“This ends now!”
And a second, and a third, and a thousandth, drowning out the screams and the fire and whatever might have held them back.
CHAPTER 15
The tingle started at the airfield, as Cooper negotiated with one of the pickup pilots who hung out in the lounge.
“Newton, huh?” The woman cocked her head, slid her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “You’re in luck. It’s a clear night, good thermals. I can get you there in two hours. Four hundred.”
“Two hundred.”
“Costs four hundred.”
“Three hundred in cash—if you get me there in an hour.”
“Cash?” She raised an eyebrow. “All right. But you better not puke in my wings.”
“I don’t get airsick.”
“You might, kind of flying I’m gonna have to do to make it in an hour.”
Two minutes later he was helping her push a glider onto the runway. Made of carbon-fiber about the thickness of a napkin, the thing didn’t weigh more than a couple hundred pounds. The pilot hitched it to a thick metal cable and was checking instruments and talking to ground control before he’d even gotten settled.
The cable jerked tight, then yanked a mile in thirty seconds, slingshotting them into the sky fast enough to leave his stomach behind.
It was his second trip in a glider, and he didn’t love it any more than the first, when Shannon had been at the stick. Cooper had no problem with planes, but not having an engine didn’t agree with him. It wasn’t exactly mitigated by the pilot, who took him at his word and rode hard, bouncing hundreds of feet up on thermals before tilting into velocity-building dives, the cracked landscape of the desert hurtling toward them. After one particularly gnarly cycle, he said, “What happens if you time that wrong?”
“Then we get to see how well the safety foam works,” she said. “Supposed to fill the cockpit in a tenth of a second, solidify with impact, then dissolve. Anyway, you were the one said you were in a hurry.”
“At least I’m not hungover this time.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The trip ended up taking a bit more than an hour, but he paid the full three hundred, then hopped in one of the electric cabs waiting at the Newton airfield. It started to snow on the ride, thin flurries that haloed the streetlights, and it was still going fifteen minutes later, when he climbed out in the midst of a row of two-story buildings, apartments over businesses. He walked past a bar and hustled up the steps two at a time. Cooper took a moment to smooth his hair and check his breath, then knocked on the door.
He waited, conscious of his heart, and a warmth that wasn’t entirely contained to his stomach.
The door swung open.
Shannon clearly hadn’t been expecting company. She wore what passed for pajamas—fitted black yoga pants and a thin cotton top that slipped low on one shoulder, revealing her collarbone. Her hair was loosely tucked behind her ears, and though he couldn’t see her right hand, the angle of her arm told him she held a pistol in it.
“Hi,” he said.
She stared at him. Quirked her lopsided grin. Moving with perfect economy, she set the gun on the entryway table, then reached forward, grabbed his shirt with two hands, and yanked him inside.
Her body was hot and tight against his, all dancer’s muscles and humming skin, and her smell enveloped him, woman and a whiff of shampoo. She took a handful of his hair and pressed his mouth to hers, her tongue flickering sweetly as he hoisted her up, legs wrapping his hips, his hands gripping her ass. He kicked the door closed as they staggered into a wall, and she laughed in her throat. “Miss me?”
“Guess,” he said, and kissed her again, softer, sucking her lower lip between his own. She moaned and ground against him, and that pulled a moan from him. Her hands slid down his chest, starting for his belt, and, Yes, he thought, God yes, he wanted it, both of them wanted it, fast this time, a reckless reclaiming of each other, and then later they could take their time, could spend the whole night taking their—
Reclaiming. Unbidden, an image of Natalie astride him flashed through his mind. Shannon’s fingers tugged at his pants, pulling them away from his belly as her other hand slid inside the—
“Wait.”
Shannon laughed. “Yeah.” She kept moving south, and God did it feel good, right—
No. He caught her wrist.
Something sparked in her eyes then. “What’s wrong?”
He set her down and ran a hand through his hair.
“Nick?”
“I need to tell you something.”
Shannon stood at the kitchen counter, not looking at him. Her fingers spun an untouched glass of bourbon. Her tri-d entertained itself, tuned to the Holdfast’s pirate news station, the volume muted.
“It wasn’t planned. It just happened. I’m—”
“Don’t,” she said sharply. “Don’t say you’re sorry.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“She deserves better than that.”
“I agree.”
“I get it,” she said. “You guys have history. And you and me, we never talked about . . .”
No, he thought. No, we never did. I was busy taking down one president and serving another, trying to protect the world. You were fighting a revolution and freeing children from slavery, not to mention saving my life.
“I wish we had,” he said. “Talked about it.”
Shannon shrugged noncommittally, still not looking at him. “It’s almost funny. I didn’t know until Natalie came to see me.”
“Didn’t know—wait. Came to see you? When was this?”
“Couple of weeks ago. After you died.”
“Ah.” He hadn’t known that. When Todd was hurt, and Cooper was beaten and ready to quit, it was Natalie who had propped him up. She had cleared his head, kicked his ass, and sent him off to fight for their children’s future. It must have been afterward that she visited Shannon. He could picture it easily. Another woman might have come to insult or threaten, to warn her off. But Natalie would just have felt Shannon deserved to know he’d survived.
At which point, Shannon had split from John Smith, then boarded a plane and arrived just in time to save his life.
The women in his life were amazing.
When the gods really want to mess with you, they give you too much of a good thing.
“I understood you cared about each other,” Shannon continued. “But until Natalie showed up at my hotel room, I didn’t know that she’s still in love with you.”
He hesitated. “I’m not sure that’s true.”
“It is,” she said, the same way she might tell him it was snowing.
“I didn’t mislead you. We’ve been done since the divorce. But I think everything that’s happened, it’s maybe changed the way she feels. Made her wonder if we deserve another shot.”
“What about you?”
“I . . . she’s the mother of my children. I’ll always love her.”
“Like I said, I get it.” Shannon sipped the whiskey. “I’m a grown woman, Cooper. Not some schoolgirl with a crush.”
And there it was. She’d called him Cooper.
“Shannon, I—”
“I’m sure it’s confusing.”
He wanted very badly to agree, but he’d been with women enough to know how very bad an idea that was. Somehow he kept himself from nodding.
“I’ll tell you what, though. You better not toy with her. She’s a good one.” Shannon took a breath, then another sip of whiskey. “Want a drink?”
He stared at her, feeling a tearing in his chest. Everything had taken on momentum, a slippery sort of velocity that seemed out of his control and headed for a wall. He knew that he could stop the crash. All he needed to do was say, firmly and clearly, that he chose Shannon. That he would always love Natalie, and didn’t regret last night, but that it was a farewell. That what he wanted was Shannon, period.