One eye on the horizon, he said, “We need to turn in the gear,” he said, and pointed. The pilot was lining up for a landing.
Together they gathered the chute and helped the pilot push the plane into the hangar that doubled as the storage facility. After they turned in their harnesses, jumpsuits, and goggles, he waved them out, staying behind to finish up some paperwork and close the place down.
Erin swung her leg over the Duc. “Race you home?”
He laughed, and pushed the start button. “I know you love your pretty new bike, but it doesn’t stand a chance against mine,” he said.
“So give me a head start,” she said, and settled her helmet on her head.
This woman. She wanted to race and win, race and lose, race and be caught, race the sunset. “You’re going to lose,” he warned.
“I bet I’ll like it,” she said and goosed the throttle. Not much, not enough to send the bike out of control, but enough to show him how she felt. He followed at a leisurely pace, thinking through the straightaways along the country roads, the curves that followed the river into Lancaster. By the time he caught up with her, she’d settled down, riding at a sedate five over the limit. They rode up onto the overpass and down the other side, then approached the curve where the straight-line country road yielded to the river, banking left. It was a pretty curve, the water glinting forty or fifty feet below, trees lining the banks sloping from the road to the river. Other than the trips to the airfield, she probably hadn’t taken many big curves on the motorcycle yet, so he hung back, watching her with an eye toward giving her some tips when they got to her house. She slowed to well below the limit, keeping the bike a little too upright, but comfort leaning into a turn would come with experience. He thought about that experience … she’d come a long, long way in a couple of weeks, from a research librarian dreaming of owning a motorcycle to a woman who owned an Italian sportbike and jumped out of airplanes.
A brown blur shot out of the tall grass in the ditch, straight into Erin’s path. Jack shouted, knowing it was useless, then watched helplessly as she made the rookie’s worst braking mistake: underbraking the front tire and overbraking the rear. The bike wobbled, laying down a skid mark, then tipped over, sliding in a straight line down the two-lane highway while Erin slid on her side under the guardrail and into the trees.
Chapter Seven
Time slowed. Erin heard each distinct note in a bird’s song, the scrape of metal against concrete as her bike skidded away from her, the thud-bump of her body bouncing over the road, her leathers scudding into the gravel. Between the moment she knew she’d lost control of the bike and the moment she went airborne, she ran through John Donne’s “The Good-Morrow.”
I wonder, by my truth …
I’m in love with Jack Powell. Cerulean. That’s the name of the color of the sky. I’m head over heels in love with him. I told him … no … I gave him my word that this would just be casual.
I gave him my word.
I’m flying.
Darkness.
A sepia-toned tunnel opened suddenly to green feathered shapes drifted blurrily against blue, then darkness again.
She strained toward the light widening through her visor to hear fuckfuckfuckfuck … don’tdieErin … staywithmesweetheart …
*
Jack’s bare head, hair cowlicked in seven different directions, his phone pressed to his ear as he hunkered down at her side. I need an ambulance. Motorcycle accident on Highway 6 …
The tunnel closed in on her …
*
Blue again. This time she knew it was the sky, framed by her helmet, and the green things were leaves budding on cottonwood trees, and the white fluff was clouds. All of this was blocked in large part by Jack’s beautiful, weathered face, solemn and serious. “Did I hit it?” she asked, her voice shaky.
“Hit what?” he said distractedly, his big hands pressing gently into her thigh.
“The rabbit. I didn’t want to hit the rabbit.”
“That fucking rabbit,” Jack said. “I’m going to find it, gut it, and roast it on a fucking spit,” he said as he peered down at her.
“Poor little bunny,” she said muzzily.
The hands pressed into her chest were rock steady, she realized. Why that occurred to her now rather than back at the airstrip she didn’t know. Maybe because a near-death experience clarified thinking? His hands were totally steady, heel resting on her sternum, fingers curled over her breast, covering her heart. She looked up into his blue-gray eyes, and knew she’d told this truthful, honorable man a lie. Yes, the rabbit startled her, but only because she’d been distracted by the one thing she’d promised not to do. It wasn’t adrenaline. It wasn’t the high of skydiving, or riding the Duc. She’d fallen in love with Jack Powell, U.S. Navy SEAL.
“Stay with me, sweetheart,” Jack said.
I can’t, she thought.