“All right,” he says and lays his hand across my stomach. “Just tell me when and what and I’m on it.”
For a long time I just lie curled around him with my head in the crook of his arm, and we listen to the rain pattering on the roof and the sound of the ocean not far away. He runs his fingers through the top of my hair softly as we lie tangled together in silence. A sweet silence that says more than anything I could ever say with words. I never want to leave this bed. I never want to leave his arms.
After a while Luke says quietly, “It was an accident.” He’s gazing up at the water-damaged ceiling, but I know the only thing he sees right now is Landon’s face.
TWENTY-FOUR
Luke
Eight months ago we were all supposed to go to China. All of us, including me. We’d been planning this jump for three years.” My chest rises and falls heavily beneath the palm of Sienna’s hand, my heart beating to the rhythm of guilt underneath her soft cheek. “But I didn’t go with them. I stayed behind because I thought the business and the money were more important than being with my brother.” I pause, at war with myself internally. “We always checked each other’s packs,” I say with blame and quiet anger. “But I wasn’t there to check his that day and he died because of it.”
My body tenses next to hers. She lays the palm of her hand softly on my heart.
“Landon was on his way to becoming one of the best BASE jumpers in the world,” I go on, “and would’ve been if he hadn’t died so soon. He had more than six hundred jumps in fifteen countries under his belt, won competitions, had plenty of sponsors. But none of that stuff was what was most important to my brother. It was never about winning with him, or about being the best. He just wanted to drink the sky. He wanted to fly.”
Sienna raises her hand from my chest and wipes a tear from her cheek.
“I was so pissed at him,” I go on, reliving the events out of order, my body growing tenser against hers. “Landon had everything going for him. He could hack into any system, if he really wanted to. Our business never would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for the things he could do behind a computer. I hated him; I always loved him as my brother, of course, but I hated him for a while because here he was, intelligent beyond my understanding, scared of nothing, and I was afraid of everything and all I could do was paint.” I pause to catch my breath.
Sienna moves her hand closer to my heart, and my hand collapses around it, squeezing gently.
“But Landon, being the brother that he was, made it his priority to help me beat my fears. He practically kicked me out of my bed one morning and said, ‘Get up, big brother! I’ve got something to show you!’ He took me to Perrine Bridge that day, and after a long drive listening to Landon tell me everything I needed to hear about why I shouldn’t be afraid to live, it was enough to make me want to leap off that bridge that day. And I did. And I never looked back.”
“You’re like him in that way, you know,” Sienna says softly, her cheek pressed against my chest. “That drive and passion to help someone overcome.”
I squeeze her hand, acknowledging the meaning behind her comment.
“Sienna,” I say in a composed, purposeful voice, “when I met you out on the beach that day, do you remember what I said to you? When I told you that if you stayed longer I could show you how to let it go?”
“Yeah. How could I forget?” She raises her head from my chest and props it on her hand so she can see my eyes. “I didn’t understand it really, but that didn’t matter. I was intrigued by your weirdness.” She blushes a little.