The Reality of Everything (Flight & Glory)

by Rebecca Yarros

  I pouted. It was childish, and I didn’t care. “Fine. We talk, then we go to your place.”

  “Open your present.” He flashed me a grin that nearly took my panties clean off and pushed the little brown bag my way.

  I slid the box from its bag, lifted the lid, and unwrapped the delicate layers of tissue paper. Mercy. This book was incredible. In simple block text, the words Night and Day stood out where they’d been embossed in rich, dark leather. It was cracked and worn in places, and though it had been protected in a clear library jacket, it was easy to see that it had passed through many hands over the course of many years to find its way here.

  “Jackson, is this…” I didn’t want to open the cover. Didn’t want to even think it might be.

  “A first edition? Yeah. But don’t worry, it wasn’t as expensive as you’d think. I didn’t dip into Finley’s college fund or anything.” His eyes were bright with the simple joy of making me happy.

  But this…this was anything but simple. It was a gift chosen with such thought and care that tears prickled my eyes and my chest expanded with a glow I was sure had to be visible.

  Oh, my heart. Do not fall in love with this man.

  Don’t fall? Or don’t admit it?

  My stomach twisted and did its own falling.

  His eyes dimmed. “Kitty, if you don’t like it, I can return it.”

  “What?” I blinked myself free of my thoughts. “Oh no, Jackson, this is exquisite. Not just that you found a copy, but it’s the only one I haven’t read yet!” I flipped the cover and, sure enough, there was the publication date: 1919.

  He flashed a smile. “I knew you were on a Virginia Woolf kick and checked your shelves. I figured it was a fitting present since you finish therapy in what…three more sessions?”

  “Two,” I said softly. My grief had been at a nine—mostly because I refused to use my ten—when we’d begun, and last week’s session it had rated a three.

  Three. It hadn’t even seemed possible when we’d started. And sure, I still had my triggers, but Dr. Circe said there was a chance those might never go away. There were some things that simply couldn’t be fixed, but they sure could be avoided.

  “Well, now you have the last Virginia Woolf book to read as your reward.”

  I carefully wrapped the book and put it back in the box to protect it. “You are incredible, Jackson. Thank you.” I kissed him.

  “You might not think so in a few minutes, so I’ll take it.”

  My brow furrowed. “Why?”

  He shifted his attention to the box. “How are you going to read it in the box?”

  I blinked. “I’m not. I’m going to buy one of those airtight display cases and protect it like the piece of art it is.”

  His gaze whipped back to mine. “What’s the point of having it if you don’t read it?”

  “What’s the point of having a first edition, priceless book if you don’t protect it?” I countered with a grin.

  “You are an astounding woman, and I love you.” He shook his head, and the atmosphere in the room shifted as he took a deep breath. When his eyes met mine, there was a plea in them that I didn’t understand, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “There’s no easy way to say this. I have to take a trip.”

  “Okay?” I sat on the nearest stool and faced him so our knees touched. “Are we talking a few days or a week?”

  “A few months.”

  The world tilted on its axis. “I don’t understand.”

  He leaned toward me and took my hand. “Hastings’s leg isn’t going to heal in time. He isn’t cleared to go. He’s livid, but there’s nothing he can do.”

  “Go where?” My pulse skittered, and nausea threatened to bring my lunch back up.

  “It’s basically a three-month vacation, when you think about it. Just a rotation.” His voice was level and calm, but his eyes weren’t.

  “Jackson,” I warned. “Half answers are bullshit.”

  He flinched. “You’re right. Okay. I have to deploy with the unit.”

  The edges of my vision blurred, and his words all jumbled together.

  “I wish we had better timing, but I have to deploy.”

  My heart beat like a bass drum.

  “It’s just three months, Kitty. That’s all. Three months and I’m back. Three months and then we have forever.”

  “I mean, how hard could it be for us to wait nine months, considering how long we’ve been dancing around this?”

  It was impossible to blink free of his voice. Couldn’t shove the memory back in the cassette tape and store it like I’d been taught by Dr. Circe. I ripped my hand from Jackson’s and pressed my fingers to my temples. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  “Shit. Babe, I can’t imagine how this sounds to you, but it’s nothing like what you’re thinking.” Jackson reached for me, but I leaned away from his touch. “I’m just going somewhere else to do the same job I do here. That’s all. Just flying.”

  “It won’t be that bad, so I don’t want you to worry, which I know you will anyway, but flying is flying no matter where you do it.”

  I slammed my eyes shut and tried to steady my breathing. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t possible.

  “Morgan, honey—”

  “You said you couldn’t go!” I shouted, the sound echoing off the tile floors. “You told me that because of Finley, you couldn’t go!”

  When he reached for me again, I slid off my stool and stumbled backward until my back hit the island.

  “No, Kitty.” There was so much pain in his eyes. “I said that I had a family care plan, but the captain decided to leave me behind because of Finley. It was a decision made for both the needs of the unit and compassion. Being a single parent doesn’t get you out of deployments.”

  That fucking word was the bane of my existence. I gripped the edge of the counter to stay upright.

  “And Captain Patterson knows Claire is back, so I’m not parenting by myself. The entire reason I was being left behind no longer exists.” His jaw ticked, and I knew there were parts of that conversation he was leaving out.

  “But if Hastings can’t fly?” God, there had to be a way out of this, right? I couldn’t do this again. It wasn’t even in the realm of possibility.

  Jackson rose from the stool but stayed a couple feet away. “The guys from Elizabethtown will cover it. We’re just an offshoot of them, anyway.”

  Something soft twined between my ankles. Juno.

  “Have you told Finley?”

  Jackson shook his head and smashed his lips in a flat line. “I told you first.” He took the bottle of water from the counter and slammed the rest of it back, then crushed it in his fist. “I can’t imagine what you’re thinking right now.”

  “I can’t.” My breaths came faster, like a steaming locomotive gained speed as it left the station.

  “It has to feel just like—”

  “No!” I shouted, pointing my finger at him. “No.” I couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t catch my breath. Couldn’t slow my heart. I couldn’t do this. Not any of it.

  “Okay.” He laced his fingers on the top of his head and took a calming breath. “Let’s look at this logically.”

  “Fuck your logic.” A lump grew in my throat. No, no, no.

  “It’s just search and rescue, baby. It simply happens to be a rotation at an air station in the Caribbean so we’re on hand for hurricane season. It’s more like a three-month TDY than it is a deployment.”

  Fuck that word. Fuck all of this.

  The stitches I’d sewn meticulously into my heart began to pop one by one.

  “This isn’t like him,” Jackson said so softly that I almost didn’t hear it.

  “I’m sorry?” I snapped, arching my neck slightly to dislodge the damn lump.

  “My deployment
is nothing like Will’s.”

  “We are not talking about Will!” He was already in my damned head as it was.

  “Kitty, we have to be able to talk about him, especially with this.”

  “He’s not…” I sucked in a breath and rolled my head, but the lump wasn’t going anywhere. It was growing. “He’s not in this conversation.” Because if he was, I couldn’t be. Deployment…I couldn’t do another one. Couldn’t get that news again. God, I could still feel the gum-like texture of the strawberry jam on my shoes.

  Jackson took a step toward me, and I moved again, heading straight into my kitchen. He couldn’t touch me. He took every ounce of logic the minute his hands were on me, and I had to be able to think. I had to survive.

  “Baby, he’s in every conversation when it comes to my job.”

  My gaze snapped to his, and my hand stilled on the handle to the refrigerator.

  “He may as well be standing in this room.” He gestured between our bodies. “Right here in between us.” There was such care, such compassion in his gaze, otherwise I might have started throwing things at him. Didn’t he know how hard I was trying to keep that from happening?

  My throat constricted, and I ripped open the refrigerator door, grabbed the pitcher of sweet tea, and drank straight from the glass. I gulped and swallowed, but nothing would shake that lump, the tightness that I refused to believe was the harbinger of what I’d been working myself to the emotional bone to get rid of.

  I slammed the refrigerator door and put the pitcher on the counter.

  “I can’t do this.” I shook my head to emphasize my point.

  He winced. “We can do this. It’s three months.”

  “No.” There. How was that for setting my emotional boundaries?

  “Morgan, you’re reacting out of fear, and I get it. I can’t fathom how you must be feeling right now, and the fact that I’m even asking you to go through this again is…” His face crumpled, and he looked away.

  “I. Can’t. Do. This.” It wasn’t possible. I wouldn’t just regress. I’d be on the fucking floor.

  “Baby.” He came for me, and I slid right around him, making it to the entrance of the kitchen before he could stop me. “Morgan, nothing is going to happen to me!”

  “You don’t know that!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I reached the foyer. “You have no fucking clue what can happen. You just think you do.”

  “I promised you that I’d never put a rescue above my own life, and I meant it. I’m the best SAR pilot on—”

  “Oh, shut up!” I shouted. “You’re the best? Funny, Will thought he was the best! Jagger and Josh? Yep, I’ve heard those words out of their mouths, too. You all think you’re the best until you fall out of the sky, because when push comes to shove, you’re not the gods you think you are, so don’t you dare stand there and tell me that nothing is going to happen to you!”

  That drew him up short, and we faced off in the entrance hall.

  Throwing my head back, I stared at the lofted ceiling, praying for my throat to open, but it wouldn’t. I was a little girl caught in the middle of a hungry boa constrictor. Tighter and tighter it drew, taking my air supply.

  “Maybe we should sit down? I’m getting worried about you over here.”

  “You’re worried?” I spat back. “You’re deploying. I’m the one you expect to sit here and wait and worry, and I’m not going to do it! Not again. No!”

  “Kitty, please listen to me. I’m not going to a war zone. I’m going to the beach.”

  My heartbeat wasn’t a bass drum anymore. It was a staccato snare, and my breaths came so fast that the room around me felt distant, but I forced my mind to work. “Twenty twelve, four dead. Twenty ten, three dead. Two thousand eight, four dead. Two thousand four, six dead—”

  “Fuck,” he swore, low and soft. “I know what happened with every single one of those crashes.”

  “Coast Guard. Search and rescue crashes,” I added between gasping breaths as my back hit the wall. “You can’t. Make. Me do. This again. I won’t. Not for you. Not for. Anyone.” My head buzzed.

  “Kitty,” he begged, and the agony in his eyes was more than I could stand. “Okay, talking about this is putting you at risk, and I don’t want—”

  “Ha! Exactly!” I shouted at him as my throat closed even tighter.

  “I won’t be at risk. Not any more than usual. No one’s going to be shooting at me, Morgan. It’s not the same, baby. Please.”

  Shooting. Will. First the RPG that crashed Jagger. Then the next one that took down the medevac with Josh and Will on board. Then the small arms fire that hit Will in the sweet spot that wasn’t covered by Kevlar. Even the best pilots weren’t immune to bullets, right? We had no control in fate. No control. None. People died. And he bled out right there, in some dusty, rocky valley in Afghanistan, all because he’d been ordered to deploy. He was dead. And Jackson was deploying. Jackson, who had become my whole world. Jackson and that same helicopter. Jackson. Jackson. Jackson was talking. What was he saying? Jackson was deploying. Deploying. Deploying. Why had I let this happen again? My past was repeating because I was too stupid to stop it. The jam was sticky. The shoes went into the trash. The necklace. The necklace. The blues—

  The air ceased. Pain erupted, so sharp it stopped my hurricane of a brain. I concentrated on my neck muscles and visualized them opening. Air rushed through again, and I gasped.

  “Can you hear me?” His hands were on my shoulders. “You’re having an anxiety attack. Let me get Sam and your rescue meds—”

  “No!” Using them was defeat. It was a step backward, and I was supposed to be moving forward. I was at a three. A three!

  Unless I was triggered. Deployment? Trigger. Jackson flying? Trigger. Jackson himself…

  “Sam!”

  I ripped out of his arms and slid down the wall. Once my butt hit the tile, I drew my knees to my chest. Breathe. Open your throat. It’s in your mind, not your body.

  “What is going— Holy shit.”

  Thudding footsteps.

  “She’s having an anxiety attack.” Jackson dropped to his knees before me. God, those eyes were so blue. Just like my sea glass. Blue. Blue. Blue. So beautiful. Of course I fell for him, and because I did, now he would go.

  “Okay. Give me a second.”

  “Just breathe, Kitty.” His voice was calm. Why was he so calm? Why was he still here? Didn’t he understand that I couldn’t do this?

  My fingernails dug into my kneecaps.

  “It’s okay.” He reached for me but thought better of it. “God, I wish you’d let me hold you.”

  Can I hold you? Just this once before I go. The next time I kiss you will be after this deployment.

  The vise around my throat squeezed.

  “Move,” Sam ordered.

  Jackson slid to the side.

  “Here we go.” Sam held out a white, oval pill and a bottle of water.

  “No,” I denied. “Over. A month.”

  Her eyes softened for a heartbeat, and then she was steel again. “Yep, so this time we’ll push for two months between. We set the goals we can attain, remember?”

  She thrust the offering my way and waited for me to decide. She gave me power in a moment I had none.

  I swallowed the pill. It took half the bottle of water to get it down my throat, but it was in. A small brown paper bag appeared next. I grasped it with two hands, brought it to my face, and began breathing.

  “There we go,” Sam said softly. “You just breathe and wait for the meds to kick in. What the hell did you do?” That last part wasn’t aimed at me.

  “I’m deploying.”

  Sam drew back and her wide eyes flew to mine, interrupted by my paper bag every few seconds as it expanded. “Oh, Morgan.”

  “It’s not the same, Sam.”

 
“To her, it is.”

  They both fell silent as I breathed like it was my full-time job. For the last four months, it had been. How had I only lived here for four months? Is that really how long I’d known Jackson? God, and I was already so far gone that I was breathing through a paper bag. This wouldn’t be the only time he deployed. This was who he was.

  Slowly, my breathing returned to normal and the buzzing faded in my head. My throat was still constricted, but that would pass once the meds kicked in. Not that it mattered because I’d be asleep soon after that.

  I dropped the bag to the floor and sat with my head against the wall, arching my neck. “You should go.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve got her, Sam,” Jackson said softly.

  “No.” I lowered my head and found him watching me. Beautiful, kind, magnetic, head over heels in love with me—and a loaded freaking gun when it came to my mental health. “You should go, Jackson.”

  “Morgan?” His eyes flared.

  “Go. This isn’t going to get any better the more we talk about it.” My heart screamed in protest. “I need you to go.”

  He warred with himself, with my words. It was all over his face. “Okay. I need to talk to Fin. And Claire. Shit. Okay. I’ll come by for breakfast tomorrow?”

  Quick cuts were better. I shook my head. “No. I need you to go for good.”

  “This is not over. This is…I don’t know what this is because it’s not a fight. This is a blip on the radar, Kitty.” Agony. That was the only way to describe the look in his eyes and the rending of those stitches in my heart.

  Sam stood and backed away, staying by the edge of the foyer. She never went far after I’d had an attack.

  “This is over,” I said softly. “I won’t do another deployment. I won’t take another phone call. I won’t bury another man I—” I snapped my mouth shut. God, when were the meds going to kick in?

  “Love,” he accused. “You love me.”

  I locked my jaw and dropped my gaze.

  “Fine. Well, I love you, even if you won’t say it, and I’m not giving you up. It’s only three months, Morgan. Nothing will change in three months.”

  “Try three days,” I whispered. “I’m not ready for this. I’m not strong enough for this. I will not do this. Do you know what happens when no one chooses you?”