He turned around, and she clipped her hand to her forehead, strictly out of habit.
Tourn saluted back. “At ease.” He took too long to speak. Long enough for Chase to remember she wasn’t the only one who had no idea what to do with their biological relationship.
“General Tourn?” she finally said. “You requested my presence.”
“Surprised you, didn’t it?”
She didn’t answer. Was he trying to surprise her? If so, why?
“It’s been a long time,” he added. Boy, this was going nowhere fast. Tourn felt it too. He started talking. At her. “When I first saw the specs for these birds, I thought it was a joke. HOTAS control? Manual navigation from a backseat RIO? Ridiculous.”
Chase wasn’t amused. She knew the Streakers were an odd mix of old-school design and killer engines, but that was why she loved them. Tourn appeared to appreciate them despite these qualities. The term essential differences, one of Kale’s favorites, sprang to mind.
“Then I saw these birds in the air. Unbelievable.” He looked like he was waiting for her to say something. She didn’t. He touched the missiles beneath Dragon’s wings. “I flew with these type of sidewinders once. Aim left of center, no matter what the target reader says.”
“Excuse me?” Was he really giving her tactical advice?
“I’ve been watching your tapes, cadet. You’ve got a gutsy streak. It works for you, but you need to remember to listen to your wingmen. You surprise the enemy—that’s good. Surprise your wingmen, and you might cost them their lives. Understood?”
“Yes, General Tourn.” So this was just a standard maverick pep talk. Great.
“You’re ready,” he added with a grunt.
Ready? Chase choked on that word the second it came out of his mouth. A jet fired up somewhere nearby, and the whole hangar turned into a mess of sound for long minutes. When it had left through the great rolling doors, Chase and her father still faced each other. She didn’t see herself in his watery blue gaze or the harshness of his features. She didn’t feel any resemblance to his calculating heart.
They were the real strangers.
“So you think you know so much about me because you know my flying?” It was exactly the kind of petulant thing she didn’t want to say. It would lead down a negative road. Remind her that she wasn’t a person to him. She was a pilot. A cadet. A cog he’d put into the machine.
Chase was supposed to be at ease, but her whole body was so tense that if she had fallen over, she would have smashed like a pane of glass. She felt like that was going to happen at any minute. At the next word maybe.
But it didn’t.
The sound of feet beating the concrete found them, the hammer of full-out sprinting.
Pippin burst onto the scene with his hair messed up and his uniform askew. He slid to a stop, making his boots screech. The near-panic look on his face faded as he locked eyes with Chase. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said to her, a bouquet of forgive-me-nows in his expression.
“What are you doing here, cadet?” Tourn snapped.
Pippin looked at the general with a casualness that only a boy with an astounding IQ and a vital position in the military could get away with.
“Team Nyx,” he said with a shrug.
32
QUICK FIX
A Stopgap Measure
“You railroaded him!” Chase couldn’t keep from smiling as she and Pippin walked the Green. “He had no idea how to come back from that.”
“There are a few perks to being a hot commodity in the military.” Pippin broke into a smile too. An easiness existed between them that had been absent since before JAFA. She didn’t know why it was there, but she wanted it too bad to question it.
“I almost lost it on him right before you got there.” She rubbed the lingering hangar cold out of her arms. “It was a close one. If I had blown my top at him, really told him what I think, I’d be on a plane back to Michigan right now.”
“I should have been there earlier. I didn’t know he had summoned you until Romeo found me. You knew I’d come, didn’t you?” She nodded, but it felt meager. Must have looked it too. “I don’t care what we’re arguing about. You don’t ever have to deal with that blockhead on your own, Chase. Promise. Didn’t I tell you that the night I found out who he is?”
“You did.” She took a deep breath. “We’ve just been so unbalanced lately.”
Pippin rubbed his temples. Hard. For a second Chase worried it was all going downhill again. “I’m going to say it fast, so stay with me. I’ve been Voldemort. You’ve been Darth Vader.”
“Why do I have to be Vader? Voldemort is so much more badass.”
“You can’t be serious. Fine. How about I’m Saruman and you’re Sauron?”
“You’ve always been too much Tolkien for me.” She paused. “How about Dr. Frankenstein and Mr. Hyde? One of them is morally insensitive”—she motioned to herself—“and the other is a’rage with primal urges.”
“I’m not raging, but nice one.” He stopped walking to face her. “Dark guises aside, I’d like it if we found some unevil things to say to one another, especially before tomorrow morning.”
“Agreed,” she said. Did this mean she had to go first? She didn’t care; she had to confess before something else got in their way. “I wasn’t trying to out you to Romeo. I just wanted to talk to him. He’s kind of ridiculous, you know.”
“I know,” Pippin said. “Now I’ll admit I wasn’t trying to be a complete dick to you about Tourn. Scratch that. I was trying to be a dick because I was…am…really frustrated. Watching you and Tristan has been hard.”
“Watching us? Why?”
“The way he looks at you like you…” Pippin was rallying something snarky. She saw it forming on his lips, and then it was gone and the truth fell out. “It’s everything I want from Romeo. You know, a serious interest. The spark.”
They kept walking, heading for their barracks.
“I’m trying not to feel bad for myself. It’s extraordinarily hard.”
They reached their room, and she sat down hard on the bunk, kicking out of her boots. “Pippin, I think you’re right. Things with Tristan are…different?”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“I’m not. You know this stuff isn’t coded for me.”
“Then allow me to translate.” Pippin sat beside her on his bunk. They weren’t the sort to put their arms around each other, but his proximity did something along those lines. “Go for it.”
“What?”
“Go. For. It. You have nothing to lose with Tristan.”
“I could hurt him, Pip. I have a feeling that Tristan’s jilted heart will make Riot’s look like rumble strips.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of playing it safe. It’s getting me nowhere.”
Chase smirked. “Does that make me sick of playing it reckless?”
He looked at her from the side. “Maybe it does.”
“So what now?” she asked. “What can we do before tomorrow?” The trials reared up in her thoughts, making her nerves run a few spastic jumping jacks.
“I suggest you find Tristan and make the best of the countdown to doomsday. I have a date with Romeo. I’m teaching him how to play pool. Well, he doesn’t know it’s a date, but that works for me.” He looked at Chase from the side. “I like being near him. It’s pure energy. Even when all I want to do is strangle him for all his blind flirting.”
“That’s love, isn’t it?” she asked, remembering how desperate she had been to spar with Tristan. Pippin nodded.
For the first time in her life, love made so much stupid sense.
She pressed her head to his chest and wrapped her arms around him. Pippin wasn’t into hugs, but she held on until his arms fell loosely around her. “I realized somethi
ng when I was about to take Tourn’s head off,” she said. “He’s the real stranger. I don’t know why he does anything he does. But you—I can always see what’s going on underneath, even if I have no clue what’s happening on the surface.”
“Maybe we should work on the details,” he said. “All the…inconsequential stuff.”
“We’ve got a whole career together ahead of us. Suppose we should be open.” She took a deep breath. “For example, I know you don’t want to be here, but I don’t know why.”
“My family needs the money,” he said.
“That’s not really an answer though, is it?”
He ruffed up his hair. “When I was nine, I told my mom about—well, me. She’s such a loving person that I thought she would make me feel better about being different.”
“And she didn’t?”
“She did not. And neither did my brothers when they found out. The teasing was…” Pippin’s eyes were dark, his expression heavy, and she held him a little tighter. “It’s not that I don’t want to be here, Chase. I’ve never felt welcome anywhere. Not for who I really am.”
“So the gay genius RIO and the hated general’s daughter. We’re quite the pair.”
“Indeed.”
• • •
In the hangar, the Streakers stood together, wing to wing. Pegasus first, polished and beautiful. Dragon next, with brand-new wheels and more than a few dents and scratches. Tristan ran his hand over the metal skin, like Chase had done so many times with her bird.
“Phoenix reminds me of you,” she said, surprising him. “Cocky. Intense. A little sexy.”
Tristan turned around, his smile ready. “Sexy?”
She nodded, not bothering to hide a blush that seemed to start at her knees and spread ever upward. She stepped under Dragon, touching her jet’s smooth skin. The pearly silver was her favorite kind of beautiful.
He stood close to her back. “If the Streakers don’t pass, tomorrow might be the last time we fly together. I hate that thought.” Chase did too. Instantly. She rested against Dragon, and he took it as an invitation. He palmed the jet’s side with both hands, Chase between his arms. Her body lit up as he leaned in.
Then he paused.
“I’m waiting for you to say that this isn’t a good idea.” His eyes were their most fiery, and his hair was in need of some messing up. The kiss in the infirmary came back to her, wild and so much wanting. She took a breath and chose a small truth.
“You make me feel like I have six hands,” she said.
“I make you feel like a mutant?”
“No. I mean, you make me feel like every part of me is reaching for you.”
He made a sound like she’d just kissed him and punched him at the same time. “Chase, I—”
She put her hand over his mouth and led him up the ramp stairs to Phoenix’s cockpit. “In,” she said.
He gave her a questioning smirk but sank into his pilot chair. His hands rested on the throttle and stick as though he might twist up into the sky at any moment. As she looked down at him, she felt scars on the inside, contrails that crisscrossed her mind without fading. She could tell Pippin that she wanted to love Tristan. She could even admit it to herself, but how could she get from the feeling to his lips?
She took the mach approach, climbing on top of him and straddling his lap.
He became very still. “What’s going on, Chase?”
“I think…yeah. I’m just having a nervous breakdown.”
“Is that all?”
She traced his collarbones to the hollow at the bottom of his throat. “Distract me?”
“Gladly.” He touched a button on the side of his chair, and the seat reclined, bringing her farther onto his chest.
She surprised herself with a laugh. “Hey, I didn’t know the chairs could do that.”
“I’m still growing. An inch and a half this semester alone.”
“Really?” She wasn’t listening. She was too busy staring at his mouth.
“Why the breakdown, Chase? Did Tourn say something to you?”
She surprised herself with her answer. “No. Everything is okay. I mean, we have the trials, but I talked to Pippin, and I’m just…we’re going to be okay. We’ll pass the trials tomorrow, and then…” She messed with her hair. “Then we take Ri Xiong Di. No problem.”
“Yeah, no problem.” His doubt was playful. “So maybe I should kiss you—to pass that optimum interest in me or whatever you were worried about.”
“I don’t think it’s going to work this time.” Chase’s chest rattled like a wild thing was beating against the cage of her ribs. “Besides, there are so many more important things right now. Not the least of which being the fact that we’re going to be hunted in the sky tomorrow.”
“They won’t bring us anywhere near the d-line,” he said. “We’ll be all right.”
“That’s a good lie.” She forced a laugh and leaned her face to his. “Say it again?”
“We’ll be all right.”
She kissed him.
His lips tugged hers in a way that made her pull him closer. Closer. She couldn’t tell if he was a better kisser than everyone else she’d tried or if she was just better with him.
Maybe both.
Chase hit the canopy release with her elbow, and the dome folded over them. She felt like she was thinking clearly, and at the same time, wasn’t thinking at all. Her fingers sunk into his hair while his hands slipped from her face to her waist.
A dizzy, weightless sensation emerged as she felt that wide open everything that existed between them. And before she could decide what to do, she was already off that impossibly high ledge—and he went with her.
Chase kissed him hard and fast, and she felt like she was falling, falling, falling without ever coming near the ground.
33
PREFLIGHT
Preparing for the Big Show
Phoenix’s cockpit filled with a knocking sound. An urgent pound.
Chase lifted her head off Tristan’s shoulder. She’d exhausted herself in kissing and late-night talking and then slept like the dead. Her body was twisted and knotted from the way she had curled up on him all night, and yet it might have been the best sleep she’d ever had.
The dome of the cockpit was incriminatingly fogged, although they’d done nothing more than kiss. She’d completely let go, and she was a little startled to find that when she stopped trying to escape feeling, she didn’t need skin or the drug of touching. She just needed him.
But it was morning now, and they’d overslept.
“Tristan, get up.”
“Can’t,” he said. “You’re on top of me.” He lifted his head and looked at her. Chase was ready for that guilty distraction she felt after hooking up, but it didn’t come. Instead, she kissed him all over again and found his mouth warm and wanting.
“Hey there,” he said when she pulled away. “Good morning to you.”
The knock came again, and Chase jumped. “Someone knows we’re in here.”
“I can hear you, dumbasses.” Sylph’s voice shot through the thick glass. “Open up.”
Chase struggled to fix her uniform while Tristan hit the release. The cockpit opened, and Sylph glared down from the top of the ramp stairs.
“Let me guess. It’s not what it looks like.”
Tristan glanced at Chase in a way that made her heart dive.
“It pretty much is,” Chase said.
Sylph grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the cockpit. “Everyone is heading down here in twenty minutes. I’ve already seen the government board members.” The tall blonde shuddered. “You two need to get your butts in your zoom bags.”
Tristan and Chase split directions at a sprint before they said good-bye.
Chase was halfway to the Green when she ran into Pippin.
He had her G-suit and helmet. She began to dress behind an old drone covered by a tarp while Pippin played lookout.
“I think your night went better than mine,” he said. “But tell me you didn’t sleep in the cockpit. Just thinking about that makes me feel smooshed.”
Chase stuck her head out from behind the tarp. “It was so smooshed and so worth it.”
Pippin gave her a quirk of a smile. “You’re in love, so I’ll allow that one.”
“How gracious.” She finished zipping up, tucked her helmet under her arm, and stepped out. They started walking back toward the Streakers, where they were supposed to meet everyone. “Sylph said she already saw the board.”
“I did too. A whole series of deep frowners, and your father is their king.”
“What else is new?”
“I told Romeo I’m gay.”
“You did?” She found herself choosing her words as if they were steps on uneven ground. “And it went…okay?”
“He immediately began to select boys for me from the crowd in the rec room.” He gave her an exhausted but amused look. “So, yes. It went okay.”
“That really is an inexact word.”
“Multipurpose.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But I feel like I’ve turned a corner, you know? Maybe I’ll reinvent myself in the public eye. The Air Force is big enough for one super gay RIO, you think?”
“I highly suspect you’re not the only one.”
“Maybe I’ll start a club.”
Chase and Pippin locked eyes. It was too funny. Too surreal. They burst out laughing.
They turned the corner around a C-130 Hercules and found everyone waiting.
• • •
A fistful of moments later, the Streaker teams stood at attention before a host: the government board, Adrien, Lance Howard Tourn, Brigadier General Kale, and a dozen higher-ups from both the American and Royal Canadian air forces—and just for giggles apparently, Dr. Ritz.
Chase gave Crackers a wink when she caught the woman looking her way. Ritz’s expression bugged out, and Chase had trouble holding down a snicker. Man, she’d love to let the psychiatrist know about the latest turn in her love life. A memory of the previous night poured all over her until she felt liquid hot inside, and she was unable to stop herself from glancing at Tristan. The boy got better looking every time she saw him.
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