Noah had told me that it was typical for the widow to speak last, but they’d wanted to spare her the emotion of listening to the squadron tell stories about her husband and then having to stand in front of over a thousand people and eulogize him. So she would go first and everyone else would follow her lead.
She walked up to the podium, the wing commander at her side, which seemed more for protocol and pretense than anything else considering the space between their bodies.
She’d asked me to find her a dress and I’d pulled some strings through the store to get one sent here so she wouldn’t have to deal with buying one herself.
She didn’t look like she belonged here in this airplane hangar. She looked like an auburn Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly, like a throwback to another time and place. This, too, was her way of honoring Joker. Even in her grief, she carried herself with poise, and I couldn’t help but think that he was beaming down on her with pride.
Another lump grew in my throat, joining the three thousand, four hundred, and twenty-two that were already lodged there.
I squeezed Noah’s hand a little tighter.
Dani stopped at the podium, her hands on either side of the frame. She didn’t speak for a moment, staring out at the crowd. Her eyes were covered by large black sunglasses, her hair pulled back in a severe bun that made her look even more fragile.
Another lump.
She took a deep breath as though steadying herself and then her voice rang out over the microphone.
“Thank you for coming today to celebrate Michael’s life.” Her voice cracked over the words. “Michael was a wonderful husband. He was my best friend. And more than anything, he was a fighter pilot. He loved flying, loved serving with all of you.” Her gaze ran over the crowd. “As hard as this is, as much as I miss him, he wouldn’t want me to cry up here. He wouldn’t want us all to gather in grief, but to celebrate the tremendous life he led.”
She swallowed, her voice trembling. “He knew the danger every time he flew, knew the price he could pay, but he loved to fly. And anyone who knew him knows that he went out the way he would have wanted to, flying the plane he loved, doing the job he was born to do. Defending the country he loved.”
She paused and the silence stretched on, her hands gripping the edge of the podium as she struggled to continue.
“Michael—” His name came out as a choked sob.
We’d asked her if she wanted anyone to go up with her, but she’d said that it was something she needed to do on her own. We should have insisted, should have realized that no matter how badly she’d wanted to do this on her own, it was too much.
Noah let out an oath beside me.
The wing commander stood off to the side, and even though I doubted he would have done much to comfort Dani, at least it was something. I silently willed him to go stand next to her, to help her get through this, but he didn’t fucking move. The silence continued and I waited for her family, for someone, to go help her, and then Dani’s gaze jerked to the side, and I caught a flash of blue walking toward the podium.
Easy, wearing his navy blue service dress, his body tense as though poised for flight, strode to the front, his gaze on Dani the entire time. And then Noah’s hand left mine and he stood, walking to the edge of our row, up to the podium. Thor followed.
Easy reached Dani first, his arm going around her waist, looking like he was propping her up. Noah stood next to Easy, Thor on the other side of Dani.
They flanked her, the three men who’d been there for the last moments of Joker’s life. Three of his closest friends. They surrounded her like sentries, giving her their protection and support.
“Michael was the love of my life,” Dani continued, her voice stronger now. “And I can’t imagine my life without him. But I know he is watching all of us, looking down on us from his place in the sky.” Her voice warbled, the tears there unmistakable. “He’s home now.”
There wasn’t a dry eye in the hangar.
Dani stepped away from the podium, her arm tucked into Easy’s, surrounded by pilots. They walked her to her seat, and then Noah was beside me once again, his hand in mine.
The rest of the service went by in a flood of stories about Joker. Most of the squadron got up and spoke about him, painting a picture of a leader who had been both friend and mentor, who had cared about his people and put them first, even when it meant he had to stick his neck out for them.
When it was Noah’s turn, he spoke of the friend he’d lost, and I realized just how difficult this must be for him, and how he fought to keep it together for everyone around him.
I’d never loved him more.
TWENTY-SEVEN
NOAH
The fucking day wouldn’t end. It was like that last radio call kept playing over and over in my mind, Joker’s voice in my ear, and then . . . nothing. He was just gone.
That was the part I couldn’t wrap my brain around, the thing that no matter how many times I told myself, I couldn’t make sink in.
Joker was gone.
Fucking gone.
We stood in an open field next to the squadron, all of the Wild Aces in attendance forming a circle around a gleaming piano standing in the grass.
How many piano burns had I gone to? How many times did we do this? How many times did we lose one of our own? And the irony was that our losses didn’t come from enemy fire, they came from routine training. From going to work. As the weapons officer, it was my job to ensure that the squadron was tactically proficient, to keep these guys safe by teaching them not to get shot down, to fly better than any threat that could come their way. But there were some things you couldn’t prepare for. Some things you couldn’t train for.
Sometimes fate fucked you over.
Jordan wrapped her arms around my waist, cuddling her body against mine. I kissed her hair, inhaling her scent, steadying myself.
And then Thor walked to the front. As the official mayor of the squadron, it was his job to preside over all of the social functions. His voice rang out over the crowd.
“Tonight the Wild Aces commemorate the life of Michael ‘Joker’ Peterson with one of our most closely held traditions—a piano burn. Some of our guests tonight might wonder why we burn a piano. The tradition originated with our British brothers and the Battle of Britain. As legend has it, and I guarantee at least ten percent of this story is true, there was once a British pilot who was the greatest piano player who’d ever lived. He used to fly in combat and then return and play at the O-Club for all to hear. But one fateful day he was killed in action. In their grief, his squadron decided that no one would ever play the piano as well as he did, so they burned it. And so began the tradition of the piano burn.”
There were different variations of the story, and as Thor highlighted, hyperbole was pretty much a fighter pilot standard. But this was without question one of our most revered traditions, one we celebrated at major squadron functions, and no matter how rowdy or drunk the crowd was beforehand, everyone always went silent, their gaze riveted to the flames.
Thor went to get the lighter and Easy broke away from the group, taking his usual place at the piano. Jordan’s arms tightened around me. He was the only one in the squadron who played, and it never failed to surprise me that Easy was capable of making the sounds he did.
His fingers touched the keys and the familiar strands of a Dos Gringos song filled the air—standard fighter pilot fare. Easy played it like he was sitting in some fancy concert hall performing for guys in tuxes and girls wearing big rocks rather than the motley group we were.
Jordan stiffened beside me.
“Whoa. He’s amazing.”
I nodded. “Yeah, he is.”
I’d have been lying if I didn’t admit that Easy definitely used his musical skills to sweet-talk girls into bed. It was just another arrow in his quiver, another tool to get laid. But no one who’
d ever seen him play could miss that he loved it, too.
The squadron broke into song, the lyrics as natural as breathing as the piano caught fire, as Easy played and played, the flames consuming the instrument until they grew too close and he had to walk away. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of song you expected to hear sung at a memorial service, but fuck it, it was us, and more than anything, it was definitely what Joker would have wanted.
We sang the shit out of that song.
JORDAN
I was emotionally exhausted by the time we walked into Noah’s bedroom. It felt as though we’d packed a lifetime worth of grief and sadness into one afternoon and evening, and if I felt that way, I couldn’t imagine how Dani must have felt.
I slid into bed next to Noah, my feet brushing against his legs under the covers. We slipped into our usual routine: he raised his arm so that I could lay my head on his chest, my hair brushing against his bare skin, his arm settling over my body, holding me toward him as though I was something he had to protect. Something he was afraid to let go of.
Today had made me appreciate the fragility of life in a way I never had before. Seeing Dani’s loss . . . I shuddered. I wanted to stay like this with Noah forever, wanted to know that he would be safe, because it was impossible for me to imagine a world without him. Impossible for me to imagine my life without him now that I’d found him.
“Thank you for being there today,” he whispered, his lips grazing the top of my head. “I couldn’t have gotten through it without you.”
“Of course.”
“You okay?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that one. My emotions were a messy gnarl I couldn’t untangle. I felt both empty and full, as though everything had been scraped out of me to make way for the enormous grief that pulsed through my body.
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
My throat tightened, but I figured if we were going to do this, we had to do it right. So I gave him the truth, as much as it pained me.
“I don’t want to lose you.”
He sighed, his arms tightening around me.
“You won’t.”
It wasn’t enough.
“How do you know?”
“I’m safe. Always.”
I believed that. I also knew he was a really good pilot. It still didn’t feel like enough.
“Wasn’t Joker safe? He’d been flying even longer than you had.”
“Spatial D happens. Especially at night. But I promise you, I’ll always be safe. You aren’t going to lose me.”
I didn’t want to keep picking at him, didn’t want to turn into an annoying nag, but I could feel myself hovering on the edge there. It would be so easy to give in to the anxiety, so easy to tell him that I couldn’t do it, that the danger of his job was too much to bear. That I didn’t want to spend my days and nights fearing the ring of the phone or the knock at the door. That I didn’t want to watch him walk out the door every day for work with dread in my heart, wondering if it would be the day he wouldn’t come home.
I wanted to be stronger, wanted to let it go, but I clutched that fear tight in my palm, my fingers wrapped around it, unable to relax and release it. Unable to move past the image of Dani at the podium. And then, just like her image filled my mind, her words came to me:
You’ll have to be strong for him. Stronger than you think you can be. Because at the end of the day, his mind can’t be on a fight you had that morning or on whatever problems you might be dealing with at home. It has to be on the mission. On coming home safely. Because in their line of work the smallest mistake can be the difference between life and death.
I unfurled my hand and opened my palm.
It wasn’t some magical, heightened awareness. It wasn’t like I suddenly became zen and equipped to deal with the shit that would come my way. My heart would always clench a bit when the phone rang. And I’d never see the words “F-16 crash” and not feel as though the loss was personal.
I didn’t want to marry a hero or a symbol; I wanted to marry a man. A man I would grow old with, have children with, spoil grandchildren with. I wanted forever, and because I was me, and I’d been thrust into a world I didn’t really understand and probably wasn’t equipped to deal with, I wanted guarantees on forever.
But life just didn’t work like that.
I’d fallen for the man that night in Vegas. But he wasn’t just Noah. I’d recognized it that first moment I saw him in the nightclub, even if I hadn’t known exactly what it was. He carried himself a little differently than the guys I’d known before him. As though there was a weight on his shoulders—responsibility, dedication, sacrifice. And I couldn’t love one part of him and not love it all. So maybe I hadn’t wanted to marry a hero or a symbol, but I’d fallen in love with a fighter pilot, so as much as he would always just be Noah to me, I had to accept that there might be a time in our future when it would be his picture in the paper next to a jet, or my name entangled in the phrase “survived by his wife.”
And I got it.
As much as I knew Dani suffered right now, as great as her grief was, she endured. She loved her husband. She loved her husband and she wanted him to be happy, wanted him to live his dream. And at the end of the day, that was all we could do. I didn’t want Noah to worry about me, didn’t want him to be focused on doing anything other than the job he needed to do so he could come home to me.
So I shut it down.
I wrapped my arms around his waist, burrowing my body against his, cuddling into his warmth.
“I love you,” I whispered, the words more a vow than an endearment.
I love you. I will always love you.
“I love you, too.”
I heard the promise there; felt it in the way he held me, like he would do everything he could to protect me from harm. Like I was his everything the same way he was mine.
Noah was silent for a while, his hand stroking my back in lazy strokes. My eyelids fluttered as I struggled to stay awake.
“Do you want a big wedding?”
That woke me up.
“What do you mean?”
“I was just wondering if you wanted a wedding like your sister’s. And how much time you would need to plan.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Honestly, I haven’t really thought about it. And with everything going on right now, I figured a wedding was pretty low priority.”
Noah shifted so we were both on our sides, facing each other. His hand skimmed my hip in a habit I doubted he was even aware of.
“Our wedding is definitely not low priority. I know the timing sucks. I hate that I didn’t give you the big proposal and that the memory of losing one of my closest friends will forever be linked with the memory of us getting engaged. I’m sorry for how complicated all of this is. But no matter how difficult our lifestyle is, I definitely want to marry you and I want you to have the kind of wedding you deserve.”
I thought about this for a moment, wondering what kind of wedding I even wanted. I wasn’t kidding; right now things like weddings didn’t seem all that important. The marriage, yes. But the rest of it? He was scheduled to report to Korea in a little over a month. I wanted to spend my time with him, not obsessing over seating charts, and menus, and arguing with my mother over the color scheme and whether the invitations were elegant enough.
“I want to marry you. I don’t care how, or where, or when. As long as it’s you and me promising forever, the rest is just details.”
“I thought those details were important to girls.”
“They can be. But after everything that’s happened, it’s hard for me to care.”
“I don’t want you to regret—”
I silenced him with a kiss, and then inspiration struck.
“Can you get leave for next weekend?”
“To get married?”
I nodded, excitement bubbling up, threatening to spill over. It was the perfect place for us to get married. Romantic, and meaningful, and absolutely perfect.
“Where are we getting married?”
I beamed back at him.
“Vegas.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
JORDAN
It was totally surreal to be landing in Vegas with my fiancé. Hell, I still couldn’t believe that Noah was my fiancé. Last time I’d made this descent, I’d been with my sister and her bridesmaids, never imagining how much one weekend would alter my life.
Besides Sophia, we didn’t tell anyone we were getting married. I told her on the same day we had a conversation about her buying out my half of the store, something I had worried she would be opposed to, but it turned out she completely understood. That was the thing about being partners with your best friend—more than anything she just wanted me to be happy. And that was Noah.
I’d played with the idea of inviting Meg, knew Noah had considered asking Easy to come out. In the end, it had somehow seemed right for it to just be the two of us. Dani had gone home for a few months to stay with her family, but considering the loss she’d suffered, I didn’t want to make a big deal of our marriage. I knew she’d be happy for me, but it felt wrong to ask her to attend the wedding. And there was something romantic about it just being the two of us, a memory we wouldn’t share with anyone else. Maybe later on we’d have a party with our families or something, but for now I had everything I wanted.
The wheels hit the runway, the plane bouncing slightly in a way that had me gripping the armrest and Noah smirking and muttering under his breath about bad landings. Flying with him had been an experience. I was a nervous flier, the type who jumped at every bit of turbulence, my stomach rolling every single time the plane hit a bump in the air. Noah was bored by the whole thing, but I figured when you flew like he did, anything else seemed pretty tame. I’d asked him inane question after inane question, occasionally gripping his hand when the moment called for it, until the captain announced that we were beginning our initial descent and I realized the whole flight had passed by without incident.
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