No! You can’t have him!
A sharp pain strikes my head, and Dom pulls away from me at the same time, startled. His face is flushed, but a stricken look pinches his brows together, leaves his beautiful mouth open in astonishment.
“You hit me?”
“What? No . . .” I swallow but can’t push the truth under the current. It bobs to the surface. “She did.”
You will not win! she cries. You don’t deserve this. You cannot love him. You cannot love him.
I cover my ears. “I can’t love you. I can’t love you.”
Dom shoves off me and stands. Black clouds halo his head as he looks down on me, lying on a blanket of nylon with soft rain dropping on my exposed skin. He holds his hands up in supplication. “Who’s the chickenshit now, Ryan?”
No response comes from me, because if I open my mouth, her words will pour out again.
“You always said your dad was afraid to love, but it’s you! You’re afraid!” He’s crying openly as he gazes at the desert, then back down at me. The agony in his eyes stabs at the ice inside me. How can I comfort him when I’m the reason he’s in such pain? I’m the reason for Joe’s pain, for my parents’ pain and fear, and I’m the reason this poet and artist, this angel of a guy with his heart in his eyes, is ripping that heart out as he tears his gaze from me and turns away.
“I’m worth loving, you know,” he tells me over his shoulder as I watch him leave me.
I sit there in stunned silence, the ice taking over. Everyone’s worth loving, I think. Everyone except me.
Twenty-Three
THE DZ BUS rumbles down the mud-pocked road. We are all sticky with muggy dampness and humiliation. My father stands in the aisle at the front of the bus, steadying himself by holding on to the metal racks above our heads where our rigs are stored. Large circles of sweat dampen his pits. I can smell him. Fermented.
“What the hell happened out there?”
No one answers. Apparently, mine wasn’t the only failed jump of the day. The team couldn’t hook up in formation. The wind completely screwed with the spotting to the target landing zone at the golf course. Not that many spectators were there, anyway, with the weather. And half our people landed, like me, in the mud and sagebrush and had to trek around to find the golf course. It was a failure in every sense. Well, no one bounced.
“Thank your stars that wasn’t the big-way. They’d laugh us out of the X Games!” Dad steps up to me, sitting alone on a bench near the front. Dom hasn’t looked at me since I followed silently behind him to the golf course. Everyone else is strangely quiet, avoiding me. “And you!” he says, pointing his finger in my face. “What in the holy hell were you doing up there? Did you screw up my demo? Huh?”
It takes monumental effort to hold my chin up, but I do. “I thought I was ready?—”
“Did you, now?” he sneers. “Last time I checked, I owned this drop zone, and I didn’t clear your crazy ass to jump!”
His words are a slap that knocks my proud chin to the side. He called me out in front of everyone. He confirmed my insanity to the whole group. I’m trying to look out the window, but I can’t, because instead of sagebrush rolling by, I’m haunted by the reflection in the glass. I curl forward on myself, resting my head on my knees.
“Sir!” It’s Dom’s voice. “It wasn’t Ryan. It was?—”
“Drunk.” Someone coughs the word into their hand and a few snickers erupt. They’re not blaming me. They’re calling my dad out for the decision to jump in the storm.
I know why he did it. We need the money. Badly.
“Stop the bus!” my dad yells. Paco looks in the rearview mirror, shakes his head, and pulls the bus to a halt in the middle of the two-lane highway. “Two things are going to happen,” Nolan says to the crowd. “The person who questions my decision is going to get their ass off this bus right now. This isn’t the Army. I never had a choice when I was ordered to jump. I never got to squawk off about where we were jumping or what we had to do when we touched down. I never had a choice about who we attacked, or . . . who I killed! You think it was a choice to watch women die? Or children? My best friend?”
I’m so shocked, I can’t breathe. I think the whole bus is holding its breath.
My dad draws a ragged inhale, trying to collect himself. He sways a bit on his feet. “You have a choice whether or not to get on that plane! Everyone has a choice! And the next person who wants to pipe off can meet me outside.”