“Or a cliff.”
“With the right height, yeah.”
“Is it like hang gliding?”
“It’s a freefall jump, but you’ve got a parachute. Which you deploy pretty quickly since you’re not even two thousand feet up.”
“That’s…terrifying.”
“It’s something we did a lot, and there’s no better place to do it than that cliff. If the wind’s right, it’s a perfect landing in the meadow.”
“I feel sick right now.”
“We told him not to do it, but he was wasted, and he didn’t want the night to end.”
“Because he knew what was on the other side of it. You’d start new and exciting lives, and he’d be left behind.”
All he could do was nod. “And Cole was always down for anything, so the minute Jaime suggested it, Cole was already running into the cabin to get the gear.”
Even though he was driving in traffic, he could still smell the pine forest and the smoke from the bonfire, could see Cole and Jaime laughing so hard they practically pissed themselves. The clank of metal, the shush of fabric…Declan was right there, living it all over again. “They were drunk. We couldn’t just let them go. If anything happened to them…”
“You couldn’t have lived with yourself.”
“Right.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “It turned out great. One of the best rides of my life. Jaime landed first, then, Cole, then me. One perfect landing after another.”
“Until?”
He heard her voice like she was in another room. Because he was still there. The cool night air, the rush of adrenaline. “It’s such a high, jumping off a cliff in the middle of the night. The only lights come from the valley and the moon. You’re free-falling until you pull the chute, and it jerks you. Then…you float.” Such a rush. “I remember feeling this intense relief when I saw them land. And when I hit the ground…” He’d been so damn happy.
“You’d tempted fate, but it had all turned out well.”
It wasn’t quite like that. He’d never felt like he was defying the odds or pushing his luck. He’d felt…competent. At eighteen, he’d been in the best shape of his life, and all the years of parkour and rappelling and all the shit they’d done had honed his agility. His instincts.
“We were so damn high off a good landing, and we turned around to watch Booker.” Tension squeezed the back of his neck, releasing a cold fluid that trickled down his spine. “It’s…sometimes there’s turbulence.” He checked to see if she understood. She didn’t. “When air flows over objects close to the ground, it’s called turbulence. If you get caught in the flow…” He saw it all over again, felt the abject panic. “It was freak timing, but it got Booker. We watched it happen. Everything was going great, and then the wind collapsed his parachute. He hit the ground and crumpled.” Jesus, he could hear the thud of his friend’s body, see his legs fold like they were made of wet cardboard.
“Oh, my God. What happened?”
“I ran like I was on fire to get Cole’s truck.” He would never forget the torturous moments when his hands wouldn’t cooperate. They were shaking so badly, he’d struggled to remove his pack. Then, he’d bolted. It was all such a blur—from the time he’d taken off to reaching Colt’s house, finding the rack of keys…not knowing which one to take. Time was ticking. His friend could be dying…could be dead. He had to get help.
Finally, he’d recognized the stupid hockey stick keychain some girl had given his friend. “We loaded Booker in the back and floored it to the ER.” They’d all been deathly quiet. It was like no one could talk over the noise in their heads. Only when they’d entered the ER did Jaime shout, Help. We need help. Everyone had turned, wide-eyed, alarmed, not sure what was going on, until Jaime roared Now. And then someone rolled a gurney out to the truck, and they wheeled Booker away.
Phinny’s hand on his forearm pulled him out of the memory.
He looked at her delicate fingers, the gems in her rings winking in the sunlight. “It was bad. He fractured his femur and broke both ankles. After they wheeled him away…” He let out a tight breath. “I had to call his parents. Woke his dad up. I could hear his mom in the background.” What is it? What’s going on? “We were so fucking lucky his spine was okay, but hockey was over for him. We knew it. It wasn’t even a question.” Not after seeing his legs crumple like that. “He was in the hospital for a long time, but his parents wouldn’t let us see him. And the next thing we knew, they’d moved back east. Didn’t even put up a For Sale sign. Nothing. One day, I stopped by to apologize to them and check on Booker—he was one of my best friends—but the house was empty.” He would never forget peering through the living room window to find the space cleared of all furniture. His stomach had plummeted. “We never saw him again. Not until the funeral.”
“I don’t even know what to say. That’s just awful. I want to say Jaime’s a piece of shit, but—”
“He’s not, though. Ever since Cole got his pilot license, we’d been flying up to the ridge. We’d BASE jumped hundreds of times. And all Jaime wanted to do was hang out. It was just going to be a bonfire at his place. Cole took it to the next level by stealing his dad’s plane.”
“But Jaime’s the one who wanted to jump. And it’s not like the rest of you had a choice.”
“No, we did. It was absolutely my choice to jump with him.”
“How were you supposed to get home? Didn’t Cole fly you up there?”
“Yeah, it’d have been a ten-hour hike down the mountain in the middle of the night. But to be honest, we weren’t thinking about that.” It still ate away at him. The what-ifs. What if he’d said no to Jaime that night? What if Booker hadn’t hesitated before putting on his chute? It was all in the timing. The gust of wind at the exact moment Booker neared the ground.
“What does everyone do now?”
“Jaime went to college here at the WY—”
“The WY?”
“Sorry, yeah. The University of Western Wyoming. And he coaches the elite travel team your dad started for us. Cole pulled a runner. We only found out he’d taken Jaime’s spot in Canada weeks later when hockey season started, and he wasn’t on the Renegades’ roster. And Booker went to Yale. He’s a sports agent.”
“And you played hockey at uni, right?”
“I did. For two years.”
“I’m sorry for being so pushy. This is obviously none of my business. It’s just you’re not playing, either.”
He’d gotten over the hardest part. Well, sort of. “Right, but that’s because Sam got sick.”
“Sam?”
“My grandfather.”
“Are you telling me you dropped out of college to take care of your grandfather?”
He nodded.
“That’s…wow. I guess there was no one else who could help? A friend, a family member?”
“Sure, there were lots of people.” In fact, he’d had coaches who promised to provide round-the-clock nursing care in exchange for a contract to play for them. “But he was my grandfather. He raised me, and I didn’t want anyone else caring for him. You think I could sleep at night in my dorm bed knowing he was sick? You think I could play hockey like nothing had happened when I knew his days were numbered?”