Is Luke latching on to me for the right reasons?
Or have I become something he needs for all the wrong reasons?
The devastating answers—if they’re the answers I don’t want them to be—are sitting heavily in the bottom of my heart.
Luke
The roar of the wind makes it hard to hear one another and I’ve yelled so much my throat is sore. The plane moves through the air at about twelve thousand feet.
“I TOLD YOU!” Seth shouts at me over the roaring wind and the plane’s engine. “SHE SEEMS TO BE HANDLING IT JUST FINE!”
I nod happily while a guy does one last check of my parachute and then my harness.
Seth steps to the door of the plane, a red helmet much like mine stuck to the top of his shaved head.
“THREE MONTHS TOPS!” he says. “SHE’LL BE UP HERE JUMPING WITH YOU!”
“I DOUBT IT!” I shout back at him, adjusting my helmet. “BUT I’M OK WITH THAT!”
He grins at me, displaying his teeth, and then jumps out of the plane—it looks like the wind just snatched him into the sky.
Kendra, wearing a hot pink helmet and with a little black skull-and-bones sticker stuck to the left eye of her goggles, steps to the door next. Her blond hair, braided behind her, whips about her back as the wind hits it.
“SEE YAH AT THE DROP ZONE, SKYWALKER!” she says to me and jumps out.
I laugh out loud and shake my head.
I hate it when she calls me that, but I guess I deserve it since I was the one who started up the Ken-doll nickname she hates so much.
When it’s my turn, I waste no time and jump right out of the plane, free-falling, looking down at the ocean and the earth, so vast and endless, yet so small beneath me. I succumb to the moment and think of my brother.
It feels like I’m flying forever. It’s so breathtaking. Every bad experience I’ve ever had, every bad memory, every failure, every regret, it all just leaves me, and I’m filled with something I never imagined a person could feel before I started doing this: absolute freedom from every kind of darkness.
Nothing can touch me up here.
Nothing.
Except Sienna …
Her face enters my mind, the softness of her hair, her adorable freckles, the heavenly taste of her lips, the brightness of her smile—I could fall in love with her so easily.
I know she worries about me and that she may fear for my safety, but I still believe that she’ll understand, that she’s the one and that she’ll be able to accept my lifestyle. But I don’t want her to worry for me; I don’t want her to constantly have that fear of me getting hurt digging in the back of her mind—I wouldn’t want to put her through that; I care too much for her. But I believe we can get through this. Together. I just know it.
All too soon I feel a hard jerk as I pull my chute and my body jolts upward for a few seconds.
I take hold of the parachute toggles and float toward the earth for several long minutes and I continue to take in the view. Not of the sky, but of Sienna’s face. And it’s in this moment when I realize that nearly the whole time I was up there, I thought about her. I thought not about the experience … but about her, and somehow—though I never knew it could be done—it made the experience even more breathtaking.
The ground is getting closer, and the closer I get, the faster it seems that it’s rushing up to meet me. My feet hit the ground first and I slowly run into a stop.
“Woo-hoo!” I hear Seth scream out.
Seth and Kendra run up as I’m unhooking my harness.
“Shit, man, that was awesome!” Seth says.
“Perfect day for skydiving—wasn’t it beautiful?” Kendra is euphoric.
I nod my head underneath my helmet.
“Yeah,” I say distantly, thinking about Sienna, “it was definitely beautiful …”
Sienna