“I … just can’t get over how he died.” My voice is quiet, distant. “It’s just really sad.”
It was true: I was thinking about Landon, but mostly I was thinking about Luke. Seems there’s something now I fear more than heights or losing my way in the financial world: I’m afraid of losing Luke the same way he lost his brother. I want to tell him—I tried to the morning after we slept together the first time—but something tells me it’s the one thing he doesn’t want to hear. That wounded look on his face, that air of dread and disappointment. I don’t see me being able to hold this in forever. I won’t be able to hold it in for long.
Luke
Sienna is a special girl—my special girl, the one I think I’ve been waiting for all my life. I knew it before. I knew she was the one long before this moment. I knew. With her here, in my arms, I feel peace again that I never thought I’d feel.
But there’s also something there that threatens that peace—Sienna’s worry over my BASE jumping. I can take it from my past girlfriends, but not with Sienna. I need to make her understand how safe I am about it, how OK I’ll be, before she decides she can’t be with me because of it. I need to make her understand. I hope that I can. Sienna is different; I have to believe that she can accept it.
No, I do believe it.
I refuse to believe otherwise.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I know it’s hard for you to talk about it.”
I roll carefully on top of her and take her into a kiss, cupping her face firmly within my hands. The kiss breaks and I look down into her eyes, searching them through tears and conflict and the sweetness she harbors as naturally as I harbor risk.
“You’re an angel, Sienna Murphy.”
She smiles, and I lean in and kiss away the tears lingering on her cheeks. And then I make love to her before letting her fall sleep in my arms.
“I drank the sky and brought an angel down with me,” I whisper into the darkness. “Not bad, huh, little brother?”
I shut my eyes and sleep the whole night through.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sienna
I haven’t breathed since we got here, in this giant field surrounded by rolling mountains and ocean, with nothing but blue sky above us. I’ve been holding my breath since we all got out of Luke’s car. And I’ve sat on the grass, out of the way, watching everybody get their packs, or parachutes, or whatever, ready. A small plane sits on a black landing strip not far away, waiting for them all to get on.
“Do you usually jump with them?” I ask Alicia, who is sitting on the grass next to me with a broken leg, stiff in a cast from her thigh to her ankle.
“Yeah,” she says with a frown, “and it sucks that I can’t do much of anything for the next six weeks.” She knocks on the top of the cast with her knuckles. “Kind of ironic—I jump out of planes and off cliffs, but I break my leg falling down three steps.” She laughs sardonically and holds up three fingers to me. “Three—would’ve been less embarrassing if it were a whole staircase, or somethin’.”
I laugh with her because she has a point.
Luke raises his hand from afar and waves at me one more time before heading toward the plane. I wave back, my smile fighting against the nauseous feeling in my stomach.
“You could fly tandem with Luke,” Alicia says.
“Huh?” I look over, having barely heard anything she said because I was so fixated on watching Luke get into the plane. Finally her words catch up to me. “Oh, no, I couldn’t do it. I have a fear of heights.”
Alicia nods. “Understandable, but the best way to get over it is to face it head-on.” She makes a weird face while sticking a straw down into the cast to scratch her leg on the inside.
“If only it were that easy,” I say.
“I hear yah,” she says, steadily scratching. “But skydiving is really safe. If you ever decide you want to try it out, Luke is the best guy for the job. I actually jumped with him my first time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” she says, pulling the straw out and focusing more on me. “Me and Braedon went out together our first time. I jumped tandem with Luke, and Braedon went with Landon. It was great. After that first jump, it became an addiction.”
I gaze back out at the plane as it goes into motion across the landing strip, getting ready to take off. I think of Luke, of him being on that plane right now, and that darkness grows inside of me again when I imagine him jumping out of it.
“Seriously though,” I hear Alicia say, “for people like you, who are afraid of heights, or just anything really, something like skydiving can change your life. I actually feel sorry for people who’ve never done it at least once.”
“Why’s that?” I ask, looking over at her.
Her black hair pulled into a ponytail glistens in the sunlight. Her dark brown eyes are full of kindness and are set in a small oval, olive-colored face with not a freckle or blemish or line anywhere to be found.
A thoughtful look appears. “It’s just something I think everybody should get a chance to do,” she says. “Explaining the experience itself wouldn’t do it justice, though. I think it’s a little different for everybody—kind of like a personalized brush with God, or whatever it is you draw your spirituality from.” She smiles and leans back, holding her petite weight up on her arms, her hands pressed flat against the grass.
The plane lifts off the ground and buzzes into the sky, becoming smaller and smaller as it flies higher into the blue ether.