty-one
and my most serious relationship to date had ended when I was barely legal to drink. It was hard not to feel like I was going backward in some ways, even as I advanced in my career.

“So why do you think he friend requested you?”

“He could have been trying to be friendly. Or maybe he was curious.”

“Or maybe he saw how fabulous you looked on Saturday night and regretted his decision to let you go.”

This was why everyone needed a best friend like Lizzie—she made you feel good even though you’d made an ass of yourself in front of your ex.

“Highly doubtful.” I sighed. “What should I do? Do I accept the request, or is that just opening me up to a world of hurt?”

“At this point, could it get worse?”

“Probably.”

“Then do you want my advice?”

“God, yes.”

“Sit on it. Take a few days and think about whether or not you want him back in your life, even in a limited way. He wasn’t just some guy, wasn’t just some ex. It’s going to be hard to let him in, even peripherally. So take the time.”

I
really
loved Lizzie.

“Has anyone told you that you give amazing advice?”

She laughed. “Just tell my son that the next time he tries to stick something up his nose. Yesterday it was Play-Doh.”

“Let me know when I can take over babysitting duty. I’m happy to help.”

“I will definitely take you up on that. I just want to go to a movie with my husband and make out in a dark theater.”

“Done. Name the time and day, and I’m there.”

We talked for a few more minutes and then I hung up the
phone, deleting the e-mail, already feeling better. Maybe time did heal all wounds. Or maybe I was just delaying a date with destiny. Either way, I had a three o’clock deposition and bigger things to do than worry about Eric.

I almost believed it myself.

The night sky was inky black as I stared out the canopy at my surroundings.

Lightning flashed, static filling the radio from the electricity of the thunderstorm.

My hand gripped the stick, heart pounding.

I’d never minded flying at night before, had always loved the calm and peace of the dark sky. Until the night Joker died . . .

I was doing a FLUG ride at the range, serving as an instructor for Brick, one of the younger wingmen in the squadron who was trying to get certified as a flight lead for his night close air support sortie. He was a solid lead, but we were strafing at night, and the weather was shit, not helping the nerves ramming through my body.

I kept my eyes on Brick, my night vision goggles giving me a good view of his jet, five nautical miles from the target area. We were in a right-hand turn, two miles apart from each other, his covert strobe flashing on my NVGs.

The joint terminal air controller on the ground called in and requested a strafing pass over the radio, passing us a nine-line over the frequency.

“Nine-line Charlie. This next attack will be a Type II bomb on target. Attack. Lines one through three NA. Line
four three hundred and fifty feet. Line five enemy personnel in the open . . .”

He went through the remaining four lines, giving us our targeting instructions, adding in the remarks and restrictions.

Brick read back the lines and gave his brief.

More lightning flashed at my three. More static filled the radio. I gripped the stick even harder, my mask suddenly feeling too tight, my chest growing heavy.

The JTAC gave the clearance.

“Cleared hot.”

We went in for the attack, my eyes on Brick off to my right, banking and rolling into a twenty-five-degree dive. A green explosion of fire flashed on my NVGs as Brick employed his gun.

Green fire.

Just like Joker. The same fucking image burned into my brain.

My hand shook on the stick.

I began the roll in for my attack, the jet in a thirty-degree right-hand turn, going forty knots, looking over my shoulder.

Another bolt of lightning to my left jolted me from where I’d locked on to Brick.

I gave the radio call, my words eerily echoing the last call I’d ever heard Joker make that night on the range in Alaska.

I overrotated, pulling four G’s, looking over my shoulder.

A secondary explosion came from where Brick shot the gun, just as I was about to squeeze the trigger. The light washed out my night vision, blinding me for a second.

I froze, my heart pounding, chest tightening.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The JTAC called out, “Abort. Abort. Abort,” over the radio, and ice filled my veins, taking me back to that
fucking night, to the same three words I’d heard right before Joker had crashed into the ground.

I could hear Brick over the radio, breaking through the whoosh of white noise in my ears.

“Snake two! Recover! Snake two! Recover!”

A solid, steady tone sounded in my headset.
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.
The jet lurched up on its own, until I suddenly got light in the seat as the jet leveled off, a couple hundred feet off the ground.

Spatial fucking D.

Sweat rained down my face, my chest hammering like I was about to have a fucking heart attack, my hand, which used to be so steady on the stick, trembling and shaking like a leaf.

I hadn’t realized where the jet was in the sky—between the secondary explosion washing out my night goggles, the bad weather, and the fact that I’d been too focused on Brick’s jet—on watching my lead—I hadn’t even noticed that I’d been flying toward the ground.

Just like Joker.

With one noticeable difference—

I had the Auto Ground Collision Avoidance System installed in my jet, a recent upgrade to the F-16 that alerted us to spatial D and recovered the jet when we lost control. Joker had been two months away from his death being avoidable, from his flight playing out the same way mine had.

One upgrade away from coming home to his wife in a jet rather than a coffin.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop the trembling in my body, couldn’t catch my breath the entire flight back to Bryer. There were ghosts in the jet with me, and if I didn’t get them under control, I’d kill either myself or someone else.

The wheels touched down on the runway and I could finally breathe again.

*   *   *

The new squadron commander, Loco, was a good guy whose biggest flaw was unfortunately the fact that he wasn’t Joker. He did a pretty decent job of navigating a squadron still grieving while simultaneously preparing for a looming deployment to Afghanistan, but it wasn’t quite the same.

I’d had my range of commanders throughout my military career—some were dicks, more concerned with getting ahead in their own careers than the guys they were responsible for; others were marginally better, guys who meant well and tried to connect with their people, even if it felt forced. And then there were the commanders like Joker. He might have been the boss and we’d all respected the shit out of him, but he’d been one of the guys, regardless of the rank on his shoulder. He’d been a fighter pilot first, a commander second, and in a squadron like the Wild Aces, street cred like that went a long way.

I stood outside Loco’s office, trying to find my balls, not sure what I was even going to say. Everyone in the squadron had already figured out that I’d lost my shit a bit in Alaska. And now it was fucking with my flying.

Loco opened the door and waved me in, sitting down behind his cluttered desk. He gestured for me to sit in one of the empty chairs. “What happened?”

I sat, trying to come up with the answer he wanted. The truth came out instead.

“I think I need some time.”

“Since the accident.”

I nodded.

“The investigation board ruled on it.”

“It did. But I was up there with him. We were friends. I was on his wing.” I swallowed, feeling like a pussy, but needing to get it out there just the same. “It feels like he’s in the cockpit with me every time I fly. I can’t shake it. Tonight was bad.”

Because it was a night flight. Because I was number two again. The green fire. Because it had reminded me of before, and now it didn’t matter how many flights I’d flown in the Viper; the one when we’d lost Joker was the monkey on my back that I couldn’t shake.

“You haven’t talked to anyone.”

I didn’t bother answering that. Getting flagged with a psych issue would be a bitch with my security clearance and career progression. The military fully encouraged us to get help, but we knew how it would look if we did. Besides, I didn’t see Easy sitting in here, bitching about his feelings. Burn was kicking ass at Osan.
I
was the one who was fucked up.

“I just need a few days off. Just need to get my shit sorted. I went from Red Flag, to Alaska and Joker’s accident, and I’ve been flying my ass off these past few months.” I felt like the biggest loser in the world for bitching about flying
too
much when all I’d ever wanted to do was fly, but at the same time, it was like no matter what I did, I couldn’t catch my breath. I needed to hit pause on everything. Needed to breathe again.

“You’ve been flying a lot because we’re undermanned. You’re one of our strongest instructors. We need you here, getting the younger guys ready for the deployment.”

“I know. And I will be. But right now, my mind isn’t where it needs to be to get the job done.”

I could go through official channels and get medical leave to get my shit sorted out, and then he’d really have a manning problem. And I didn’t think he was trying to be a dick
about it; I’d been to the schedule buys—we definitely needed more bodies in the squadron. I’d seen the inbound list and we had some older guys who were already qualified as instructors—IPs, like me—before we left for Afghanistan, but in the meantime, they needed me.

“How long?” Loco asked with a weary sigh.

“Three weeks?”

He made a face.

“Two and a half? I already have leave to go to Reign’s wedding in South Carolina. I could just extend it a bit.”

Reign and I had gone through pilot training together and had bonded over busting our asses flying T-38s and trying to make it to the big leagues. He was friends with Easy and Merlin as well—the F-16 community was a tiny fucking world—so we’d all flown out to Columbia for his bachelor party this past weekend and had planned on making the trek back to South Carolina for the wedding since we were all groomsmen.

“And you think this will fix the issue?”

God, I hoped so. This wasn’t exactly a normal request, and if the circumstances were any different, there was no way I’d get to take time off with this short notice. But we were in a bit of a weird situation here, and I figured Loco was trying to do the best thing for his squadron. No one needed a rattled pilot up there.

“Yeah, I do.”

He sighed. “We’ll work out the manning. Take the leave.”

Relief flooded me. “Thank you.”

I felt like an asshole because me being on leave would mean that everyone else in the squadron would have to pull longer hours, but this had become more of a necessity than an option, so I figured I was all out of plays here.

“If you need to talk . . .”

I nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

I got up from my seat and headed to the door.

“Thor?”

I turned.

“Are you going to be in the local area while you’re on leave?”

I hadn’t even thought of it, hadn’t considered my options besides hoping that he granted my request, so no one was more surprised than I was when the words left my mouth—

“No. I’m going
home.”