The Reality of Everything (Flight & Glory)

by Rebecca Yarros

  Finley cocked her head at me, motioning to her dress. Her very sparkly dress.

  “I love it.” I loved even more that she felt good about herself in it. If that was the confidence boost she needed, I’d fill her closet with fluffy dresses.

  Morgan gave her a hug. “You guys have a great night, okay?”

  “Walk us out?” I offered as Fin slipped on her jacket without the usual fight.

  “Sure,” Morgan agreed, her hand finding Fin’s as we headed out the door.

  By the time I locked up behind us, Morgan and Finley were down the steps, lost in some animated conversation that I wasn’t privy to, but I heard Fin mention Vivian.

  Right. Next weekend was Vivian’s with Fin. Usually, I’d grab a drink with Sawyer and Garrett, but what if I didn’t? What if I spent the time with Morgan, instead? Would she even say yes? Shit, was I actually nervous about asking a woman out?

  Absolutely.

  I got Fin buckled in her car seat, then turned the Land Cruiser on so the air conditioning would circulate for my little redhead.

  “Hey, Kitty,” I called out when I caught her walking away from me.

  She turned, tucking her hands into her back pockets just outside our open garage door. “Jackson?”

  There it was, that little uptick at the corner of her mouth, the one I couldn’t wait to trace with my tongue. God, if the woman said yes, I was going to have to wait an entire week to take her out.

  “I hate that I have to work this weekend.” Wait, why the hell did I say that? I was rusty as shit when it came to someone I actually wanted.

  “That seems fair.” She tilted her head to the side.

  “Sorry, that wasn’t what I meant to say.”

  She smiled, and it was real.

  My brain emptied. She was beautiful in more than her body or her face—that was a given, and in my experience didn’t always carry any deeper. Morgan’s beauty skyrocketed with that sparkle I caught right now in her eyes, the hint of playfulness, the glimpse of another stunning facet of her I had yet to discover.

  Because I hadn’t earned it yet.

  But I would.

  The timing was wrong. I wasn’t sure she was ready. I hadn’t been interested in more than a few hours with someone in over five years. She had a broken heart, and I had a kid whose heart I couldn’t risk. For God’s sake, I was standing outside my garage, which wasn’t exactly romantic.

  But none of that mattered…or maybe it did, but I was going to give her every reason not to let them matter.

  I was going to earn the right to see her smile and hear her laugh.

  “Are you okay?” Her eyebrows furrowed.

  “Yeah, absolutely.” Just busy talking to myself. “So I have to work this weekend, which we’ve already covered. But I’m off next weekend.”

  Her eyes widened slightly.

  “You feel up for seeing a little more of the island with me? You haven’t gotten out much.” Holy shit, Montgomery, did you just quasi-insult the woman?

  “Oh. I’m not really one for bars anymore.” She rocked back on her heels.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of nocturnal sightseeing.”

  “Sightseeing?”

  “Yes.”

  “At night?”

  “I believe that’s the meaning of nocturnal.”

  She stared at me for a moment, her pause almost awkwardly long, but I waited. I had a feeling that was the key to Morgan, taking small steps and putting the choice in her corner. I’d never been a wait-for-anything kind of guy, but I’d so fucking learn if it meant having a shot with her.

  “Okay,” she finally answered. “What time?”

  I managed to not fist-pump. Barely. It was close.

  “Nine on Saturday. Unless you’d rather grab dinner first? I know some great—”

  “Nope, nine is great.”

  Small steps, Montgomery.

  “Okay, see you then.”

  She nodded and damn-near ran back to her house in obvious retreat.

  I blocked off Saturday evening on the calendar using my phone and grinned the whole way to the school. We got there thirteen minutes early.

  Fin held her head extra high as we walked in through the front double doors. We turned left at the end of the short hall and passed a pair of classrooms, one that had the door propped open.

  “Aunt Brie!” Finley dropped my hand and ran toward her aunt, who was seated behind her desk and a pile of papers.

  “Hey, Finley!” Brie got out of her chair and gave Fin a hug.

  “What are you doing here so late?” I asked, leaning against one of her students’ desks.

  “Well, I’m grading papers, and I knew this little lady had orientation tonight, so I thought I’d wish her luck! Let’s get a picture!” She took her cell phone from the desk and snapped a picture of Fin.

  “Do you like my dress?” Fin asked, spinning with a squeak against the linoleum floor.

  “Very glamorous. And look at your hair!” she gushed. “If that’s not the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen!”

  “Morgan did it!”

  “Did she?” Brie shot me a raised eyebrow. “Well, I love it! That Morgan sure is talented, isn’t she?”

  “Yes! And she’s going out with Daddy next weekend!” Fin clapped.

  Oh, shit.

  “Fin, it’s not like a date-date,” I told her. We were going to have to discuss expectations. I didn’t need Fin’s heart set on something that wasn’t even on the table right now. “And how do you even know?”

  She looked at me sheepishly. “My iPad told me.”

  Right. She had access to the family calendar and got notifications—my bad. But— “When exactly did your iPad tell you?”

  She pressed her lips in a little line.

  “Fin?”

  “When we left the house.”

  “You snuck your iPad into the car? Where? How?” I folded my arms across my chest.

  “Under my jacket.” She shrugged unapologetically.

  “That’s why you didn’t argue about putting it on,” I mused, giving my daughter a point for pure mischievousness. “But I didn’t say you could bring it. Tech stays home.”

  Her eyes darted from Brie’s to mine and back again. “You didn’t say I couldn’t bring it…”

  “She has you there,” Brie acknowledged. “What do you say we walk you down to the kindergarten rooms?”

  “Yes, please!” Finley bounced with excitement.

  We walked out of Brie’s room and almost ran right into one of Fin’s friends from preschool, which meant Fin was already starting down the hall with Julie, no longer caring about an escort.

  I glanced at the door that would be Morgan’s next year.

  “She’s not just some tourist, you know,” Brie said softly, motioning toward the door. “If you start something with her and it ends badly, I’m the one stuck hearing about it at work, and more importantly, it will affect Fin.”

  “Is that why you told Claire about Morgan?” I questioned as we passed bulletin boards full of artwork.

  She gave me an indignant scoff. “I told my sister because she has a right to know that you’re putting yourself in a position to move on.”

  “I moved on years ago.”

  “Not emotionally, you didn’t. I know Claire is…Claire, but she’s still my sister, and I’m just looking out for her.”

  “I like Morgan. I’m taking her out. I didn’t say that we were hopping a flight to Vegas. Fin, baby, wait up!” I called down the hall.

  Fin paused outside the kindergarten doors.

  “I just wish—”

  I turned, halting us both. “You wish she was Claire. That’s your baggage. Not mine. Now I’m going to take my daughter into her orientation. The daughter who once again doesn’t h
ave her mother here. I’ll see you later, Brie.” With a curt nod, I left her standing in the hall and headed for Fin.

  I wasn’t the only single parent there, but I was the only single dad. The usual onslaught of complicated emotions didn’t hit me this time, though. Fin wasn’t looking around, sad that her own mother hadn’t come—that was my baggage, not hers. She was busy twirling in her dress and showing everyone her crown braid.

  But then again, how could she miss someone she’d never really had?

  …

  “Oh, come on!” Sawyer begged as he spotted me the next night.

  I pushed the bar through my final rep and set it back on the rack.

  “Don’t give him shit about it,” Garrett muttered from the pull-up station.

  We’d already flown a patrol, and we were doing what any man of logic would normally do at one a.m.—working out in the station gym to keep from falling asleep.

  “Sorry, man, you’re on your own,” I told Sawyer as I sat up.

  “I made arrangements,” he whined. “There are two of them. Two. Cousins. What am I supposed to tell them?” He followed me as I headed for the leg press.

  “That you made plans without consulting me?” I adjusted the weight, adding twenty pounds.

  “That you made plans without consulting me. What the hell is so important that you’d blow me off on a non-Finley weekend?” He stared down at me with a mix of real and mock outrage. “You know we only have a few months before we deploy! You’re supposed to be mine!”

  “A few months before you deploy, remember? I’m on rear D for this one.” Command had taken mercy on me since I was Finley’s only parent. Yes, I had a care plan, but it had been a relief when they told me I wasn’t going to have to use it. I hated sending my guys without me, though.

  He grabbed his chest in indignation. “We’re supposed to be spending every moment we can together so our bromance survives the separation!”

  “All three months of it.” I laughed. “Now seriously, I’m taking Morgan out.” I slid into the machine.

  “I’m sorry. Morgan as in your extremely hot, way unavailable neighbor?” Sawyer asked, his expression changing to a shit-eating grin.

  “Yes.” I started my reps and hoped the conversation would end there.

  “Do you even know how to actually date anymore?” Sawyer dropped down so we were at the same level.

  Of course he couldn’t let it end there.

  “Pretty sure it all works the same as the last time I did it,” I snapped, breathing through the reps.

  “You mean back in the eighteen hundreds?” Sawyer laughed.

  “Seriously, leave him alone,” Garrett told Sawyer, dropping after his last pull-up. “Jax, I like her. She might be gorgeous, but she doesn’t act like she knows it, and she ate your burnt-ass cheeseburger.”

  “Thanks for your approval.” I grunted as I reached the end of the set.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t like her!” Sawyer threw his hands up in the air. “I’m here for this, Montgomery. What can I do to help you? Do you need tips? Advice? Date ideas? You know that Myspace isn’t a thing anymore, right?”

  I finished the last rep, then climbed from the machine and put my hand on Sawyer’s shoulder. “Sawyer, you know I love you like a brother, but you are the last person in the world I would ever ask dating advice from.”

  Garrett burst into laughter as I hauled my ass to the shower. I wasn’t letting Sawyer get to me, not when I’d gotten Morgan to say yes—even if it was a friend-zone date. I’d take what I could get when it came to her.

  My phone rang as I zipped up my flight suit post-shower.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, but I still answered. “Do you know what time it is, Claire?”

  “Ten thirty,” she snapped.

  “It’s one thirty in the morning here.” I sat down on the bench in front of my locker and put on my boots.

  “Well, you answered, so you must still be awake.”

  “But you didn’t know that when you called—” I sat up and rubbed the skin between my eyes. “Okay, let’s start over. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

  “We have a giant fucking issue,” she seethed.

  “Which would be?”

  “Did you seriously send my daughter to her kindergarten orientation wearing a damned Easter dress and Converse?” Her voice was pitched high enough to be called a shriek.

  I bit back an instinctual reply, which would have been to tell her to fuck off and hang up. She’s Finley’s mother. I repeated the thought four times before I spoke.

  “Not that I know of.” I leaned down to lace my boots, holding the phone between my ear and shoulder.

  “So this picture Brie sent me isn’t Finley’s orientation? I just sent it.”

  My phone vibrated, and I pulled it back long enough to see the picture Brie had taken yesterday appear in our text thread. “That’s Finley right before orientation,” I confirmed.

  “Jax!”

  “What?” I finished tying the first boot and started on the second. “She’s not wearing an Easter dress because it doesn’t have a thousand bunnies on it, or eggs, or a giant cross. It’s a party dress. And those aren’t Converse; they’re her favorite pair of Vans.”

  “And you let her wear that? Do you know what the teacher must have thought? What the other kids must think about her?”

  “That’s their problem,” I retorted, taking a page out of Morgan’s book as I tied the second boot. “Look, Claire, she wore whatever made her feel good about herself. If you have a problem with it, then I guess you should have been here to tell her that what people think is more important than how she feels.”

  “I cannot believe that you just—”

  The alarm went off, and I jolted from the bench, racing for the hallway.

  “We’ve got a mayday!” Sawyer called out, running my way, where all of our flight gear was stored.

  It was go time.

  “Claire, I’m going to have to call you back. There are people who need me to save them from an actual issue.” I hung up and pocketed my phone without another thought about Claire as I ran back to the locker room. Sawyer and Garrett both came through the door as I grabbed my flight bag, then pressed a kiss to my fingers and touched the picture of Finley I kept taped on the inside of my locker door.

  Then I put her out of my mind, too, and focused only on the mission in front of me.

  “Let’s go save some lives.”

  Chapter Ten

  Morgan

  I’m leaving you the truck. The best memories I have of it are with you in the passenger seat, so it seems fitting.

  I stared at the door handle of Will’s truck and reached, only to drop my hand yet again. Sam had told me to take it easy while she was visiting Grayson’s grandparents for the weekend, but I wasn’t going to show up at Dr. Circe’s office next week having failed with the simple homework assignment of opening the damned door.

  But what if I opened the door and had another anxiety attack? Even worse, what if Jackson saw it? How was I supposed to go out with the man if I wasn’t even healthy enough to open this door?

  A set of tires crunched the gravel of my driveway, and a blue sedan stopped right in front of the truck. Christina climbed out.

  Great, now I had a witness to my failure.

  “Well, good morning, sunshine.” Christina held a cup of coffee as she glared me down in the odd combination of yoga pants over her wetsuit.

  “Hardly,” I retorted. “I thought we were meeting at your shop? And what’s with the wetsuit?”

  “I thought so, too, but then you stood me up.” She tilted her head. “I even grabbed you coffee. It’s nasty when it’s hot, so I bet it’s extra special tasty when chilled by an hour of waiting.”

  I looked from the coffee to her and back again. “Wait, we
’re supposed to meet at nine, right?” It couldn’t possibly be that late.

  “Yep, and it’s now ten.” She shook her phone.

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry, Christina. I lost track of time.” I’d been standing here for an hour and a half? I wasn’t sure if I was more upset by the time loss or my ultimate inability to open the door.

  “It’s okay. We can make the eleven o’clock class.” She walked over to the construction dumpster and tossed the coffee over the metal edge. “Now get your wetsuit and let’s go.”

  “For yoga?”

  She grinned. “Do you trust me?”

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “Smart woman. What if I ask you really nicely and promise not to ask you to surf?” She batted her lashes at me.

  I sighed. “Give me five?” I was supposed to be exercising my body and making new friends, and if that included putting on my wetsuit, then fine. At least I wouldn’t fail that section of my homework.

  “Take ten,” she answered with a shrug.

  I raced up my steps and didn’t stop until I reached my bedroom, where I went to war with the neoprene piece of hell known as my wetsuit. Good Lord, this thing exhausted every muscle I had just getting it on, but I did. Thank God I didn’t go with the full-body model or I wouldn’t have made it.

  With already aching arms, I gathered my hair at the top of my head and looped it into a bun, then pulled on my yoga pants, grabbed my sunglasses, and headed back outside, where Christina patiently waited for me.

  “Good girl. For your speed, I shall offer you a new cup of non-cold coffee on the way,” she said with a smirk.

  We took her coupe twenty minutes north to Avon, stopping along the way for the promised caffeine hit.

  “You going to pry?” I asked when I caught her glancing my way.

  “Nope. I figure if you want to tell me why you were staring at a pickup truck like it was your mortal enemy, you will.” Her eyes cut my way. “Doesn’t mean I’m not dying of curiosity.”

  I took a sip of the caramel macchiato as we sped along the narrow parts of the island.