“I know,” I reply, though I can’t help but feel like I don’t know anything anymore. But no matter what, I’ll protect her. I’ll see it through.
Chapter Twenty
MacKenzie
Who’s sorry now?
“I’m sorry,” Kyle says over and over. “I’m so sorry.”
I just keep screaming and screaming. Thrashing my body around, clawing and grasping for anything and anyone that can get me off of this God forsaken airplane because I can’t be here. I can’t be on a plane—this plane or any plane, ever again. I know without a doubt to the very pits of my soul that if I do, I will die.
I don’t just panic; the chaos and fear of crashing make up every single molecule in my body. I can't do it. I can’t be here.
I can’t crash again, because I won’t survive it. I’ll never survive it. You think you’ll know what to do, that you’ll be okay if you’re ever taken, but there is not one thing, not one ounce of training, that can prepare you for being a prisoner of war.
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
I try to get the words out, but it’s no use. My mouth won’t work.Please, please, please, I want to beg. Help me get off this flying death trap. People weren’t meant to fly like birds. We shouldn’t tempt fate or God or whoever, because when they turn their back on you, you will know absolute fear and darkness.
Kyle holds me in his strong arms, and his scent envelops me, but what once made me feel safe and secure cannot penetrate the terror that seizes my mind and my body.
His friend Sean approaches and lays a hand on my arm to comfort me, but it’s no use. Nothing helps.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers to me. “It’s going to be okay.”
But is it? Nothing is ever going to be okay again, because if I can’t fly, then who am I? And if I don’t have that, what is there even for me? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I feel a sharp pinch, and then warmth seeps into my veins, spreading out, over, and through every inch of my body, and I slowly slip below the surface of the waves of consciousness. As I go, I hear Sean whisper, “I’m sorry.”
He’s sorry. Kyle is sorry. They think they can protect me, that they can heal me. That if they wish it away, it’ll all be better. But terror, like I felt when I woke up on this plane, is not something that can ever be wished away. I’m not even sure it will ever go away. It lives inside me now like a cancer, and I don’t think I will ever be free of it. And as a pilot who always lived to fly high in the sky, that’s no life to live at all.
So who’s sorry now?
Me. The answer is me.
And then I let the darkness take me again, because what else is there to do when I have nothing left. Not one thing.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kyle
Beautiful and broken
I knock on the door, even though for weeks I lived off and on at this house. MacKenzie’s condo is as still and silent as a tomb.
I use my key and open the door. It’s been days since I’ve seen her. She won’t answer the phone, and she won’t come to the door. I know Cinco and Hooter have seen her, and it kills me. It fucking kills me that she’ll let them in—to her home, to her space, even her personal thoughts—but not me. Never me.
When I walk through the door, she’s there, lying on her side. The bruising on her face is healing in shades of grizzly yellow and green, but it’s still jarring to see. She’s endured so much, and here she is, silently suffering. I want her to let me in, let me be here with her, to hold her and help her heal inside and out, but she won’t cave. Finally, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I just came over.
I don’t know how long she’s been here like this, but she hasn’t showered in a while. Her hair is limp and greasy, and quite honestly, she smells. Even through the filth and the grime and the heavy depression that blankets her, she’s still beautiful. She’s still my MacKenzie. I know it down to my bones, I just have to make her see it too. That I’m here, she’s still here, and there is so much to live for. I know she’s hurting, but I need to be here with her, to love her. If she’ll let me.
Her eyes flit from the wall to me for a second before flitting back again. I have no idea what could be so appealing about some cream-painted sheetrock, but there she is, staring at it like it holds all the secrets to the universe.
“Hi,” I say as I make my way into the living room. MacKenzie says absolutely nothing. Not one fucking thing. She doesn’t even look at me. “Mack, baby, look at me please.”
And finally, she does. Those gorgeous green eyes come back to my face and hold my gaze, and then she breaks my fucking heart into a million pieces.
“You should go,” she says quietly, and her voice sounds rusty like she hasn’t used it in a while. Like maybe the last time she used her vocal cords was to scream her terror on the flight home.
