“You’re going to need a jacket,” he says before turning and walking out of the bathroom.
I follow behind him, making a detour into the closet to grab an old Texas A&M sweatshirt. I pull it over my head and walk down the stairs. I’m so nervous that my knees are shaking, and it’s everything I can do to keep my balance on the two flights of stairs.
When I get to the bottom, Kyle takes me by the hand and leads me out to his truck. He opens my door for me like a gentleman and then makes his way around to the driver seat and climbs in. He starts the engine and then looks at me for a minute, really looking at me. It feels like he can see all the way down to the very depths of my soul.
“Look at me, honey,” he says, and my heart starts beating faster and faster. “I will never let anything happen to you again. I promise you that I will do my very best until the day I die. And if something does happen again, I will walk through hell to get you out again. There is nothing and no one in this world that could stop me.”
My breath seizes in my lungs, because as far as promises go, that’s a pretty good one. I just nod, because I don’t know what else I can say that could be even close to what he has just given me.
Kyle pulls out of the driveway and down city streets until he can get on the highway. He takes the 52 East, and I wonder where in the hell he’s going until I see the signs for Gillespie Field. My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. I feel sick and my skin is clammy. I’m suddenly glad I didn’t have enough time to eat breakfast before Kyle brought me on this little adventure to hell, because I would be tossing my cookies right now if I had.
He pulls up near a small hangar, and I think I’m going to die. I’m sweating profusely and barely hanging on to my conscious thought. How I’m not letting the nightmares take me back right now, I don’t know. It must be the promise Kyle made to me, his vow to never let me fall again. Apparently, he meant literally, like from the sky, because this man I love is about to send me hurtling through the air in a tin can. Oh my fucking God, I cannot do this. I can’t. I just can't.
“Just breathe, baby,” Kyle says as he climbs out of the truck and makes his way around to my side, where he opens the door. For a brief second, I considered throwing the lock on the door, climbing in the driver seat, and peeling out, but he took the keys with him and dropped them in his pocket. And I don’t know how to hotwire a car.
“I’m not sure I can,” I admit.
“You can,” he replies calmly. “Let’s just go look around.”
I don’t like where this is going. It feels like a trick, and I don’t like it. He’s going to try to get me up in a bird, and not just any bird, a baby bird with primitive avionics. I fell out of the sky in a brand spanking new, state of the art, eighty-million-dollar aircraft. If that can happen in a Lightning, then this little piece of shit will surely kill us, right?
But I also know that’s not true. In my rational mind, I know I would have killed to fly one of these private planes a few weeks ago. Hell, I used to go up in some terrible planes with my grandfather to pipeline spot, so this is surely safer than that. Those were barely held together by duct tape and chewing gum. I know because my grandfather used the gum in my mouth to fix something on more than one occasion.
Kyle takes my hand, and we walk into the hangar where a gorgeous Cessna sits gleaming and freshly washed. Someone takes very good care of this baby bird. I’m green with envy over whoever has the good fortune to own this beautiful piece of machinery, and at the same time, I don’t want anywhere near it.
“Let’s take a closer look,” he encourages me, and I think that maybe he’s lost his damn mind. How the hell am I supposed to just look around? And still, I’m curious. I want to but I also don’t want to let myself do it.
“I’m fine right here.”
“What did I promise you?” he asks me as he gets close enough to hold me in his arms and squats down just enough so he can look me in the eye.
“That you’ll never let me fall,” I repeat his earlier words.
“That’s right,” he agrees. “And what else?”
“That if anything happens to me, you’ll walk through hell to get me back out again,” I answer.
“That’s right,” he says with a proud smile on his face. “So let’s do this.”
“Oh God.”
“MacKenzie, I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine, Surfer,” he says, surprising me. And by the knowing smile on his face, he also knows he caught me off guard. “Surfer and I were on the teams together way back when. Surfer, this is my girl, Mack.”
“Hi there, MacKenzie,” a tall, beautiful man with blond hair and ice-blue eyes greets me. He looks so familiar, but I can’t place him, because I know I’ve never met this man before. He’s dressed casually in a way that he blends in, not stands out. It’s almost like he’s no one and everyone all at the same time. He is literally every man. It’s unnerving.
“Hi,” I reply nervously.
“There’s no reason to be nervous,” Kyle says. “Surfer is how we got you back, honey. He found you.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Surfer tells me in a gentle tone. One that would be used with a frightened child or wounded animal. Is that what I am? A wounded animal? Probably. “I know what you went through, and I know how you’re feeling. I know what it’s like to have everything you love taken from you so ruthlessly. I also know that Tarzan and I checked every inch on my personal plane that no one ever gets to fly but me. I’m also happy to let you check whatever you need to, but my friend would really love to show off his skills in the air to you.”
“You fly?” I ask, surprised. I know he said before that he could, but still, I never imagined it. I just pushed it out of my brain and forgot all about it. Now, I’m realizing that there’s even more to Kyle than meets the eye.
“Not like you do,” Kyle says sheepishly. “But I can.”
“So you weren’t lying?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around what I know about Kyle Garrett. He’s a renaissance man for sure.
“About being a pilot? No. About being an F-35 pilot? Yes.” He laughs unrepentantly.
