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Chapter Fifteen
Coop
Once Nik and Thea had cleared the plane, I readied Titan and shuffled back to the opening. The copilot, Peter, stood by to launch the storage bin behind me. I glanced down, expecting to see Zee’s chute deployed by now. She was still in free fall. Shit.
“Zee, pull your chute now,” I commanded over the comms as I launched. I made as aerodynamic a beeline toward her as I could with Titan strapped to me. She wasn’t technically in trouble. Yet. But she wasn’t playing it safe—blissfully enjoying her little sky ballet while leaving zero room for error. “This isn’t a pleasure dive, Zee. Pull now!”
Fuck!It was my stupid fault she was on this dive in the first place. If anything happened with her chute…if her backup failed… No, I couldn’t allow it. Wouldn’t. Speeding toward her, my head started to throb. Shit. Even if I stayed conscious, I wasn’t going to get to her in time. “Now, goddammit!”
The hot pink canopy flared open at the last fucking second.
I gripped my own ripcord, as my heart struggled to recover. I made one more scan of the skies to ensure the other divers were in good shape, because as soon as my chute deployed I’d be less able to assist.
I’d already passed Leo, as he’d pulled his cord almost immediately after leaving the plane. I had to look up to see him hanging below a gold and green chute. Beneath me, nearly parallel to Zee, I could see Nik and Thea both grinning goofily, happily latched together under a rainbow-colored arch, as I imagined they would be their whole lives.
With a tug, I deployed my chute.
The canopy billowed open, yanking me by my rig straps as it dramatically slowed my descent. The sound and sensation of the hurricane force winds buffeting me evaporated into a sudden silence. I lifted the visor on my helmet and glanced around again.
I envied Nik as he peacefully sailed toward paradise, his future bright with Thea next to him. Meanwhile next to me was a hundred-pound dog. And as for a future? Tumor growing in my skull notwithstanding, I could only watch mine from afar as she glided skillfully onto the sand below.
Beautiful, tenacious, reckless…woman.
“She’s gonna kill me one of these days,” I muttered to Titan, who looked like he’d just had the best head-out-the-window car ride ever.
As angry as I was at Zee’s irresponsibility, I had to find a way to keep the smile I’d seen on her face as she’d fallen through the air, because that smile was most definitely worth living for. And whatever had wiped it from her lips right before she’d pulled her chute was worth killing for.
Aziza
Gritty, warm sand. I grasped it in my raw grip. Clawing at the semi-solidness of it, I pulled my way out of the water as if I were climbing a rock wall. I struggled until my toes were just beyond the reach of waves. Then I lay blissfully still under the heat of the sun, a clump of seaweed washed ashore. My salt-brined skin might never be truly dry again. Being braised by the sun wasn’t safe, but it felt so nice to not be fighting for air, to be warm, alive. Still.
Or maybe I had died, because I could hear my mother singing softly in the breeze. Feel the gentle rocking of being in her arms again. She kissed my forehead and called me Aziza, precious, like the gemstones from our emerald mine.
As the heat began to sear my flesh, I knew I wasn’t in heaven with my mother. The rocking had been the residual feel of the ocean. The singing? Birds. My mother’s kiss? A drop of sea water sliding down my forehead. A memory. I focused on the trees, palms, a line of them. At least this wasn’t hell.
Hell was behind me.
I didn’t dare turn back. I only looked forward to the shade beneath the palms.
Pearled tears blurred my vision as my tennis shoes imbedded into the sand on the very beach I’d washed up upon twenty-two years ago.
I pulled in a deep breath of late afternoon air as my very first view of the island blinked in the back of my mind. Young palms had lined the beach then. I remembered them well. The survivor who’d escaped this island had been forged under their fronds.
The trees were taller now and mature, while others had been downed from storms over the years. I started forward, drawn toward them just as I’d been all those years ago. A gust caught my chute and jerked my body, snapping my focus back to the present. I turned to corral the billowing pink nylon.
Nik and Thea touched down next. I had to stifle a laugh, now that I had the chance to get a good look at Nik. He was exactly as Coop had described to me one night when he’d been telling me about all of his former teammates. “Imagine one of the guys in those Christmas in July movies you love. You know the type, from Maplefuck, Vermont or some shit—short dark hair, perfect amount of unshaven stubble, looks good in a flannel shirt and carries around an axe. But Nik has actually chopped wood and you don’t want to know what’s been in his chipper. He curses, shoots whiskey, and if he takes off his flannel shirt, you’ll realize this cat has seen some shit, and not the kind the town busybodies are gossiping about in the back alley between some flower shop and an old inn that needs saving.”
I watched as he unlatched Thea and she immediately spun around, wrapping her arms and legs around him as she kissed him deeply. Thea was hooked, both on skydiving and Nik.
I fought my own longing to run and jump into Coop’s arms when he touched down. Even with proof of his actions in the Amazon, turning my feelings off had been impossible. I was still so freaking in love with him.
How many projects had we worked on? How many times had he given me the extra confidence to take bigger chances? Been there when I didn’t think anyone in the world was? He was family. More than. And the way we had fit together in the war room, the fire between us combusting after just a few kisses… Those intimacies, passions, couldn’t be replicated.
My previous sexual experiences had certainly been more physical, but even so, they hardly measured up. Comparing them was laughable. I’d been a curious young woman, exploring. The sex had been enjoyable, but neither my heart nor my mind had been into those men beyond our bodies. Relationships just weren’t possible. And I still had my concerns whether one was possible with Coop, but what he and I had went way beyond sizzling chemistry to something even deeper than this ocean.
I couldn’t believe I’d almost passed up the opportunity to see if what we had was real. Coop’s activities in the Amazon were damning, but I didn’t know the reasons.
Like Dr. Walsh had told me more than once, “we don’t base our decisions on reports and numbers, we base them on the individual.” And if there was one individual on this planet who I knew always saw the bigger picture, it was Michael Cooper. No matter what he’d done in the Amazon, he had to have a good reason for it.
