Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2)

by Harper Dallas

  It turns out that the same weekend Raquel and I are not getting back together under the meteors, Chase is doing much better with Brooke.

  I’m happy for them. Of course I am. Chase is my oldest friend, and Brooke is like a kid sister. They’re exactly the right type of insanity for each other, and I’m glad they’ve finally realized that. It took them long enough.

  I wish I were a big enough man to be entirely happy for them, but I’m not. Big enough to hide that fact from them? Definitely. But not so perfect that I don’t feel jealousy curdling in my stomach.

  When they fly out to Jackson in early the second week of May, I’m happy to leave them to themselves for a couple weeks. I’ve been in a new relationship before. I remember how much sex and I Raquel were having in the beginning: Brooke and Chase are going to be spending about ten hours a day doing it and another two rehydrating, before they spend the remaining twelve hours either sleeping or making doe eyes at each other. I don’t want to be around that.

  Anyway, it makes skipping the Raquel question easier. If Brooke came over, we’d have to work out what this is—and after what happened under the meteors, I don’t know I want to push it.

  Every morning since I’ve been well enough Raquel has let me join her for yoga, so that’s good. And then every day we live together like roommates, which is… something other than good, but okay.

  At least she didn’t walk out on me.

  I can sense she’s avoiding this question too. Stuff is both better between us and worse. Sometimes when we end up eating at the same time we chat like it’s old times. Sometimes, when she draws away if I step too close to her, it feels like we’re a hundred miles away from how things used to be.

  It turns out being Hanne who pushes it, which figures, because Hanne has always been the kind of person to make things happen. Like her coming to stay in my guest room for a long weekend. I find out about that when she calls me to say she’s booked her flight for the last weekend of May.

  “I have four days free before I fly out to Europe for Vesku’s race. I’m staying at yours. I hope that’s cool.”

  Vesku’s the dude she’s hanging with—a pro rally driver, a Finnish guy whose full name has a shit ton of dots over the letters. I don’t pay that much attention. Hanne always has some low-key, casual thing going on with someone badass: the last dude was a mountaineering guide on K2, and the one before that was a wingsuit flyer. We like Vesku—we being the rest of the crew—but we know he’s not going to hang around long term. They never do. They come into the picture, we get to try out something new and kickass, and then they disappear from the picture for reasons we never fully understand.

  I’m unsure of how to bring up Hanne’s trip to Raquel. It turns out I don’t need to worry. Hanne tells Raquel herself. Because of course she does.

  “She just doesn’t want me—” I grunt, trying to work another way through another stretch—“dead.”

  “Yes,” Hanne deadpans where she watches me from the parallel bars. She holds her weight braced through her arms, keeping her bent knees up in front of her. She holds the knee raise as if it’s effortless. A faint thread of tension at her forehead might be the only sign that her muscles are working double duty... or maybe that’s more about how she’s staring at me. Bright and alert, like a bird. A predatory bird. “Your ex-fiancée and supposed mother-to-be of your children is back in your old marital home purely because she wants to ensure the physical safety of her ex-lover.”

  “It’s not a marital home unless you actually got married.”

  “If only you dodged avalanches like you dodge questions,” Hanne sniffs, before lowering herself down to the floor.

  I can’t help but laugh. If there’s ever anyone who can make jokes at the darkest of stuff, it’s her.

  Chase pauses in grunting his way through a set of sit-ups, letting out a huff of air as he reaches for his water bottle. He rubs the back of his hand over his forehead, flicking away sweat as he looks up at me.

  “You know when she’s leaving?”

  So there it is: Chase is taking Hanne’s side. You wouldn’t know that unless you knew Chase. He’s subtle about it. But that’s about as directly involved as he’s likely to get in anything as complex as my—or Hanne’s—romantic lives. He doesn’t like talking about emotional shit. But I get the message loud and clear: he also doesn’t think Raquel is going anywhere.

  Being with Brooke is really changing him. I know that’s a good thing and also, in this moment, I hate it.

  I turn away from them both, flopping flat on my back and raising my leg up against the resistance band again. I frown at the ceiling and imagine Raquel upstairs, cooking or reading or—whatever she’s doing. If she’s not out with someone in town. Which she wouldn’t have to tell me. Because she’s not mine anymore.

  “Are you two going to leave it so we can have a nice night, or what?”

  “She’s not leaving,” Hanne says, singsong. She grabs her towel from the weight stand, flicking it idly at my raised leg. “I’m going to shower off. I’ll start making shakes.”

  Chase turns to watch her go. He presses his tongue to the edge of his mouth thoughtfully before looking to me in the mirror.

  “What,” I say.

  Chase shrugs easily before he lets himself flop back, reaching down for his knee and tugging it up to his chest. He holds it close, flexing the muscle of his thigh up.

  “I dunno,” he says to the ceiling. “She’s usually right.”

  “Hanne, or Raquel?”

  “Hanne.” Chase turns his head to look at me, his stubble scraping over the mat. “Raquel maybe, too. You can be a dipshit.”

  I let go of the resistance band so I can flip him the bird. “Shut up.”

  Chase isn’t fussed. He grins as he relaxes again, letting his feet fall back to the floor. This time he doesn’t look back to me as he pushes up to his feet. “I just want you to be happy, man. You know that.”

  “You assholes make me happy.”

  “Maybe. But we don’t kiss you.” Chase’s grin widens as it emerges from behind the towel he’s scrubbed roughly over his face. His dark hair goes in all directions, ruffled and tall. “You know what I mean.” He nudges me with his toe. “And if you ever feel like it… I want to introduce her to Brooke.”

  My smile tightens. Seeing Chase with Brooke is awesome, of course, and that doesn’t change the fact that it’s painful. To see him so in love, when I’m…

  “She’s not gonna stay.” My smile is tight over my face. “I know you’d like her to. So would I. But I don’t think there’s much point introducing Brooke to someone who’s just gonna go.”

  Something ghosts over Chase’s face. He wipes it away on a shrug. “Sure.”

  I mean, it figures. Chase clearly has a lot of baggage around people who go. And for that matter, so does Brooke.

  But still I’m left sitting in the gym thinking—they found each other. They made it work. And Brooke’s got some real baggage. And God knows Chase can be a handful himself, when he wants to be. And yet…

  But when I get upstairs, Raquel is out of the house again, avoiding yet another night with us.

  Raquel

  It’s not that I don’t want to see Chase and Hanne.

  Of course I do. Before everything happened, Hanne and I were close. I have so many good memories of hanging out with her and cackling over some in-joke as the boys looked on, confused. And Chase has always mattered to me—because of how much he matters to JJ.

  But after what happened under the meteors, I have to keep my distance.

  I have to remind myself that this isn’t forever. That JJ and I might be living together for a while, but that’s all it is. We’re roommates, nothing more.

  Roommates with a whole lot of baggage.

  Even if I don’t spend a whole chunk of time with Chase and Hanne, I still see them occasionally. Hanne hugs me when she arrives, and we have a couple meals together, just the three of us. It’s just as awkward as I imagi
ned—but it still matters to me.

  It’s good to see Hanne and JJ together again. Other people might be threatened by one of their partner’s best friends being female, but I never understood that. JJ’s love for Hanne has always been proof to me of something that matters: that he loves women and respects them. It’s always been one of the most important things to me. Some men are great—to you. Some men are great—to their mothers. But JJ treats people with absolute equality, and his love for and support of Hanne have been proof perfect of that all along. What sounds worrying to me is a man who doesn’t have any female friends, who isn’t capable of feeling love for a woman without a) being related to her or b) wanting to sleep with her.

  Anyway, you only have to see them playfighting like ten-year-olds to be sure that there’s never been, and never will be, anything between them. Hanne is JJ’s sister in all but blood. I’ve never had anything to worry about from that angle.

  Anyway, I used to joke to JJ, she’s too good for you. You’d never able to keep up. And he’d laugh, and elbow me, and Hanne would mouth: It’s true.

  She matters to me. And as she’s getting ready for JJ to drive her to the airport, I’m sorry to see her go.

  She holds me close, and for one moment I’m back in that hospital in Vancouver, crying my eyes out into her hair.

  JJ is watching us. She can’t say much. But as she squeezes me against her, Hanne’s voice comes soft at my ear.

  “Hey. Remember we love you. We’re rooting for this to work out.”

  I freeze in her arms. “This isn’t…”

  But Hanne only squeezes me again, and when she lets go of me she’s beaming, casting a teasing look to JJ as her voice rises.

  “You take care of him. I think he’s starting to play up this broken spine shit. He’s always been soft.”

  “Hey,” JJ protests with a grin.

  I force a smile to hide the thud-thud-thud of my heart.

  “He doesn’t want to give up that grill, does he?”

  Nina leans on the edge of the door, casting me a smile.

  It’s a week after Hanne left, and I’ve stopped hiding. I had reasons to spend as little time as possible with JJ’s crew, but there didn’t seem to be any point in avoiding his sister. Not when I speak to her mom on the phone once every couple weeks, updating her on her son’s process. Nina knows that I’m involved. It would be weird to avoid her.

  And anyhow—I’ve wanted to see her a lot.

  She has the same German coloring as her brother—that warm honey blonde hair, hers cut to a bob, and those dark eyes. Like him she’s tall, but she somehow seems even bigger: where JJ is relaxed she’s efficient, forceful, a woman not to be messed with. She’s been a civil rights lawyer as long as I’ve known her, and even now at a family barbecue the force of her personality is evident.

  I follow her look outside to where JJ’s sprawling on a deckchair. The first weekend of June is hot this year in Jackson, and he’s wearing a T-shirt and shades, laughing as he chats to Nina’s wife, Angelique, where she tends to the grill.

  Nina comes to stand beside me at the chopping board, reaching for a knife and a cucumber, looking out at them with a smile on her face. “It must be a challenge, being kept away from his God-given territory as a man.”

  Her humor is dry and sharp as ever, her lip twitching to the edge of a grin which threatens to reveal the same dimple as her brother. I laugh. JJ does look uncomfortable watching Angelique flip the patties, but she looks in her element. She lets a bottle of beer swing from a curl made by her index finger and thumb, tilting it lazily as she makes the vague, wide gestures of a story.

  “It’s good to be able to laugh about it, huh,” Nina says.

  I don’t need to ask what she means. I look at JJ, and it’s obvious. He sits there, away from the hospital where he was taken, almost broken. He sits in the chair that he walked to, and he laughs, and though his t-shirt is loose on him and his skin is pale, his smile is almost exactly the same as it always was. There’s an edge of pain there, yes, but it’s been fading slowly, bit by bit, and it seems not only possible to hope but obvious: that he will be well again. That he will be if not entirely as he used to be, as close to who he was once as any of us can ever be.

  One month JJ and I have been in this house together, and I have seen him get better and better.

  It is good. It’s good to be here on a warm day, listening to Pharrell singing about happiness on the radio. The air smells faintly of smoke, and I might not eat meat myself anymore but I can enjoy the scent of long summer evenings in my childhood. Angelique and JJ’s chatter is too low to properly make out, but it’s precious to be close to this scene of domestic bliss. JJ chattering with his sister-in-law, while his three-year-old nephew plays on a picnic rug between them with his trucks.

  “It’s good,” I agree, but my voice wavers as JJ sits up. The movement is creaking, painful, but it doesn’t matter.

  What matters is the way JJ reaches down to tousle his nephew’s hair. The way he looks down at the boy, his face glowing with love.

  For a moment my view of Bryn shimmers, his little boy’s curls glistening. I can almost imagine it’s JJ’s own son laughing to himself. JJ’s own boy who he looks at with such love.

  Our boy.

  Nina has stopped chopping and she’s looking at me, an expectant part to her lips. Those bright, intelligent eyes haven’t missed a thing. She’s going to comment on it, this dream that I have.

  Had.

  One of the two.

  “I’m glad we brought him to see you,” she says abruptly as she slides the chopped cucumber into the salad bowl and reaches for a pepper.

  I’m caught off guard for a second. “Bryn?”

  Nina nods. “I wasn’t sure, before… It’s hard to decide with a child. They need stability.”

  We all need stability. But I know what she means. JJ and I made choices. And surely the whole point of the choice I made was to protect tiny people—my own tiny people—from bad things happening, by fashioning my choices around their needs. So I can understand why at first Nina was unsure about bringing her son here to see me, when my role in his life has gone from the stable surety of an aunt to… something else entirely, something I can’t explain even to myself. Let alone to an three-year-old, who deserves a world that’s steady and predictable.

  A world that’s safe.

  I swallow around the ache in my throat. “Of course.”

  Nina gently nudges me with her elbow. “I’m glad you stayed here. I’m glad he got to see you. And I hope, maybe, you’ll decide to give it a go again. With James.”

  The weather hasn’t changed. It’s still warm, still bright, a bluebird day. Nevertheless I shiver, the small hairs over my arms catching at my blouse.

  What can I say?

  I want more than anything to stay.

  I want more than anything to be with JJ.

  I want more than anything for my children to be safe—just like I want Bryn to be safe.

  “Thank you,” is all I say.

  Nina’s catching me in a hug so quickly that it takes me a moment to relax into it. To wrap my arms around her and hold her close.

  “Whatever you choose, we love you,” Nina says softly into my hair. “And we’ll never forget what you’ve done for him. For Mom.” She squeezes me tight. “Family. No matter what. Forever.”

  The last word is a promise. I press my face into her hair and take a deep breath of her smell, a softer, more feminine version of her brother. I’ve known Nina for almost as long as I’ve known JJ. I was there when Bryn was a baby. I was there when Nina and Angelique married. I was there for all of it, and I know in this moment it’s true: we are family.

  “No matter what,” I promise.

  Outside JJ has moved to sit on the floor beside his nephew, and together they’re playing trucks. Bryn holds out his favorite for his uncle to see, and even though I can’t hear what JJ says, I can tell what he’s saying: approving. Supporting. Loving. />
  The way he looks at Bryn makes me ache. Something low and primal, deep in my stomach. It’s not desire—at least, not lust. It’s something even deeper. It seems crazy. I want his children. I want him to look at our babies, like that. I want that tender care, that consideration, for our family.

  All these months on, all these lessons later, and still I can’t imagine a better father than JJ Schneider.

  When he’s here.

  When he’s not under all that snow, so far away.

  Suddenly he looks up at me, and at the meeting of our eyes the world shakes.

  I’m falling all over again, and I don’t know how to stop.

  JJ

  It’s hard to appreciate the moments.

  We don’t do it that often. It gets easy to forget them. There are those first years you’re together, when everything is magic. When you notice the way she breathes, the way she touches her coffee cup, the way she slides notes into her wallet.

  But then after that? You love just as much, but it’s just… life, together. You share a home. Cars. Bills. A Netflix subscription. You stop noticing the normal things, because that’s just being together.

  You forget how beautiful she looks as she stands at the sink, rinsing the soapsuds from the barbecue prongs.

  Now, silhouetted against the dusk light out the window beyond, Raquel glows. The gray evening light makes her skin luminescent. Her hair is falling free from its clasp, the strands stroking over her neck when she moves, and her sleeves are rolled up to reveal the delicate bones of her forearms and the thin cage of her wrist. When she turns to rest things on the drying mat, I see her face in profile, and the line of her lips takes my breath away.

  How did I ever have her?

  Why did I ever let her go?

  I don’t want to break the moment, but I have to, or I might never leave.

  “I finished closing up the grill.”

  Raquel looks over her shoulder to me, and she smiles, and it just might slay me.