The Reality of Everything (Flight & Glory)

by Rebecca Yarros

  She didn’t know. I had dumped my feelings all over her without offering her the one truth that would give her the information she really needed.

  I sent up a prayer that this wouldn’t be the only time I kissed Morgan. Then I fought my own instincts and slowed the tempo, gentling my mouth even as she whimpered in protest.

  “We should go,” I said against her lips, then gave her one last soft, lingering kiss before easing her legs from my waist. My body was never going to forgive me, but I’d never forgive myself if I let this happen under false pretense.

  “Okay.” She blinked at me slowly, her eyes hazy with the same desire that pumped through my veins and had me harder than the stone at her back. Once her feet reached the ground, I took her hand in mine and led her back into the lighthouse, shutting the door after us.

  “Ready to head down?” I asked, trying to breathe steadily and failing miserably.

  She nodded, her chest rising and falling just as erratically as mine.

  I walked down ahead of her just in case she stumbled, her fingers laced with mine as I held her hand awkwardly behind my back. Unless my shoulder dislocated, I wasn’t letting go.

  I used every single one of those 257 steps to formulate a plan—to come up with a way to phrase the truth of what I did for a living so she wouldn’t run. By the time we reached the ground, my breathing had evened out, but my mind was blank.

  We thanked John for letting us into the lighthouse after hours and walked back along the sidewalk to the parking lot.

  “Thank you,” she said with a little sigh, smiling up at me. “That really was worth the hike.”

  “My pleasure.” I tried to smile, but it came out weirdly enough that Morgan’s brows knit.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as we approached the car.

  I tried to answer, but the words just weren’t there. She’d been brave enough to lay her shit out—well, everything but the cause of her anxiety attacks—and here I was fumbling for an explanation.

  She raised her eyebrows at me when I opened her door, but she got in without protest.

  I slid behind the wheel and fired up the ignition, then slowly pulled out of the lot.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Her voice trembled on the last word in a way that broke my fucking heart.

  “No. God, no. You’re perfect. That was perfect. Kissing you is…” I shook my head as we drove out of the park.

  “Perfect?” she guessed, but her smile was shaky.

  “More than. But I didn’t plan on that happening.” My left hand gripped the wheel as my right reached for hers.

  “Right,” she replied with a touch of ice, retracting her hand and placing it in her lap.

  The move was a direct gut-punch, and I more than deserved it. “What do you mean, right?”

  She shrugged, staring out the windshield. “I mean I’m sure you didn’t plan on me basically jumping on you and kissing you like that. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” I snapped in surprise, my gaze jerking toward hers as much as possible while still keeping my eyes on the road. “Why the hell would you be sorry?”

  “Because it’s obviously not something you wanted!” she exclaimed with a sharp note of self-loathing.

  “Trust me, it’s definitely something I wanted. Something I still want.” I was tempted to put her hand on my dick to prove just how much want there actually was. “There’s just something you need to know about me first, and I was going to tell you tonight—”

  “I already know you’re still in love with your ex.”

  What?

  “Hell no!” I pulled off the pavement, turning onto one of the many dirt roads that led to the beach and putting the car in park so I could turn to face her. This wouldn’t wait the five minutes it would take to drive us home. “I’m not in love with Claire. No fucking way.” Just the thought spiked my blood pressure.

  Her face puckered with confusion. “You’re not?”

  “No!”

  “Then what could I possibly need to know before a kiss?” she fired back. “Are you a murderer?”

  “No.” I scoffed.

  “A kidnapper? Rapist? Do you have three other wives spread around the United States?” She shrugged in obvious frustration.

  “I don’t have a single wife, let alone three—”

  “Then what—”

  “I’m a pilot!” Shit. Shit. SHIT. It fell out of my mouth so carelessly that I wanted to suck it back in, hit rewind on this moment, and do it all again.

  She stilled completely. No blinks, no cursing me out, no glares, nothing. I wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

  I sure wasn’t.

  “You said you were in the coast guard,” she accused softly, still staring at me in what I assumed had to be shock.

  “I am,” I assured her, leaning on the console between us. “I’m a search and rescue pilot for the coast guard.”

  Her eyes flared, not in fear but with stark, palpable terror. “Helicopters,” she finally whispered.

  “Helicopters,” I confirmed, swallowing the rising knot in my throat. “This wasn’t how I wanted to tell you. I was going to explain why I chose my career and—”

  “Take me home.” The demand was icy and flat as she turned away from me.

  “Morgan, please. Let me explain.” My mind scrambled with panic. If I could just get her to listen, then she’d understand, right?

  She opened the door.

  “Where are you going?” I reached for her elbow.

  She turned just enough to glare at my fingers on her sweater.

  I removed them immediately. Fuck, this wasn’t going well.

  “If you won’t take me home, I’ll walk. I can see the lighthouse from my deck, which means if I take this trail, the beach will lead me home.” She paused, her hand lingering on the handle.

  “I’ll take you home.”

  She shut the door, then stared out the windshield as I put the car in reverse—something I wished I could do with the last five minutes of my life. We pulled onto the pavement, and I headed toward our houses. The silence between us wasn’t just tense; it was sharp enough to draw blood—or break hearts.

  I had to fix this. She wasn’t just a friend or the woman who lived next door. I cared about her, and I wasn’t willing to let whatever this was between us go without a fight. Fuck that. A battle. I put my mental armor on and prepared to go to war against her past in the hopes that she’d give me a chance for a future.

  “When my parents died,” I began.

  “No.” She shook her head. “You don’t get to speak. You lied to me.”

  “I never told you I wasn’t a pilot.” I turned onto our street.

  “Semantics don’t make you honest, Jackson,” she snapped.

  When faced with which driveway to pull into, I chose mine, hoping it would give me more time. “I get that. And you’re right. I should have told you sooner, but I knew you’d react just like this.” I put the car in park. “And I wanted you to know me—not just what I did—before we had this conversa— Morgan!”

  She was already out of the car.

  I killed the ignition and took off after her, catching up midway between our yards. “Please, just give me a chance to explain.”

  She spun around and stuck her finger in my face. “You’ve had all the time in the world to do that, and you chose not to!”

  I barely managed to stop my momentum quickly enough to keep from running her over, and then she was off again, striding toward her house.

  “Kitty, come on!” How the hell was I supposed to get her to understand if she wouldn’t even listen? I chased after her like the desperate fool I was.

  “Oh no,” she threw over her shoulder as she reached her steps. “You don’t get to call me that. Never again.” She marched up two of the steps and the
n paused, going still as a statue.

  My feet froze to the very sand beneath them. I knew an approaching storm when I saw one, and she was a cat five hurricane spinning just off my coast.

  Her shoulders rose slightly, and then she turned on her steps and advanced toward me. She was a storm all right, and I wasn’t sure I’d be standing after she released all the wrath in those eyes.

  “You knew.” She flung the accusation from a few feet away, planting her feet and crossing her arms.

  I swallowed.

  “You knew I would shut you out the moment you told me you were a damned flyboy.”

  “Yes.” This had just gotten so much worse for me.

  “You know what happened, don’t you?” She seethed, her jaw clenching.

  Fuck. My eyes closed momentarily with the realization that I’d lost this battle long before I’d come clean in the car. I took a deep, fortifying breath and found her staring at me with the kind of loathing that only broken trust could evoke.

  “I know what happened to Will,” I admitted.

  She blanched, her eyes flying wide, then narrowing. “Don’t ever say his name!” she cried, that finger coming at me again. “You don’t have the right!”

  “Okay.” This was so far beyond bad that my stomach took up permanent residence in my feet.

  “How dare you bring him into this!” Her finger trembled.

  “Morgan, he’s already in this.”

  She flinched and lowered her arm. “Who told you what happened? I know it wasn’t Sam. She wouldn’t do that to me.”

  “No one told me.” I shifted my weight, hoping the motion would appease my need to cross the distance between us and hold her. It didn’t. “I saw the wings that day you had me get the registration out of the truck, and the name on those dog tags hanging from the mirror is the same one on the registration.”

  “And you what? Googled him?” she fired back.

  “Pretty much.” My lips pressed in a thin line as I nodded, knowing the gathering fire in her eyes was about to come right for me.

  “How dare you!” Her hands dropped to form fists at her sides.

  “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have, but you’d just had that anxiety attack and—”

  “And you decided that my past was up for investigation? You wanted to see what had turned me into a neurotic shell of who I used to be?” she cried.

  “I wanted to solve a mystery that I knew you wouldn’t explain. And I don’t think you’re neurotic. I think you went through something that you’re still recovering from.” I tucked my hands into my pockets.

  “If a woman doesn’t want to tell you about the fucked-up past that she’s barely survived, then you don’t go searching for it, you asshole!”

  My eyebrows rose. That was the first time I’d ever heard the woman curse. “You’re right, and I’m so sorry.”

  She offered me a look that clearly told me I was an idiot. “I’m sorry doesn’t remotely begin to cover this! You went looking for something you have zero right to know. If I wanted you to know, I would have told you! You. Had. No. Right!”

  “I’m sorry, Morgan,” I said again. “I will make it up to you, I swear.”

  “You can make it up to me by staying the hell away from me.”

  I felt the blood rush from my face. “Please don’t ask that from me.”

  “I’m not exactly giving you a choice,” she spat. “What did you think was going to happen? That I’d say it’s perfectly fine that you fly those death traps, and we’d…” She tilted her head. “What exactly do you want from me, Jackson?”

  “You,” I replied, taking a step toward her. “I just want you.”

  Her chin rose. “I’m not something you can have. Not now, and apparently not ever.”

  She was pissed and hurt, and I knew there was a chance those words were simply a reflection of those feelings, but damn did they sting.

  “I know that what you’ve been through has to make you scared of being with another pilot—”

  “Don’t presume to know my feelings just because you threw Will’s name into a search engine,” she interrupted. “You might know all about how he died, but that doesn’t qualify you to even begin knowing the first thing about him, or the way I feel about him, or you, or anything!” Color flooded her cheeks, and her shoulders rose and fell fast enough that I started to worry about her having another attack.

  “Fine, then how do you feel?” I questioned, my voice rising slightly. “Because you never talk about it. You’ve told me that you don’t talk to your best friend and that you can’t open that truck door, but you never go into the why of it. You know everything about me with the exception of how I make my money, and you never give me the same access. You never let me in!”

  “Let you in? Like I actually want you to see inside this?” She gestured to her torso. “What do you want to know, Jackson? That I dream about him every night? That I watch the video he left for me before bed or I can’t sleep? That my nightmares are full of the sound of crunching metal and gunshots, but I wasn’t there with him, so my mind gives me a thousand different scenarios?”

  “Morgan,” I whispered, reaching for her.

  She moved away from my touch. “You think I’m scared to be with another pilot? I wasn’t even with Will! We never got the damned chance, and look how that turned out! I’m not scared of what you do—I’m terrified. I’m paralyzed by anxiety attacks I can’t control, and they’re so bad that one of my best friends has to live with me until I get through a therapy program for it! The same friend who Skypes with her husband every day because he’s flying helicopters in the same fucking country that took the man I loved, and every breath I take is heavy with dread that those fucking uniforms are going to show up at the door for Sam! Is that what you want to hear?” Her voice pitched to a near-scream.

  “Yes. I want to know how you feel, and I don’t care if it’s ugly.” I would take whatever she wanted to give me—whatever she was.

  Her eyes narrowed. “How I feel about you isn’t ugly, and that’s the problem. I moved here so I could lick my wounds in peace, and you appeared, all gorgeous and smart and funny and so damned concerned about me. And you tell me you’re in the coast guard, and I figure oceanographers can’t get hurt in the coast guard, right?”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it again, because anything I said would only dig me deeper into this hole I created, and right now it was the size of the Grand Canyon.

  “And then you let me get close to you! And Finley! And suddenly, I’m waking up again, and I start looking forward to things like seeing you. And I feel happy when I’m around you! And I start to realize that when I’m with you, he isn’t with me, and as much as that fucks with my head, I accept it. You push me to start living again, and so I do, and then you take me up a lighthouse, and I kiss you and it’s just…” Her eyes closed as she shook her head, and when she opened them again, she was even angrier. “It’s the most incredible kiss I’ve ever had!”

  “That’s not a bad thing. It was incredible for me, too. The best I’ve ever felt.” Hope brought my stomach back into place.

  “You don’t get it. Will was the last person to kiss me! That was supposed to be the best, and then there you are, blowing my mind, and you have the nerve to make me want you!” Her outstretched hands moved with every word.

  “Morgan, I want you, too. I’ve wanted you since I saw you on that beach, and I knew we’d end up here the moment you mocked my barbecue skills and ate that burger anyway. I. Want. You.”

  “Damn you!” she screamed, her eyes filling with tears that caught in the moonlight. “Damn you for making me want you! For making me think I have a shot at being happy again and then snatching it away because you do the same fucking thing he did!” She pointed at the truck parked fifteen feet away, just outside the boathouse. “You do the same thing that got him killed, a
nd I swore I would never put myself in that position again! Never! Not for you. Not for anyone!” The first tear spilled over and raced down her cheek.

  “Don’t cry. God, Kitty, don’t cry.” I moved toward her, but she walked straight past me, headed for the truck.

  “Don’t touch me! Stay away from me! How could you do it?” she shouted, not even bothering to look back. “How could you make me want you, make me think we have a chance, and then break me into a million pieces? It’s not fair, and I hate you for it!”

  My heart lurched, but there was nothing I could say or do to alleviate her pain. There was an overwhelming chance that the possibility of what we could be might not be enough to outweigh what loving him had cost her.

  She grabbed the door handle to the truck and flung it open only a few inches before slamming it shut again.

  Holy shit, she did it. She opened the door.

  “Why? Why me? Why that fucking helicopter? Why?” she screamed, punctuating each question with another slam of the door.

  Watching her breakthrough felt a lot like watching her fall apart, and it was so fucking painful that my hand grabbed at my chest.

  Headlights caught my attention as a car drove down Morgan’s driveway, but she didn’t stop yelling at me as she abused the door. The car drove past Morgan and parked next to the Mini. It was Sam.

  She got out and shut the door, then stared, drop-jawed, at Morgan before looking at me. Her gaze darted between us, her head swiveling back and forth like we were a tennis match before she approached me.

  “You made me want you!” Morgan screamed, slamming the door again.

  “What the hell did you do?” Sam asked, arching an eyebrow in clear warning as she folded her arms across her chest.

  “I told her I’m a search and rescue pilot for the coast guard. I fly helicopters,” I told her without taking my eyes from Morgan’s rage.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” Sam seethed.

  “I wish I was.” At that moment, I wanted to be anything else. “I don’t know what to do. Should I go over there?”

  She snorted. “Unless you’d like Morgan to put your head in that doorframe between slams, I’d stay right where you are. Fucking flyboys.” She muttered that last part.