Worth the Risk(78)

“What?” I laugh, drawing some attention from those around us. No doubt, some of those people are actually wearing mom jeans and Crocs.

“I’m happy to report that we are both the most stylish people in this joint,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Well, you don’t have to worry about it rubbing off on me, because this? My being here? Is not a long-term thing.”

And why does saying that cause my chest to constrict?

I think of the lunch delivered to my office anonymously. The unexpected knock on my door one night when Luke stayed over at a friend’s house. A surprise invite to go hunt for tadpoles with them for Luke’s school project that I swore was gross but ended up laughing until my sides hurt. Late nights on the phone until we fell asleep with the connection still open. The two bouquets of dried daisies that each of the Malones gave me, which are well past dead but I can’t bring myself to throw out.

“Uh-huh.” She draws the word out as if she doesn’t believe it. “You just keep telling yourself that, and maybe you’ll start to believe it.”





“God, I missed this,” I say into the microphone angled in front of my mouth.

“The adrenaline is like a drug.”

“Damn straight.” I look over at Devon and nod as the rotors reach speed, then I pull back the collective and the chopper lifts off the ground.

“It’s as if everyone was waiting for you to come back to have an accident or something,” he says with a laugh as he runs over the switches to check their positions.

“No shit. It’s one call after another today,” I say as the heaviness of the sleepless night is swept away by the adrenaline coursing through my veins as I clear the landing zone.

“MVC. Drunk driver in a truck head-on with a mini-van. Patient is a two-year-old female thrown from vehicle. Ambulance ETA to landing site ten minutes.”

“Christ,” I mutter.

This is what I don’t miss.

The frailty of life.

The fear that in the few extra seconds it takes me to make sure there are no power lines, make sure I can land safely, might be the difference between life and death.

“This is Mercy 445. Ten-four. Our ETA is eight minutes and counting,” I say.

God, please let the little girl hold on.




Exhaustion takes hold.

I can barely keep my eyes open as other patrons drone on around us in the Better Buzz, but I’m doing everything I can to be present for Luke.

“Did you have a lot of calls last night, Dad?” he asks as I pour creamer into my coffee and shake the exhaustion from my brain.

“A lot,” I say, realizing how hard it is to get back into the swing of things after being off for so long.

“Did you save them all?” he asks as if we hadn’t missed a step in our routine.

“Not sure yet, buddy.” I wrap an arm around his shoulders and squeeze. “Some are still getting help from doctors.” My mind pulls to the little girl who was ejected from a car seat, which had been strapped in wrong. To the faces of her parents as they stood outside the helicopter and watched their world being taken away, trusting in me to get her to General so she had a chance.

“Okay. I’ll say prayers for them tonight to help them get better.”

“I’m sure they’d appreciate that, bud.”

“Looking good, Malone,” a voice rings out across the shop, and I turn to her with a tired smile.

“Hey, Desi.” I pull my sister-in-law’s best friend, now turned family friend, in for a hug.

“Are you trying to make every woman in here salivate at your hotness? You really should ditch the flight suit before you leave work if you hope to have a chance of making it home. You’ll end up having to resuscitate all the women fainting over you.”

“Good to see you, too.” I laugh.

“Hey, Luke.” She ruffles his hair and talks with him for a moment. I look up and am startled to see Sidney on the other side of the street. I shouldn’t be. I see her in passing all the time. Usually, we just wave to each other and pretend not to be together, and yet something about seeing her now pulls at me.

“Give me a sec,” I say absently as I walk toward the window and watch.

Yep, that’s her, all right. She’s with another woman with jet-black hair that is pulled back in some kind of fancy knot. They are both dressed alike—heels, skirts, button-up blouses. They both are carrying shopping bags galore from some of the boutique shops in town.

They also both look like they don’t belong anywhere near Sunnyville. They stand out like an anomaly. Sidney, with her dirty blonde colored hair and brown eyes and legs for days, looks like the picture of California, but one where there are stars on the avenue instead of vines on the hills.

It’s a stark reminder of how different our lives are. She’s more like Claire than either of us wants to admit, and I’ll always be me. A Malone.

I’ve been coasting along with this . . . whatever this is . . . telling myself that we could make this work, that she could be content here. Seeing her like this—looking so out of her element, has the realization that I’ve been lying to myself fall like an anvil onto my chest.

The pressure from it is debilitating.

I stand squarely in the picture window of Better Buzz and just stare. Somehow, some way, she senses me. Her feet falter. Her head turns. Our eyes meet.