It Wasn't Me

by Vale, Lani Lynn

God, she was beautiful.

  A goddamn knockout.

  “You’re in my seat,” I said.

  She frowned and looked at the seat holding my box of shit.

  “What’s wrong with that one?” she asked accusingly.

  “That one is too close to the goddamn wall, and I have wide shoulders,” I answered.

  “Well, this guy has wide shoulders, too. You’ll be stuck either way you go about it,” she answered then.

  I gritted my teeth, upset that she was partially right.

  “You.” I gestured to the large man on her other side. “Go down there and switch with a small fucker in between two smaller fuckers.”

  The man didn’t question me, but he probably would have had I not had authority leaking out of my every pore.

  It was a weird thing, being in the military. You somehow always knew when someone was higher rank than you, or when someone could kick your ass.

  Eventually you learned when to behave, and when not to.

  When the kid moved, I moved my box and gestured for the girl to move.

  She didn’t, and I had a distinct understanding of what she was waiting for.

  “Please,” I finally gritted out.

  She rolled her eyes and unsnapped her seatbelt, moving over to the next seat, and re-buckling in lightning fast. As if she was afraid that the plane would take off, and if she wasn’t strapped in safely, she’d take off with it.

  I sat down and buckled my own seat, nodding at the small little woman that came to take the previously occupied spot next to me.

  The woman nodded back and resituated herself, leaving me with the knowledge that I’d be stuck between two women for hours and hours on end.

  Fuckin’ wonderful.

  “That’s a nice shirt,” the curly blonde said softly. “Swoleminator?”

  I looked down at the barfing, buff unicorn lifting weights that was also throwing up rainbows, and then shrugged. “My other shirt was fucked up after working on the plane. Some kid went to the only other guy on the base that happened to be my size, and obtained this.”

  She looked like she wanted to laugh.

  “It suits you,” she lied.

  It didn’t.

  Not even a little bit.

  I wasn’t unicorns and rainbows.

  Though, I was muscled.

  When you had no one, lived alone, and worked for fun, there was only so much you could do. Lifting weights and eating well were just things that I did now to keep myself entertained. I liked to see how far I could push myself, and that came with a muscular body.

  I was in my early forties, and nothing to show for it but a goddamn nice body, a failing career that was seriously taking more effort to continue than it should, and a life that I didn’t much see value in.

  “It doesn’t,” I finally answered her.

  She snorted. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

  I allowed my legs to sneak out into the aisle, then crossed my arms over my chest and closed my eyes.

  The engine began getting louder, and moments later, we were moving.

  The woman on my right, the curly blonde, started to hyperventilate.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, feeling the cabin seal.

  I popped my ears and looked at her doing the same.

  “Piper,” she answered. “Piper Mackenzie.”

  Her breathing turned from fast to choppy, as if any second she was about to pass out.

  Shit.

  “Jonah Jeremiah Crew,” I offered my name back to her.

  She couldn’t care in the least.

  Her eyes were screwed so tightly shut that I could tell that it was likely paining her.

  And, for some stupid fuckin’ reason, I felt the need to comfort her.

  I wasn’t sure why.

  I shouldn’t even be talking to her.

  Yet, I couldn’t stop myself from trying.

  “Are you on leave?” I asked curiously.

  She licked her lips, and it caused my belly to tighten for altogether different reasons.

  “No,” she admitted. “I am officially ex-Army.”

  My brows rose.

  “Why?” I asked, pushing.

  She cracked open one eye and squinted at me.

  “Why what?” she asked curiously.

  “Why are you ex-Army?” I asked. “You’re young. You have a lot of good years in you.”

  She frowned.

  “I know that I could’ve stayed longer. Honestly, I only stayed the minimum, but being away from home was a lot harder than I ever thought it would be. Plus, I was tired of being shipped off to places that I had no control of.” She frowned. “Why do you care?”

  I shrugged.

  “I loved the military,” I admitted. “I got to visit the world. Got to do things that I would’ve never been able to do otherwise. Got to meet all kinds of new people, and there was never a dull moment. Honestly, the Air Force was really good to me.”

  “Air Force?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “The Air Force is shit.”

  I snorted at her fiery words.

  “If you say so,” I shot right back, feeling the plane picking up speed.

  Her eyes, that had both opened when she was listening to me talk, went a little wide.

  She started to shut down again, but I reached for her hand like a complete and total dumbass.

  Why, I couldn’t tell you.

  Honestly, I already had her hand before I’d even made the conscious decision to reach for it.

  And before I could take it back away, she curled her fingers around my larger ones like a lifeline.

  She bit her lip and tried not to give away too much, but it was no use. I could tell that she was downright terrified.

  “Listen, Pip,” I said as I squeezed her hand. “You’re not going to die. They’ve flown in this weather so many times that this is like an average day in the park to them.”

  “You don’t know that,” she argued, sounding breathless. “It doesn’t even have to pertain to the weather, us going down. What if the pilot suffered a heart attack, and the co-pilot slipped and fell and hit his head, knocking him unconscious?”

  Her hand felt good in mine.

  Very good.

  She was also nuts and had the imagination of a four-year-old—all creative and far out there.

  “I do,” I confirmed. “The pilot and the co-pilot have done this thousands and thousands of times. If they couldn’t fly the plane, I could.”

  She swallowed hard.

  “What if a freak lightning strike takes out the plane?” she pushed.

  “What if we land in Seattle and everything’s a-okay?” I countered right back.

  She licked her lips and tried to think of something to say that wasn’t negative. I could practically see her wheels turning.

  “I’m scared,” she admitted.

  I squeezed her hand just a little bit tighter and wondered how the hell I’d gotten myself into this position.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, sounding shaky.

  Instead of telling her to fuck off like I would’ve any other person that had asked me that same question this week, I answered her.

  I didn’t know if it was the paleness of her cheeks or the way she looked like she needed the distraction.

  Whatever the reason, I told her exactly why I was there.

  “Had some trouble in my hometown,” I admitted. “Needed to get away for a few days. Decided to help a buddy out and teach a class for him.”

  “Where’s your hometown?” she questioned.

  “Kilgore, Texas,” I answered, not thinking twice about giving the information to the woman.

  It’d taken me a few seconds to place her, but the name ‘Piper Mackenzie’ had struck a memory in me from a long time ago.

  “You live in Kilgore?” She paused. “That’s where I’m going, too!”


  “I know,” I admitted. “It took me a while, but I finally figured out where I know you from.”

  She frowned. “Where?”

  “You made quite a name for yourself when you left,” he said. “Plus, you graduated top in your class from high school, then top in your class from boot camp. Your dad was talking you up when that happened. I had to take my motorcycle to him, and he talked my ear off about his girls for an hour.”

  Her face flushed. “My dad is proud.”

  He was. He more than was.

  Her face fell, though, at the mention of her dad.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She swallowed hard.

  “I was going home anyway,” she said. “Just not on this particular flight. I had about four more days until I left, but I got a call yesterday that my dad was almost killed in an accident. He’s okay…but he’s banged up pretty bad.”

  Worry crossed my features. “What happened?”

  “Some lady pulled out in front of him when he was on his motorcycle,” she answered. “He hit her going about thirty miles an hour. She got out and was all ‘my back,’ ‘my neck,’ all the while my father was on the ground.”

  The words ‘my neck’ and ‘my back’ were hauntingly familiar to my reason for leaving.

  I was telling her my story before I’d thought better of it.

  “I hit someone in my police cruiser before I left,” I said, swallowing hard. “I was driving, heading back to the station for my end of shift change, and was making a U-turn. Got almost completely turned around when some bitch pulls out of the Starbucks parking lot on her phone. I couldn’t stop in time and ended up barely tapping her. I’m talking zero damage to the police cruiser, and a dent in the door, one about the size of a golf ball, of her car. At least where I hit her.”

  “And let me guess,” Piper said. “She got out of the car complaining about injuries?”

  I nodded. “You bet. God, she laid it on thick, too. She spilled her coffee on herself. A coffee that she most assuredly did not have in her hands when she was hit. One of her hands had been on the steering wheel, the other clutching her phone, and she’d been glancing in my direction.”

  “As if she knew what she was about to do,” Piper said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “But I’d had a malfunction in my dash cam earlier in my shift. And from the way it looked at the scene, she was completely on the road. And since I didn’t have a green ‘turn’ light, it looked like she had the right of way over me. And to top it off, she conveniently had a friend in the car behind her that ‘saw the whole thing’ and ‘I was a maniac’ and ‘I was driving way too fast and looking at my phone.’”

  Piper’s mouth fell open just as the plane’s wheels left the runway.

  “You’re shitting me,” she said. “What happened next?”

  “Next, I was suspended pending an investigation,” I continued. “Without pay.”

  “What?” she squawked. “Why?”

  “Because it hadn’t been my first incident. And the chief really, really doesn’t like me. I was a punk ass kid and got myself into trouble. My brother happens to be really good friends with the chief, and we’ve never really gotten along all that much. I think everyone thought that me going into the Air Force, my attitude would change, that I would become all nice and shit. But I didn’t. And when I got a job at the police station after I got discharged, I knew that he really wasn’t sure when it came to my attitude.”

  “You? An attitude?” she snickered. “What were the other incidents?”

  “Roughed up a few too many assholes,” I said. “Everyone is all singing ‘police brutality’ and shit. Honestly, I just wanted some kind of justice. I’m fuckin’ sorry that I was a little rough on a piece of shit that felt up his eighteen-month-old daughter. My goddamn bad.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Should’ve killed him.”

  My lips turned up into a small smile.

  “Yeah,” I said as the plane leveled out. “I wish I could’ve.”

  Chapter 2

  I wonder if you look both ways before you get on my nerves.

  -Text from Piper to Pru

  Piper

  I woke stiff as a board, my neck was hurting, and we were already bouncing up and down as the wheels touched down on the tarmac.

  The bouncing made my face press against something soft and hard, and I groaned as I opened my eyes, taking in my surroundings.

  Somehow, I’d curled myself into a ball in my seat.

  Well, mostly my seat.

  Everything but my head, anyway.

  My face was resting comfortably in the man’s lap at my side.

  And my face was inches away from something bulging and quite large, even in its non-erect state.

  I swallowed hard and sat up stiffly, trying hard not to blush.

  Sweeping my mass of crazy, curly hair out of my face, I turned to look at the man that I’d fallen asleep on for God knew how many hours.

  “We’re here?” I asked curiously, voice husky from disuse.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Ready?”

  I looked at all of the men that were unbuckling their seatbelts in a damn hurry to get off the plane just like we were.

  “Oh, yeah.” I sat up and lost his heat, hating it.

  “Good,” he said. “We gotta get off first otherwise we’re going to be stuck behind all of them. And our plane leaves in twenty minutes whether we’re on it or not.”

  I bit my lip, wondering how he knew that.

  I was also thinking about all the coincidences that were at play at that particular moment in time.

  I mean, what were the chances that someone coming all the way from Germany happened to be going to the exact same place that I was, on the exact same flights?

  I stood up when the plane came to a halt, and Jonah turned to the woman on his other side and said, “Excuse me.”

  She got up as well and backed into the aisle.

  Jonah picked up the box of clothes that he’d stashed in the cargo bin on the side of the door, and I got my bag.

  We were waiting as the doors swung open, and when the stairs were in place, we hurried off with about two hundred grouchy, hungry men behind us.

  “Which plane?” I asked curiously.

  We were at yet another military base, and the man at my side seemed to look like he knew what he was doing.

  I decided to follow him because I had a feeling he knew more than me.

  “That one.” He pointed at another military plane. “They’re taking supplies to Fort Hood.”

  I nodded, and once again found myself in a plane with my hand in the man’s that I only met about twelve hours before.

  “Y’all ready?” the captain asked.

  Jonah nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  The captain’s eyes flicked to me, my hand in Jonah’s, then he smiled.

  “All right, take your seat and get strapped in, we’ll be on our way here shortly.”

  Jonah gestured to the two seats facing backward, and I buckled my self in before blowing out a breath.

  “I really do hate this,” I told him.

  “Was there anything in particular that struck this fear?” he asked. “Something happen?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not necessarily anything big. I watched a few too many movies with plane accidents, I guess.”

  He chuckled and stretched his long feet out in front of him.

  With the plane not moving, and me not quite freaking out just yet, I finally had the chance to check the man out.

  He was very attractive.

  Like, I’m talking, holy shit, if I’d seen him walking down the street, I would’ve stuttered if he talked to me, attractive.

  His eyes were a deep shade of blue, kind of like the color of the blue jeans he was wearing. His hair was a russet, reddish-brown color that women would’ve paid a mint to reproduce at a salon.

  He
had a square jaw that was covered in scruff. Not quite a beard, but definitely not clean-shaven.

  He had a nose that had definitely been broken quite a few times, and dimples that appeared when he was smiling or talking about something amusing to him.

  I hated my dimples. Honestly, I felt like they made me look fat.

  But on him? Wow, they looked good.

  So good, in fact, that I wanted to lick them.

  I was torn, because on the one hand, I knew the man would look sexy as hell with a thicker beard. But on the other, if he had more of a beard, you wouldn’t be able to see the dimples as well as I could.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked, amusement lacing his tone.

  “I’m looking at your dimples,” I told him honestly. “I hate my dimples. You rock yours. I was just curious if you liked yours, too.”

  I honestly couldn’t believe I’d just told him the truth. What was going on with me? I swear to God, I had to be impaired in some way. The flying was impairing my judgment, that was for sure.

  He shrugged. “Used to hate ‘em when I was a kid. Now, not so much. They’re just there, on my face. Most of the time they’re covered by a beard, anyway.”

  “This isn’t usual? For you to see them?” I asked.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I shaved my face when I was in that accident. My boss said I’d look more professional. Whatever. So I did, and I’m regretting it now. Especially seeing as it was forty below there and I didn’t have anything to warm up the lower half of my face like I usually do.”

  I grinned. “I did notice that you were standing there, in the snow, working on a plane. I’m fairly positive that the missing beard didn’t bother you that much.”

  He grinned then, and it did weird things to my body.

  One, I was tingling in my lower half. As in, he was making me want to jump on him and ride him like I stole him.

  Two, my usually stagnant heart thumped hard.

  I wasn’t the type to date frivolously. I was very selective in my partners. I thought about a lot of them very hard before I even went on a date with them. I’d been on five, maybe six dates if you counted the one that I asked to be let out of about thirty seconds into it. Him drawing this kind of reaction out of me was rare.

  Very, very rare.

  I wasn’t sure what it was.

  I wanted to go out on a date. I just had a lot of trouble getting interested. And staying interested.