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In the war room, I’d looked into his eyes and my gut had told me the only purpose for taking this job, for coming to the island, had been me. Not for Zaki. Not for the money. Not for some ulterior motive. Only me.
I smiled, watching him safely land and unhook Titan. The German shepherd loped past me, jumping into Thea and knocking her flat as he lapped at her face. I couldn’t help but laugh. Embracing the ones you love after an exhilarating experience must be a universal urge that transcended species. Still chuckling, I turned back to Coop. The sharp daggers in his eyes transmitted his eagerness to embrace my neck with both hands.
With hardened jaw and lips stretched in a snarl, he grabbed up his chute as he stalked toward me. When he got close, he hissed in my face, “Don’t you ever do that again!”
“Do what?” I backed up a step before his pushed-out chest knocked into me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You! You’re what’s wrong with me! You waited till the last fucking second to pull your chute! You know how dangerous that is? What if it hadn’t opened? There was no way I could get to you in time!”
“Slow down. Yes, I went long. But not to the last second.”
“The hell it wasn’t! I told you repeatedly to pull your fucking chute and you flat-out ignored me.”
I steadied my breath. Coop was hardly the first person to blow up at me. In business I made people, even big blustering men, angry all the time. I’d learned how to keep my cool and de-escalate. In Coop’s case, it meant conceding where I could. “I’m sorry for not responding. I had my comms turned down.”
He threw his hands up. “Even better!”
“I’m not a novice.”
“Then stop acting like one!”
I bit back a curse, but my hackles were twitching and eager to rise. “First off, if my chute hadn’t opened, my backup would’ve.”
“And by then you would’ve landed too hard. What about your legs, Zee? You want them both broken? Because I don’t!”
I was oddly charmed by the virility of his concern for my legs, for me. He hadn’t been angry, he’d been scared. Just as I’d been when he’d disappeared without a trace.
Didn’t warrant his being condescending, though.
“If I’d been coming down too hot, I would’ve steered for a water landing. I can think under pressure, Coop. You know I can.”
I put my hand on his arm. Despite the spark touching skin to skin gave us both, or perhaps because of it, he tried to step back. I closed my fingers to keep him from leaving. “Just because you kissed me doesn’t give you the right to treat me like a child.”
His eyes may’ve narrowed, but not in anger. He studied me as he asked, “Is that what you think, Presh?”
I trailed my hand down his arm to his hand. “It’s how your scolding me feels.”
He twined his fingers with mine, his thumb stroking the underside of my wrist. “I’m not treating you like a child. I’m treating you like you’re the most important thing in my world. And I was fucking afraid I was going to lose you.”
My breath stilled. “I’m sorry. I…I didn’t…know.”
He pushed out a breath. His eyes locked on mine, softer this time. “Please don’t do it again.”
I swallowed and gave a subtle nod. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Coop accepted with a chin bob of his own, then he looked down at his feet. “You know, before you should’ve pulled your chute, you looked beautiful up there. Happy, too. Dancing in the sky.”
My memories flickered. “I said the very same thing the first time my aunt showed me a video of her skydiving.” There’d been the same awe in my voice that I heard in Coop’s, but when I looked up at him he wasn’t smiling the way I’d been. His brows were drawn together and his eyes looked more like two hard gemstones.
“Your aunt? You told me you were an orphan and didn’t have any family.”
The accusation in his voice had me drawing back. “If I made it seem like I never knew any of my biological family, I guess it’s because I never really did. How much can a child truly know an adult? Right? My aunt’s been gone a long time. They all have.”
I looked up to find Coop still unsure of me, or maybe the questioning arrangement of his features was because he wanted to know more. I frowned, not sure how I could tell him everything without him hating me for the extent of my lies.
Deception had been a necessity in my life, and certainly had its place in business, but the relationship I wanted to forge with Coop needed to be built on honesty. My aunt seemed an innocuous enough place to start.
I dropped my gathered chute to the beach and stepped out of my harness. “I called her Am’maty Z. We were very close. We shared a love of animals and she taught me to ride horses. Actually, she taught me a lot of things—to be strong and independent, to survive, to fight. She’s why I took up scuba and skydiving. Those were things she did, things she was going to teach me, but she died before I was old enough. She told me skydiving made her feel like she had wings. She’d pretend she could soar across fences and walls and borders. I was young then, I thought she wanted to be able to fly. I understand now that was just semantics. She wanted to fly away. She wanted freedom.”
Coop’s whole body softened with concern. “Are you not free, Zee?”
The hard blue gemstones dissolved and now his eyes were deep as the sea. The kind of ocean depths I could fall into from any height, at any speed, and still never get hurt. I swallowed and glanced away.
“The freedom I seek is a little different.”
Maybe once the Ozma Emerald was recovered and the Esmeralda scuttled I’d have freedom, at least from the fear of my past catching up with me. Or maybe not. But I knew I’d never have a chance at true freedom until then.
“When I jump, it’s like my body is flying faster than my mind can keep up with. I’m able to outrun all the voices, and questions, and thoughts, and noise. That’s why I wait as long as safely possible to pull my chute. Because when I do, the earth will start spinning again and my mind will catch up and I’ll be fighting time again, fearing the fall, trying to prevent the next big wreck. And as you well know, there’s always some eminent crash awaiting on the horizon. That’s why I turned down the comms and why I held the freefall for as long as I possibly could. To wring out every second of peace.”
Coop drew me up against his chest, wrapping me in his arms. “You don’t have to fight the fall, Presh. I won’t let you crash.”
