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CHAPTER 10

SUMNER

“Yo, Jenny! I’m here,” I call out, dropping my duffel beside the front door and rolling my shoulder where the strap dug into it.

Colston’s condo is nicer than any other place I’ve stayed, and if it wasn’t my best friend who lived here, I’d be afraid to step inside because I might scuff the floors or something.

We do the same job, but Colston comes from money, so his condo is fancy as fuck. The lobby’s got a Michelin-starred restaurant, there’s only one other unit on this floor, and the windows in his living room overlook Tampa. I can even see the beach from up here.

As far as places to pick up the pieces of my life go, I could do a whole hell of a lot worse.

The drive from Lakeland gave the adrenaline from my fight with Delia plenty of time to burn off, and now that I’m standing still, everything hits at once. My head’s pounding, my back aches, and every muscle below my waist is reminding me exactly how I spent last night and most of this morning.

No regrets there.

I haven’t eaten since those room-service fries in the middle of the night, but the thought of food still makes my stomach turn.

Mostly, I just want to lie down somewhere and stop thinking for a few hours. Maybe sleep off this hangover.

I make it as far as the living room before dropping onto the couch and letting my head fall back against the cushions.

For all the expensive shit Colston has in this place, he somehow managed to buy the least comfortable couch in existence. It looks nice, but sitting on it feels like a punishment.

Colston comes out of the kitchen and presses a cold beer to my chest. I grab the bottle, hoping a little hair of the dog will knock out the rest of this hangover.

At twenty-eight, he’s the youngest guy on our flight crew, but he’s easily the best co-pilot I’ve ever flown with. He flops down beside me, pushing a hand through his messy blond hair, the perpetual half-smirk he usually wears totally wiped off his face as he eyes me.

“You look like shit,” he says.

“Yeah, well. That’s what happens when your life implodes.” I hold out my beer, and he clinks his with mine. “Thanks for letting me crash on your couch."

Colston shakes his head. "Fuck no. This thing is fine for watching the game, but if you sleep on it, you'll wake up wishing you were dead.”

I choke on the sip of beer I just took, but he’s right. My ass is already starting to go numb.

“Plus, we have that calibration flight tomorrow morning. If you blow out a disc, the chief will bench us, and I can’t let that happen. So unless you want to sleep in the flight-sim room”—he points down the hall with the neck of his bottle—"or curl up next to my weights, you’re taking the left side of my bed.”

I shoot him a side-eye. "I may be single now, but I’m not about to be the little spoon."

"What about the big spoon?”

I glare at him, and he grins.

“You know what?” I ask. "I'm building a pillow wall. If you touch me in the middle of the night, I'm kicking you onto the floor."

He laughs. “Kicking me out of my own bed for a little platonic cuddling? That’s cold.”

I take a long drink of beer. We've shared cramped racks on deployments before, so neither of us actually cares, and keeping my flight status is the only thing in my life I have any control over right now.

And getting good sleep is at the top of my priority list to make sure that happens.

I let out a long sigh as the grin slips off Colston’s face and the air between us gets heavier. "I appreciate this, Jenny."

Colston leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees. He turns his head to look at me, all the joking gone. "So. You want to tell me why you just walked out on your wife?"

I stare at a drop of condensation slowly working its way down the side of the bottle. "Delia got her tubes tied a year ago.”

Colston chokes on his beer. He coughs, his eyes going wide as he stares at me. "Are you fucking kidding me?"