Into the Blue (A Wild Aces Romance) (14 page)

We drove to the restaurant with the top down, Eric’s hand on my thigh, “Jack & Diane” blaring from the stereo speakers. When we were younger, little more than kids, we’d done this drive so many times in Eric’s beaten-up car, eager to escape the quiet of Bradbury. By most people’s standards, Columbia probably wasn’t considered a big city or anything, but to us it had been a whole other world, full of limitless possibilities.

Neither one of us had the greatest home lives, both of us ending up feeling more than a little alone, and Columbia had represented a fresh start for us, that first step toward building lives of our own.

I didn’t know if it was how much all of this felt like déjà vu or the fact that I’d grown up a bit, but it hit me, really hit me, how young we’d been back then. It hadn’t seemed like it—I’d been on my own for all intents and purposes for a long time at that point, but I’d still been figuring out who I was, what I wanted out of life. I’d thought otherwise, been
so sure of my path, but now? Looking back, I realized how little I’d known about myself and life. And as much as it had hurt me at the time, a part of me couldn’t help wondering if I’d found a part of myself somewhere along the way when I lost Eric, a part I never would have found without that loss.

Eric’s hand drifted a little higher on my leg. “You okay tonight? You’re quiet.”

I turned and smiled at him, studying his face in profile. “Just enjoying the ride.” I hesitated, not wanting to spoil the mood with bringing up our past but, at the same time, failing at pretending with him. “I was remembering all the times we did this drive when we were younger.”

His lips curved, his attention turning from the traffic to look at me.

“We made this drive on our first date.”

I couldn’t believe he remembered that.

“You’re right, we did.”

I’d been so nervous that night. We’d officially met when I started tutoring him in English, although I’d known who he was before then. Everyone had. Our high school was small and we’d all grown up together, but Eric had been a year ahead of me. He was held back at the beginning of high school when his parents divorced and he started skipping school, so we ended up in the same grade.

After a couple weeks of sitting at a cramped table in the library, hunched together, he asked me out, which had been a pretty good thing considering I’d had a massive crush on him by that point and
Middlemarch
had been the last thing on my mind.

“You wore a blue dress with flowers and your hair was down.”

Shock filled me. I totally had. I still remembered going shopping for the dress with Lizzie after school, remembered
when I’d nearly called the date off because I’d hated my hair and had so badly wanted everything to be perfect. I just couldn’t believe
he
remembered. It had been fifteen years.

“How do you remember that?”

“I remember everything about you.”

God, I didn’t know if I was ready for this. It hurt and yet his words tempted me until I wanted to cloak myself in them. In him.

“What else do you remember?”

“I remember that you take your coffee with skim milk, no sugar. That your favorite breakfast food is pancakes. You hate scary movies. Your favorite color is blue. If you could go anywhere in the world, you would go to Venice. You like bananas, but not banana-flavored things. Bizarrely enough, you like strawberry-flavored things, but not strawberries, because it’s a texture thing.”

I was either going to laugh or cry.

“You hate waking up in the morning. You love to read, especially romance novels because you’re always looking for a happy ending. You love your job because justice is its own form of happy ending. You’re not a big fan of cats, but you’re a sucker for dogs, the fluffier the better.” He shot me a smile I couldn’t quite read. “Do you want me to go on?”

I couldn’t have answered him if I wanted to; my words were frozen in my throat.

“You’re the most loyal person I’ve ever met, and when you do something, you don’t believe it’s worth doing unless you give it your all. You love fiercely, would die for the people you love, but the flip side is that you don’t forgive easily, and once someone breaks that bond, it’s tough to get back in.

“But if someone is lucky enough to be one of those people that you love, if they’re lucky enough to get just a moment of what you give, then they’d have to be a fucking
idiot to do anything to jeopardize that. And if they were stupid enough, then they’ll do everything they can to get back what they lost because once someone’s had it, life without it is unimaginable.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over,” I repeated, my voice and heart tight.

“Becca—”

“Just pull over.”

He slowed the car, and then he pulled over to the shoulder of the highway. The road between Bradbury and Columbia was mostly rural and there wasn’t a ton of traffic at this time of day—it was past rush hour and most people were home with their families.

I didn’t care.

I took off my seat belt.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry—”

His words were cut off by my mouth, my lips, my tongue. I didn’t so much kiss him as I attacked him, every single word that had fallen from his lips building an ache inside me that had been a low-level hum since I’d left him this morning.

Getting dumped, especially getting dumped when
you were engaged
, made you question everything you thought you knew about your relationship. You wondered how you could be so stupid as to think you were in love, to imagine your relationship was one thing when it turned out it was actually very different. I’d run the gamut of self-doubt, analyzing so many moments of our past, wondering where I’d gone wrong and what mistakes I’d made.

So to hear things from Eric’s perspective—not just that he was sorry, but the fact that I hadn’t been just a phase in
his life, that what we’d had together had meant something to him—well, it affected me. A lot.

And while I wasn’t sure I was ready for a big emotional discussion, while there was still a part of me that felt the need to keep my heart under lock and key, my lips didn’t get the memo.

So I kissed the hell out of him.

His lips parted beneath mine instantly, his hands gripping my hips, pulling my body closer to his. We couldn’t have sex—it wasn’t
that
remote—but I figured tongue was totally fine.

My fingers threaded through his hair, tugging his head toward me. I sucked on his lower lip, capturing it between my teeth, before moving down, kissing the line of his jaw, inhaling that masculine, woodsy scent that was as familiar to me as breathing.

Eric groaned. “You know we can’t have sex here, right?”

I grinned, pulling back to look into those gorgeous blue eyes.
Gah.
He really had an embarrassment of riches in the looks department.

“I know. Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” I said, not sorry at all.

I climbed off his lap, settling myself back in the passenger seat, rebuckling my seat belt with shaky hands.

His hands clutched the steering wheel, a pained expression on his face that I was pretty sure could be attributed to the impressive bulge in his pants.

Yep, not even a little bit sorry.

“I’m guessing a blowjob is out of the question?” he asked.

I laughed. “While you’re driving?”

He gave me a hopeful look.

“Sorry.” I patted his leg inches away from where he wanted me to be. “But if you’re good, I’ll go down on you when we get home.”

He groaned. “You can’t give me that mental image and expect me to get through the night.”

“I don’t. I want you to be horny and miserable.” I grinned. “Kidding.” I reached out and ruffled his hair, unable to resist screwing with him a bit. He could be so cocky that it was difficult to turn down the opportunity to steal the upper hand on the rare times it presented itself.

“Well, now tonight definitely has something in common with our first date.”

I snorted. “Seriously?”

He grinned at me, that boyish charm taking another swipe at my resolve.

“Hey, like I said, I remember that blue dress
very
well. I spent half the night wondering if you were going to let me get under that short skirt.”

I made a face. “I definitely wasn’t going to put out on our first date.”

“I knew you weren’t. But I was a seventeen-year-old boy. I hate to break it to you, but ninety-nine point nine percent of the time my thoughts involved sex.”

“And now?”

He laughed. “I’ve grown up since then. Much better control.”

“Ninety-three percent?”

“More like ninety-five.” He gave me a wolfish grin. “In that dress? One hundred percent.”

“Just wait until you see what I’m wearing underneath,” I teased.

His head jerked toward me so quickly, I worried he’d have whiplash.

My lips curved. “Let’s just say I bought a few things at the sex shop.”

He groaned, his hands gripping the steering wheel more tightly. “Jesus, Becca.”

I leaned back in my seat, looking up at the sky, loving the rush of power, the knowledge that he would be thinking about us all night long.

And then I felt his free hand gliding up my inner thigh, teasing the hem of my dress. My legs parted and a sigh escaped my lips. He slipped under the fabric, walking his fingers up, higher and higher, until he reached between my legs, strumming my clit through the silky fabric, rubbing against the wetness already gathering there.

“What color are they?” he asked, his voice husky, vibrating with need.

“Red.” I struggled over the word, struggled to breathe.

“Describe them.”

My voice shook. “They’re soft. Sensitive against my skin.”

He continued stroking me, his gaze intense. We were on the side of the road, and while there wasn’t much traffic, anyone could drive by and see. My dress was down, but if anyone looked at his hands, at my face . . .

“Keep going.”

“They’re . . .”
Ohmigod.
He was going to get me off, somewhere between Bradbury and Columbia. I was so close, so . . .

“You’re so wet. So slippery. So warm. I bet I could just slide my fingers inside you.”

“Yes.”

“You want to come, don’t you?”

I bit down on my lip, feeling panicky and aroused, and
sofreakingclose
.

“Yes. Please.”

His thumb stayed on my clit, his fingers hooking under the silk and thrusting inside with one smooth glide.

“Fuck,” he hissed, a groan escaping his lips. “I can’t wait to get inside you.”

Me, either. Did we really need to do dinner? We could eat later. Much later.

The force of his thrusts increased, his thumb playing me expertly, and then I was coming, gripping the seat, my body bucking beneath his touch. When I’d finally come down from the high, he slid out of me, his gaze on me as he sucked me off his fingers, his eyes dark.

I died. Again.

We just sat there for a minute, neither one of us talking, the sound of our harsh breaths filling the car.

Finally he took a deep breath, gathering himself and maneuvering the car back onto the highway. I went someplace else, my head reduced to colors, sounds, the feel of the wind on my face, the lingering pulse between my legs. Nothing and everything. The music playing on the stereo filled the silence between us until Eric spoke again, his voice stripped of its usual cockiness, as though he’d been sanded down.

“You didn’t ask me what I was doing the other half of the night.”

I couldn’t follow the conversation we’d just had, couldn’t gather my own thoughts.

“What?”

“On our first date. I told you I spent half the night fantasizing about you. You didn’t ask me what I was doing the other half.”

I grinned, feeling a little drunk on him. “Do I really want to know?”

Whatever I’d imagined, his answer definitely wasn’t what I’d expected.

“I was falling in love with you.”

It was, hands down, the best date I’d ever been on. It wasn’t just that she was hot, the way she leaned over the table, thrusting her tits forward, inspiring quite a few fantasies that kept me turned on and fighting an erection throughout the night. Or how good it had felt to make her come in the car earlier. More than anything, it was the simple fact that I’d never been able to talk to anyone the way I could talk to her. Never felt as comfortable with anyone as I did with her.

I’d forgotten that. Or maybe not forgotten it, but forgotten how much I’d counted on it, how much she’d been an integral part of my life, like a limb I’d been missing all this time. Forgotten what it felt like to be with someone who knew you better than anyone.

I’d been nervous to talk to her about my job, worried that it was the white elephant between us considering how much of a wedge it had created in our relationship, but surprisingly I found myself telling her how I felt when I flew, about the
deployments, and the friends I’d made, letting her in on the parts of my life I never thought we could share.

We didn’t talk about the future, didn’t talk about the fact that I’d be returning to Oklahoma in a week. But I gave her the most important parts of the last decade of my life.

“So what’s your favorite part of the job?” she asked in between bites of chips and salsa.

I thought about that one for a beat. “Probably the flying. It’s amazing up there.”

A smile played at her lips. “You always did love pushing the limits.”

“Yeah, I guess a thing like that doesn’t really go away.” I shrugged, taking another bite of my burrito. “I like the challenge of it. In the beginning when I was going through pilot training, it was such a fucking struggle. Your first flight you’re absolutely clueless. It’s like watching a baby learn how to walk. But little by little you get more comfortable, learn more. Every step is a new challenge—just learning how to fly, then learning how to fly like a fighter pilot, then an F-16, then how to be good enough in an F-16 to keep progressing, to start having the experience and knowledge to teach other guys how to fly.

“We’re constantly adapting to new threats, new mission sets. And even when you get used to it, there’s always the chance that weird shit can happen in the air and suddenly you’re back to feeling like a newbie again, just trying to stay alive.” I swallowed, taking a sip of my margarita. “I told you that I had an issue flying before I came here.”

She nodded, her mouth tightening. “It sounded dangerous.”

“It was. I was flying, and all of a sudden, it was like I was back there on the night he died.”

I remembered my conversation with Burn, and while I
wasn’t sure I was ready to talk to a shrink or anything, part of me did want to talk to someone. Needed to talk to someone.

And my “someone” had always been Becca.

“What happened when he died?”

I took another deep breath, feeling like a lead weight pressed down on my chest. “We were TDY in Alaska. It was a night sortie and we were finishing up, on our way home. Everything was fine, or so we thought. I was on Joker’s wing.” The familiar guilt came rushing back. “He made a radio call; we were doing low-level strafing as a four-ship.” She looked confused. “Basically, shooting the gun at targets on the ground while we were flying low. It’s one of those things we do in combat a lot and we practice it all the time. Completely routine.” She nodded. “Apparently, he spatial D’ed. Spatial disorientation. You get confused on where the jet is, think you’re in a different position than you are, and by the time you realize it or when you try to correct yourself, it’s too late. Joker didn’t realize how low he was flying and he crashed into a mountain.”

Becca’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God.”

“The whole thing happened so fucking fast. He was fine and then he was just gone.”

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for all of you. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to fly after something like that.”

“It spooked me. And I can’t seem to move past it.”

She took a sip of her margarita, fear in her eyes. “Does that kind of stuff happen a lot?”

“Spatial D? Yeah. Most of the time you recover, no big deal.” I ran a hand through my hair, my voice cracking. “It happened to me on my last flight before I took leave. The flight that made me realize that I needed to figure out what
the hell was going on. It was the same kind of situation as what happened with Joker. And I just . . . I freaked. I’ve probably spatial D’ed dozens of times in my career, and I’ve always recovered, always been lucky. But this time, it was like I was back in that night, and I couldn’t shake it. The worst thing you can do in the cockpit is lose your shit. We’re trained to stay calm always. And I couldn’t get control. And that scares me more than anything, because a spooked pilot is a dead one.

“There was an upgrade to the jet, a new system that sets off an alarm if you get too close to the ground to keep what happened to Joker from happening again. It saved my life. I keep thinking that a few months would have made the difference between saving his. If he’d only had the upgrade . . .”

“I’m so sorry.” She reached out and took my hand, squeezing my fingers as though she could infuse me with some of her strength.

“I know. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to ruin things by getting so heavy, I just . . .” My voice trailed off again and I played with my food. “I haven’t been able to talk about it. It’s hard.”

“You can always talk to me.”

She knew all my secrets, had been there for all of the rocky times in my life when I was younger.

“I know. It means a lot.”

“Do you think you can move past it when you fly? Find a way to deal with it?”

“I don’t know. I want to. I know I need to, that it’s too fucking dangerous for me to be up in the air if I’m going to lose it again.”

“Can you talk to a professional or something?”

“I mean, yeah, I can, but I’m worried about how it could affect my career.”

“Why? That’s bullshit.”

I shrugged. “I’m not much of a fighter pilot if I’m cracking in the jet.”

“Yeah, but what about you? Just as a person. How are you supposed to deal with this if you can’t talk about it, if you can’t get the help you need?”

“There’s not a lot of coddling or hand-holding in my job. They don’t really give a shit about that stuff as long as we get the mission accomplished.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again, and I could tell her sense of justice was deeply offended.

I grinned despite the depressing conversation. It was reassuring to see that some things never changed. For all of her shyness when we were younger, she’d always been the first person to sign up for a protest, to volunteer when help was needed, to speak out against a wrong that had been committed. She was fierce about the things she believed in, and it had always been one of the qualities I admired most about her.

“Has being back helped at all?”

I made a face and she laughed. “I’m not talking about your orgasms; get your mind out of the gutter.”

“It’s definitely been worth it for the orgasms alone,” I teased.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” I sobered. “Honestly, I’m not sure. A little bit maybe? I guess it recharged my batteries. I’ve been so fucking tired for so long, and it feels good just to have the time off to process everything.

“I went from a series of TDYs and then Joker’s death, and things have been pretty intense lately as we’ve ramped up for our next deployment. There hasn’t been a lot of time to breathe.” I brought our joined hands to my lips and
pressed a kiss over her knuckles. “And I promise, I’m not just saying this because I want to see what you’re wearing under that sexy dress, but seeing you again, having you in my life again, has definitely helped. I’ve never been able to talk to anyone the way I can talk to you. I’ve missed this.”

She didn’t answer me, not audibly anyway, but I saw her answer in the emotion lingering in her eyes, felt it in the way she held on to me and didn’t let go.