Fly With Me (Wild Aces #1)(63)

We sat next to each other on Dani’s couch, our bodies huddled together, our cells clutched in our hands, a blanket wrapped around both of us. Our eyes were glued to the TV.

It had been five hours. Nothing.

Dani had been investigating on her own, but we still didn’t have any information. All we knew was that a jet had gone down. We didn’t know if it was one of ours or what was happening with the pilot.

It was the scariest five hours of my life.

I called Noah over and over again. And still we waited.

We didn’t even speak, didn’t give a voice to the fears filling our heads. At some point, I reached out and grabbed Dani’s hand. She didn’t let go.

Part of me felt like I was dreaming, like this couldn’t be reality. I kept thinking it was all a nightmare. He had to be okay. And yet no matter how many times I tried to convince myself it was true, I couldn’t quite remove the knot of fear from my chest.

The doorbell rang.

For a moment we both froze, the sound intruding on the haze we’d wrapped around ourselves. For a moment, that sound could be anything. And then it was everything.

We both rose from the couch as if in slow motion. We didn’t speak, didn’t even make eye contact. But we stayed together, our hands locked, as we walked toward Dani’s front door.

Ice filled me. Our hands squeezed tighter. I was too overwhelmed to cry, too scared to think beyond what was on the other side of that door.

Dani stopped in front of her front door and took a deep breath, her body bracing as she reached for the doorknob.

And then the door opened and I felt all the tension in her body pass through to mine.

Three service members in uniform stood in the doorway.

No.

For a moment, I didn’t hear anything. I could see their lips moving, but the sound was gone. It had been swallowed up. I knew Dani was speaking, and yet nothing made sense.

No.

I kept repeating his name like a chant through my head—Noah, Noah, Noah.

No.

And then I heard it, their words finally breaking through the haze.

“Mrs. Peterson, we regret to inform you . . .”

No.

No.

I felt Dani’s weight give out through our locked hands, her body hitting the floor, taking me down with her. The casualty officers rushed forward, but I moved, wrapping my arms around Dani as she screamed.

No.

Not Joker.

No.





TWENTY-THREE




JORDAN

Part of me stayed with Dani in the home she and Joker had built together. Part of me was in Alaska with Noah, desperate to hear his voice.

We didn’t have any information besides the fact that Joker had crashed and didn’t survive. They were going through the recovery process now, searching for his remains, but the communication blackout had yet to be lifted. We couldn’t call the guys and they couldn’t call out. I clung to the knowledge that Noah was okay, even as Dani clung to me in her grief.

I held her hand while she called Joker’s parents, knowing I’d never forget the pain in her voice and on the other end of the line. I’d never experienced anything like this in my entire life. Never known a loss this great. There were simply no words. There was just an unspeakable pain. I focused on the little things, on helping Dani, focused on anything but the fear, and panic, and sheer devastation that filled my body. I operated on adrenaline and little else, determined to keep it together, determined to give Dani someone to lean on.

The squadron’s Director of Operations’ wife had been mobilized already and was taking over the military protocol stuff. Things I had no clue how to handle and arrangements Dani didn’t need to worry about. I tried to do what I could to just be there for her—fussing over her until she ate, until one of the flight docs came and sent her to bed with a sleeping pill. I’d promised I’d stay with her until her family arrived, and that’s how I found myself on the floor of Dani’s elegant guest bathroom, my hand over my mouth attempting to muffle my tears, my body shaking, my cell clutched in my hand as the adrenaline seeped and oozed out of me, leaving me hollowed out and exhausted.

There had been times in our long-distance relationship when I’d missed Noah, when I’d needed to talk to him. But there was nothing like this moment, this need. I would have given anything to hear his voice, even for a second. The rational part of my brain knew that he was alive and that he was safe, and that should have been enough, but it wasn’t. The part of me that felt nearly paralyzed with terror needed some tangible proof that he’d survived beyond someone else’s word. I felt like I was floating in a sea of loss and I needed his touch, his voice, to keep me from drowning.

I clutched my phone even tighter, my knuckles white, the pain breaking through the haze. My heart pounding, I dialed his number again, chanting the same phrase over and over again.

“Please pick up, please pick up.”

He answered on the second ring, and with the sound of his voice, I became tethered.

“Jordan.”

He said my name like a prayer and a plea, his voice taking on a reverence I’d never heard before.

I tried to answer, tried to gather the courage that had helped me keep it together with Dani, but this time it fled and a sob escaped instead.

“I’m okay.”

The words and the fact that he was alive, breathing through the phone, answering me, confirmed what he said. And yet his tone suggested he was anything but.