Angry, exhausted, confused — feeling a hundred things at once, I grab Jameson’s arm. “Together,” I say, seeing the blood begin to leak from a bullet that passed straight through his torso. God. It’s bad; it’s awful. His shirt is already getting slick. I help him to the edge, see the plane down there on the lake. It’s a long jump. It’s a pretty blue lake, and I know it’ll be cold as ice.
We hold hands, his breathing ragged, and another gunshot booms behind us.
We jump.
Chapter Seventeen
Jameson
The pain is searing. Unbearable. But I have to push through it, ignore it because our lives are on the line here, and it’s still my fault. The icy water numbs the pain because now my whole body is screaming, and I know now I’m at risk of an entire range of complications from my wound, but we had no other choice. No way.
I’m hauling myself up into the plane, and I’m aware of Jemma helping me into the seat, but my vision is fading, and I can feel my body slumping over.
“In the air, Jamie,” I can hear her saying. Her voice is trembling. Her hands are on her stomach, forming a protective cocoon from the day’s events, whether she is conscious of it or not.
“You’re going to be one kickass mother,” I mumble, and I kick the seaplane on and lift us into the sky. We rise past the two guards who are shooting up at us. The plane dips, lurches, and Jemma screams, and I slip out of the pilot’s seat.
“Jameson. Jamie!” I can almost hear her saying, but I’m on the floor and the plane is careening to the side. Bullets zing through the air, ping against the side of the aircraft. At any point, they could get us, catch us, or get the plane in exactly the right way to take it down.
I only have so much consciousness left, so I slide into the other seat and slump against the window. “Drive the plane, Jemma,” I say. “Fly the plane, I mean. Quickly. Take the yoke.” I motion at the controls. I grimace, convulsing at the pain in my body. I’m pressing my hand to the wound, and Jemma is pressing her free hand against mine.
“I can’t. I can’t fly a plane, Jameson.” Her words are filled with terror, but I believe in her. In us. We aren’t going down without a goddamn fight.
“You have to. We’ll die. We’ll crash, or they’ll shoot us out of the air, or both.” My voice is a slur. “Just listen to me, and we’ll be fine. Jemma, we’ll be fine. Together.”
She’s chewing on her lip, breathing rapidly, hands shaking as she takes in the dials and knobs.
“How do I get it right side up?” she asks panic and determination both in her voice. “What do I do, Jameson? Oh, God.” The gunfire is more rapid now. They may have switched to deadlier weapons, which would make sense now that they’re trying to shoot down a plane. It lurches again, and Jemma screams.
I gently talk her through it, and with horror, I realize I can’t move. If I don’t make it, I want my last act on earth to be ensuring the mother of my child lives. “Okay, now reach into my left pocket and find a little remote,” I say, throat dry, fighting with everything I have to stay awake. “Press the button, Jemma, but make sure we are a few feet higher first. Pull back on the -- the yoke, and, exactly.”
She’s crying silent tears, but she does it exactly right. She has been a permanent resident of hell before, and now she’s just passing through. Jemma is the strongest woman I know and God, it makes this all the more painful, realizing that I might not have the honor of being by her side as we both grow old.
We climb a couple of feet, nose pointed into the sky and plane chuffing and sputtering at the exertion, and she slams down the button on the remote.
There is a pause, and I wince when I think it hasn’t worked, but then BOOM. The plane is rocked by the force of the remote explosive I planted on the path.
“Wake up, I need you!” she is yelling as the plane bobs in the air.
“I’m here,” I say. “I’m right here. I believe in you completely.”
The gunfire has finally stopped, the bomb did its job, and Jemma fights with the controls of my little seaplane as I talk her through it, drifting in and out of warm darkness, concentrating on her hand pressed hard against mine.
Chapter Eighteen
Jemma
“Don’t fight her,” Jameson is saying. “Work with the plane, with the wind, and don’t overcorrect.”
I would never have thought I had this in me, but somehow the plane is chugging along above the canopies, probably riddled with dents, soaring back towards his cabin. I look out at the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness beneath us, mouth agape, when I think about everything I’ve gone through and how incredibly insignificant it all seems now. I’m up so high, flying a plane by myself, just hurtling through the sky on a pair of wings.
It’s like all the stress, anger, terror of the day — of my life — is lifted, and it’s just me and the clouds and the birds.
But then I have to land, and it’s a bumpy landing, and it all comes back to me as soon as I switch the plane off and sit there catching my breath.
Jameson is half-conscious beside me and needs medical attention. He got me in serious trouble. I’m pregnant, and I’m not sure what the future holds. For a second, I was, literally, flying high, but now it feels like reality has come crashing down all too soon.
I help Jameson out. He’s fully conscious but cradling his arm against his chest and glowering at the ground, setting his jaw. I know he’s in a lot of pain, but I also know he got through the worst, and he’s going to be okay.
That makes it a little easier to say what I’m about to say.
“I’m leaving.”
Outside his door, he looks up at me, and for a long time, he doesn’t say anything until he says, “I don’t think you should. I think you should stay, and we should talk. And if that doesn’t work out, we’ll talk again.” He’s shivering but trying to seem like he’s okay. If I leave, he won’t be able to chase me. I’m freezing, but the fire in my core is keeping me going.
“I’m leaving, Jameson,” I say again. I won’t have a repeat of what just happened. “I’ve been through enough for one lifetime.” I don’t speak the next part, but I think it so loudly that I swear he knows it. Our baby deserves better. “We’ll go to see Walker and Wavy, but I’m not staying here with you after that. I just want you to know.”
I step away from him and feel my heart break, but it’s the right thing to do. It has to be the right thing to do.
Why does it feel so wrong?
Chapter Nineteen
Jameson
We make it to the other cabin intact, and soon Jemma is washed, dried, and wrapped in a fuzzy bathrobe like the first night we met. She has a steaming mug of cocoa and is sitting in front of the fire, laughing and crying with Wavy, holding one of her newborn nieces.
I’m not having such a great time. Beam is here, having come down to meet the babies. He’s filled with righteous anger over what happened to Jemma and me, but I tell him it’s been dealt with. The mountain militia isn’t going to cross me again.
Walker has just finished cleaning me up, and now he’s stitching my gnarly wound. I grunt, grit my teeth, and try to distract myself from the pain by watching the sisters reunite. Watching Jemma’s eyes got big and round every time she looks down at the babies.
She’s doing her best to ignore Beam, who she clearly knows and has a lot of bad memories of. As far as I know, Beam used to work for Maker, but for the last year or so, he’s just been minding his own business as a fisherman nearby. I’ve never paid him much attention, but it does make me uneasy that he makes Jemma so uncomfortable. I take another shot of whiskey as Walker pulls the final stitch through and cuts it.
“Wasn’t so bad, was it?” he jokes, wiping his forehead with his wrist. I breathe out, touching the tender skin around his handiwork.
“Look at that,” I say. “You’re a motherfucking artist.”
As I get up and start test walking up and down a little, I notice Beam’s eyes on Jemma, and her cheeks flush an angry red
as she speaks to her sister. She hates that her past won’t seem to leave her alone. I don’t blame her.
“What now?” Wavy is asking her, and when I hear that, I strain my ears to hear Jemma’s response.
“I’d love to stay and help with the babies, but I’m going to leave as soon as I can,” she says, fiddling with her niece’s blankets to keep her hands occupied. “Going to find Julia.”
I frown, but beside me, Beam perks up. He’s also obviously eavesdropping. “Julia?” I ask, not sure if I remember that name or not.
Beam fusses with the threads of his flannel shirt. He’s a huge, burly guy, so this sudden act of preening stands out as he leans closer to me. “One of the yacht girls, from when I worked with Maker.” I see something in his eyes as he speaks, and I frown and look him up and down.
“You like her,” I say. “Julia.”
He doesn’t respond, but I can tell that I’m right. I wince as I press a thick bandage over my wounds, front and back. The militia got me pretty good, but they didn’t kill me. Without unexpected complications, I know I’ll feel alright in a few weeks.
“What happened?” I ask, not expecting Beam to give me an honest answer but wanting to think about anything other than being shot. Or about Jemma leaving. They both hurt pretty badly.
“Julia moved to that cult, Father John’s, about a year ago,” he tells me. “It almost got shut down by the feds, but I don’t know how they wormed their way out of that. They’re still up and running somewhere here in Alaska.” He steps forward. “Jemma?” he asks.
She gives him a deeply uncomfortable glance, and then looks away, but doesn’t shut him down. “Mm?”
“Do you know where Julia is?”
She swallows, taking her time in answering. “Yes, I do, yeah.”
I let them talk for a moment while I pull on a fresh shirt, and then when Beam looks satisfied with the information she’s given him, I cut in. “Jemma, before you go,” I say, “we need to talk.”
She turns from Beam and looks at me, and I see the pain in her eyes that wrenches my gut. But she finally nods. “Yeah, Jameson,” she agrees. “We do.”
Chapter Twenty
Jemma
“You know I can’t stay,” I say softly to Jameson, guiding him away from everyone else, into the hallway by the stairs. “You know that.”
He frowns, shakes his head, but he doesn’t argue. “I just want to hear why I guess.”
“Because you lied to me. You were, what? Doing grunt work for a local militia? Didn’t think that was relevant? You know my trust issues!”
Jameson blows out a breath, and I do feel bad having this conversation now with him all freshly stitched up, but it needs to happen. “Jemma,” he says, pained. “I’m sorry. I’m really, truly sorry. You have no idea. I know I lied by omission, but I was so happy with you, and I wasn’t ready to admit my flaws straight up like that. My parents wanted me to go work for my dad, but I didn’t want to. I’m stubborn like that, but you’re stubborn too.”
I wasn’t expecting him to turn the tables on me, and I reel in surprise. “What?”
I don’t see anger in his face, only sadness. Remorse. “Because you know that I would never have wanted anything to happen to you, Jemma. I love you. I wanted to marry you, and I still want to marry you. I want to spend my life with you. I hate that my mistake came around and bit you in the ass, and I am ready to spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
God. I’m trying not to let his words affect me, or his handsome, serious face, so I wrap my arms around myself and look away. I’m trying to be objective and smart here, not stubborn. But also not foolish.
“How can I ever trust you?” I ask. “I thought you were a good guy, but you were doing bad things for money. Was it drugs, weapons, both?”
He runs his hand over his beard. “Does it matter, really?”
I guess not.
But he goes on before I can answer. “You should know better than anyone, Jemma, that our pasts don’t define us.” Ouch. The words make me flinch and I look down at the floor, knowing the truth in them. “It’s our choices now, here, in the present that should define us,” he says softly, his low, gravelly voice working its way into my heart. I blink back tears. “I’m stepping up and choosing you, forever,” he says, “what are you choosing?”
Tears well up in my eyes as I look at him, so raw and real and here and ready to be with me, so I take his face in my hands, reach up, and kiss him. His mouth twists into a smile, and he kisses me back, his lips so warm, so soft, so perfect. He’s mine, and I’m his, and he’s right — our pasts don’t need to haunt us forever. We can start the rest of our lives today.
“I love you, Jamie,” I say. He’s so happy he looks like he could laugh and pick me up into the air, but he’s trying to keep it together for the sake of his stitches. My heart melts for him, and what he must have gone through since learning I’d disappeared.
He came after me with everything he had, and he found me. He saved me more than once and in more than one way.
“Let’s choose to be the people we want to be today. And then every day after that,” he says.
I laugh. “I love that. Yes. Let’s do it.”
He pulls me towards the door, then outside, and across the wilderness, I’m starting to know so well, and we’re laughing and making promises, and then we’re kissing and tugging at each other’s clothes when we are back at his cabin. He has to be careful of his injury, but he’s pumped up on adrenaline and so am I. On the couch in his living room, he leans back and lets me straddle him, kissing my neck, collarbone, tugging at the baggy shirt and pants Wavy lent me, and I have his belt in my hands.
“I love you, Jemma,” he’s saying into my ear, his breath hot and his words so beautiful. “I love you so damn much.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Jameson
She pulls out my cock like it’s made of glass, but I’m not so injured I can’t do things to her all night. I’m rock hard and ready to make love to the woman of my dreams. It’s the first day of the rest of our lives — that’s a saying I’ve always heard but always thought was a little silly, until now. Now I feel like I really understand it.
“You got hurt bad,” she says, peeling off my shirt and pouting at my bandages.
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
“No, you need someone to take care of you,” she says, and then she flashes me the naughtiest smirk and my cock twitches in her hand.
“Oh, yeah? Are you volunteering to nurse me back to health?”
She bites her lip, works her fingers up and down me. “Maybe. If you trust me.”
“God. I trust you.”
I want Jemma to ride me until I can’t feel anything but her anymore, but instead, my girl shuffles down so I get the most incredible view of her taking me in her mouth instead. Her beautiful, full lips slide down my shaft and her fingers work me at the same time and already, I’m in heaven watching her.
“Wait,” I say, running my fingers through her hair. “Come here.”
She crawls up over my body, careful to avoid my bandage, and we kiss passionately. I’m not expecting it when she lowers herself onto my cock and envelops me completely with her wet, tight pussy.
“Jemma,” I say, because I don’t know what else there is to say. She is gasping, riding me slowly, and then fast. My sexy nurse is taking such good care of me. I’m already so close, and from her breathing, I can tell she is too. “You are so incredible.”
“You are everything,” she pants. “This is everything.” And then we’re coming together. I grip her hips and feel her tighten and squeeze me as I fill her up. She flops beside me, and I kiss her like I’ve never kissed anyone in my life. It’s the kind of kiss you only have when you very briefly lose everything, only to gain it again. It’s the kind of kiss that means I know exactly how much I need her.
“I love you with everything I have,” I tell her, and she smiles. Blushes, even. She’s cute as fuck.
>
“I love you too, my bullet-riddled mountain man.”
I look down at my body and then smile back at her. “It doesn’t hurt that badly.” She shakes her head and kisses me again. “I’d become Swiss cheese for you any day.”
“That’s insane,” she laughs.
“What is?”
“I just never thought I’d be loved that much.”
She looks serious suddenly, her fingers tracing light shapes over my skin, and then she bites her lip. “I need to tell you something.”
I wait patiently, although I think I know what’s coming.
“I, well, I took a test, and then another one when we were at Waverley’s place, and I’m pretty sure that I’m pregnant.”
It looks like a huge weight is lifted from her when she says that, and I can’t help myself — I start laughing. Her face falls.
“What?” she demands.
“I knew that, you crazy woman. You left the test on the bathroom floor. Do you know how worried I was about both of you? I climbed up the side of a mountain, and I got shot!”
She snorts, and then laughs with me. “Okay. Well, now we know everything, right? No more secrets?”
“No more secrets,” I agree, and kiss her cheek, nose, forehead. “Nowhere to go now but the future.”
“Together,” she says, curling her fingers around mine. I take our hands and press them to her stomach. She feels warm, soft, bursting with life. Potential.
“Together.”
Epilogue
Jameson
Jameson: The Men of Whiskey Mountain Book 2 Page 8