The Way We Fell (Love At First Flight #2)

1. Jay

Chapter one

Jay

3 0th JULY, 2026

“Welcome back, Sergeant Bevan.” The bright white haze clears slowly, and I find myself looking up into the pink face of a round man in turquoise scrubs. He’s the kind of riot of mismatched colour that belongs in a pre-school toy box, not this—wherever I am. A hospital, I guess, judging from the scrubs and the rhythmic machine bleeping that slowly cuts through the ringing in my ears.

And that’s when I remember it. Flashes of someday past—flickers of images play in my mind. My throat closes around the stale air in the room, dry tissue sticking together like glue. I couldn’t say a word if I wanted to.

But I want to.

I want to scream.

The images I see—the world burning, upside down. The smell. Caleb.

I open my mouth, or at least, I think I do.

“Don’t try to speak,” the pink man says. “You’ve been through a lot. Rest now. I’ll come back later.”

2ND JANUARY, 2027—PRESENT DAY

“Get a fucking grip.”

My little sister has convinced me to go out tonight. I’m not quite sure what came over me when I agreed to it, other than it being her birthday, or why I’m so anxious about it, but I find myself shifting nervously from foot to foot, towel wrapped around my waist as I survey the contents of my wardrobe, and sigh.

I grab a pair of jeans—plain black—and a grey button-down shirt. Why do I even care what I wear? It’s just a night out… with my little sister. And her friends. Her pretty, female friends. Who are all much younger, and much more outgoing than I am. I sigh again.

It’s not that I’m worried that I’m boring. I mean—I am boring. I’m pushing forty, and for the most part, all I do these days is exist . I have a new job. I go to work. I come home. And Ruth’s friends… they’re young, they’re vibrant, and they have nothing in common with a thirty-nine-year-old war veteran with a metal rod in his leg and an unhealthy avoidance habit.

Nevertheless, I wrap my watch and a handful of leather bands around my wrist, stuff my feet into unlaced army-style boots—because once an army boy, always an army boy—and snatch my keys from the hook, slamming the door behind me. If Ruth wants me to get out and meet people, then I guess I’m getting out and meeting people. I’ve never been able to say no to my baby sister.

It’s an interesting club. It’s all straight lines and shiny surfaces, very slick and modern. Not a patch on the clubs I remember from my younger days. My feet aren’t even sticking to the floor. It’s far too loud, and for some reason, everything is purple—everything, that is, except for the flaming hair of one of my sister’s best friends. Even in the violet downlights, it glows orange.

“Jay!” Ruth waves me over to a table where she sits with three other women. The orange-haired friend jumps up when I reach their table, wrapping her heavily tattooed arms around my neck and enveloping me in some sweet, berry-and-musk kind of scent. It’s not unpleasant, but I’m betting her shrill shouts in my ear will be soon enough.

“Happy birthday, Rooey.” I escape the hug and lean in to kiss my sister on the cheek. She raises her drink towards me with a wide grin.

“Thanks, bro! Glad you made it.” Ruth pats the couch beside her and I sit. She introduces me to the group: the tall, willowy redhead with a drink in each hand—the one who hugged me—is Paloma. Amie is the pretty one in the emerald green dress, and to my left, with dark coffee-coloured eyes burning into my chest is Katy. I offer a tight smile and try to control my breathing. Loud spaces are not my favourite thing. Ruth’s hand touches mine and I turn to face her. I see my own eyes staring back at me—our mum’s eyes—brown, with hints of moss green around the inner edge of the iris. Hers are questioning.

“I’m fine, Roo,” I tell her. It’s not a complete lie. I pat her arm and stand. “I’m gonna get a drink. Anyone want anything? Rooey? Birthday drink?”

Amie raises a still-full glass towards me, but Ruth nods happily. After a moment of hesitation, Katy pushes up from the table.

“I could go for another,” she says over the music. She loops her arm through mine like physical touch is the easiest thing in the world for her, and she steers me around the edge of the room towards the bar. She smells like oranges, bright and summery, completely at odds with the light grey cable-knit dress skimming her thighs and the frosty night outside. The scent reminds me of days spent at the beach, teaching my sister to jump waves. Before the nightmares. Before the horror and loss. Before everything.

It’s comforting.

I slide my credit card from my pocket and tap it against the contactless reader on the bar to pay for both of our drinks, and Ruth’s margarita. Katy smiles shyly, offering a quiet thank you I only hear over the noise because she’s pushed up onto her tiptoes, despite wearing heels, and her mouth is inches from my ear. Her breath is warm and I suppress a shudder. Her small hand touches my arm again and I try not to flinch. My skin burns at the contact. It’s been so long since I’ve been touched—at least, by anyone without a medical degree and a vested interest in repairing my battered body. It feels foreign in a way, but at the same time, a burn has never felt so good.

By the time we return to the table with full pint glasses, Amie and Paloma are lost to the crowd on the dance floor. Between Paloma’s height and mine, and her vibrant hair, I can just spot the top of her head somewhere in the centre of the shuffle, bobbing up and down as her inked arms raise. She’s pretty, and I take a long mouthful of my beer as I imagine what it might be like to be with someone so uninhibited.

Ruth breaks me from my haze.

“Penny for ‘em.” She leans in, tequila breath tickling my nose. “I invited you out to have fun tonight, not to sit and mope.”

“I’m not moping,” I say carefully, and my expression turns indignant as my sister raises a manicured brow. It’s petty, but I can’t help but stick out my tongue in response. Ruth is my best friend and I’d never, ever want to live in a world without her—but we’ve always bickered like children. And we’ve always enjoyed it.

“I’m not ,” I continue hotly. “I just don’t know anyone here. Not anymore. I’ve been gone nearly ten years, Roo.” I slide down on the sofa so my face is level with the side of her head, speaking over the music directly into her ear. “It’s been a long time.”

“That’s why I invited you.” She rolls her eyes, and I half-expect her to add ‘duh’ to the end of her sentence. “C’mon, Jay, you’re home. You’re here. You’re alive . After all that, you made it out. Isn’t it time to just live?”

Just living sounds good. Maybe if I could convince the nightmares to let me just live , or the constant ache in my leg, the way it throbs at the barest hint of rain, the way knives stab hot and hard through the soles of my feet when I take my first steps every morning. Yeah, I’d like to just live , if only I could manage it.

I don’t say any of this. Roo knows some of what happened, but there’s plenty I’ll never tell. She knows I was injured, and the severity of the injury itself, but if I have my way, she’ll never learn how it happened. She’ll never find out how it still affects me every day. From the day she was born, it was my self-imposed job to keep her safe, and I’ll protect her with my life, no matter the cost. I hope she never learns the extent of what happened out there.

Katy has been watching us intently. I’ve had half an eye on her beside me and half an eye on the club’s exits, and as Ruth and I bickered, Katy’s eyes darted between us. I pat Ruth on the arm and slouch further in my seat, feeling my body begin to tense as the bass becomes heavier, pounding in time with my heartbeat. Amie and Paloma wave from the edge of the dance floor and Ruth pats my shoulder as she stands, beelining for her friends. Katy takes the opportunity to slide closer, taking the glass from my hand and replacing it with her own.

“Taste this,” she shouts into my ear. “What do you think?”

I take a sip and hold it in my mouth, testing the flavours on my tongue. Huh.

“Too much citrus,” I shout back. “I don’t know if I like it.” I hold out my glass to her and she smiles into my drink as she tastes it.

“Oh, that’s good. ” She sighs happily, taking another quick sip before swapping our glasses back. “That’s really good.”

“It’s Belgian,” I tell her. I don’t know why I’m still talking. I don’t know a lot about beer, especially IPAs, but I have my favourites. And so does Katy, it would seem.

“Some of the best beers are!”

We lapse into quiet for a moment and I can feel Katy’s eyes on me the entire time. I take another long drink from my glass, savouring the bready, almost caramel-like flavour as I exhale heavily.

“You doing okay?” Katy nudges my shoulder. I turn to her, finally facing her after another beat of silence.

“I’m good,” I say with a tight smile. “Honest.” I might have crossed my toes inside my boots, because that is a big fat lie. I’m not good. But I think I might be just about as good as I’m going to get. I blow out another long breath and slouch even further.

“There’s a new brewery in Sunbridge,” Katy says. She’s even closer now, pressed against me from shoulder to knee. She’s warm and she smells sweet, and her eyes are bright. She’s even prettier than Paloma. “They have loads of IPAs and ales. Maybe… I mean—would you want to go? With me? For lunch, maybe, they do lunch I think. As friends.”

I turn to her and smile. At least, I think it’s a smile. It might just be a slightly constipated grimace.

“Friends? That sounds good. Nice.” God, what is it about Katy? She has me tongue-tied like a pubescent teen seeing a girl for the first time. Why can’t I get my words out? “It sounds nice.”

Ruth grabs my hand and drags me to the dance floor, and I dance with her—if you can call it dancing. It’s something more akin to a barely-rhythmic sway, and it’s done under sufferance, but a dance is the one thing my sister asked of me for her birthday. I manage half a song before my leg begins to ache, but for Ruth, I take a deep breath and power through, just about staying on my feet for the entire three minutes before I hobble my way back to Katy and Paloma, who are saving our table whilst Amie buys another round of drinks.

Between Katy’s conversation, and Amie and Paloma’s dance floor antics, increasingly wild as the night wears on… well, the evening isn’t nearly as terrible as I thought it might be.

A week after spending an evening with Ruth and her friends at Pacifica, I find myself chopping vegetables in her kitchen, helping her prepare for what she’s been referring to all afternoon as a celebration of margaritas and fajitas . I came over to lend her some tools and help her put together some new furniture, and she put me to work. Now, she’s sprawled out on her sofa—decidedly not using the brand new desk I’ve just built—clacking at her laptop keyboard and occasionally barking into the headset perched jauntily over one ear.

“No, Walter, you can’t do that,” she says, and I smirk. She’s been politely tearing this Walter dude a brand new asshole for the last forty minutes, and my sister is not a patient woman. She covers the microphone and sighs heavily, before pulling her hand back. I sense she’s about to lose what little patience she has left.

“Because that would very much be grounds for unfair dismissal; they’ll sue and they’ll win. And frankly, Walter, I couldn’t even begin to defend your actions on that one because it’s bullshit . This is the bed we’ve made. Now we have to lie in it. Come up with something else.”

Damn , my sister is fierce when she wants to be. I return to slicing peppers as she turns to roll her eyes at me, lest she catch me eavesdropping on one side of her conference call.

“Fine, you do that, Walter. I’ll talk to you then.”

She tears the headset off her head and flings it to the ground, throwing her arms out dramatically.

“How does someone so obnoxiously ignorant become so important? How did that man become CEO when he doesn’t have the first fucking clue?”

“It’s the obnoxious ignorance,” I say. “It’s a free pass to unlimited power.” I wiggle my fingers in a piss-poor attempt at jazz hands.

“He’s a fucking moron.” Ruth slams her laptop shut. “I’m gonna have to go to New York again to fix this absolute clusterfuck. I can tell.”

I hum, moving from peppers to onions.

“What a shame for you, having to fly across the world in business class on someone else’s dime,” I comment wryly. “Being a highly sought-after corporate lawyer is such a tough life.” Ruth throws her pen at my head, but because my dear sister has the aim of a one-armed sloth taking a nap, it misses by quite a margin.

“Thanks for cutting the veggies,” she says, crossing the room and slipping into the kitchen. She pats me on the arm, rounds the counter, and opens the fridge, pulling out the tub of marinating chicken. My mouth begins to water from the smell of the spices. Sometimes I forget what a fantastic cook my sister is. I’m hardly a slouch in the kitchen—I guess that’s what you get for being the kids of a butcher and a pastry chef—our parents taught us both to cook as soon as we were tall enough to reach the kitchen counters.

“Smells good, Roo,” I say, slapping her hand away as she reaches in to steal a stick of pepper. I’ve arranged the thick sticks of pepper neatly, stacked by colour, and the julienne cuts of red onion are stacking up beside them.

“Thanks, bro,” she says, swatting me back. She pours the chicken and its marinade into a large baking dish and covers it with foil before sliding it into the oven. Her door phone buzzes three times and she skips across the room.

“That’ll be Katy,” she calls to me, checking the tiny screen on the intercom before pushing the door release button.

“Which one is Katy?” I ask, feigning confusion.

“Uh, the one who isn’t Amie or Paloma?” my sister responds sassily. I pick up a stick of pepper and launch it directly at her head. It misses, but it grazes her ear as she ducks to avoid it. I don’t really need to ask. I know who Katy is. She’s the curvy blonde with the coffee eyes and pouty lips. The one whose hand on my arm ignited nerve endings I thought long dead. The one who invited me to lunch.

She’s the one whose calm, reassuring smile has, for reasons unknown, been floating behind my closed eyelids every night.

There’s a loud shriek and I hear my sister making demands, talking a mile a minute before Katy has even entered the flat. It’s mostly unintelligible noise, but I think I make out the words highlights and fuck me dress .

Fuck me .

I plaster on a smile as Katy comes into view—thankfully, not wearing a dress, fuck me or otherwise—although I wouldn’t complain about seeing it. Instead, she’s wearing jeans that mold perfectly to her hips and a long-sleeved tee that hugs her narrow waist and shows off her boobs with a deep V-neck. Fuck me indeed.

“Oh, hey Jay,” she sings as she shrugs out of her leather jacket. She lays it over the back of the sofa. “I didn’t know you were joining us. Wait— are you joining us?”

She looks over at Ruth, who is busy packing away her laptop.

“There’s plenty of food,” Ruth replies. “And I do kind of owe him for putting him to work all afternoon.”

“And I have done half of your meal prep for you,” I chime in, pointing a spoon in her direction. I’ve finished slicing veggies, and I’ve moved on to mixing a cheese sauce for nachos.

“So, you’re staying, then.” My sister hides her laptop bag behind her closed bedroom door and grins mischievously. I glance at Katy, who is eyeing me with a hopeful smile. Something blooms in my chest.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I say with a cheeky smile, popping a carrot stick into my mouth and crunching loudly.

Between my sister and Katy, the conversation is loud and full of laughter, and I sit back to let them take the lead. When Paloma arrives, followed soon thereafter by Amie, the volume increases tenfold.

I study my sister and her friends. She and Amie are almost the same height; both slender, with barely a handful of curves between them. Paloma is a few inches taller and downright skinny, with a wide smile that shows off perfectly straight teeth, and almost ghost-white skin exploding with vibrant colour.

By contrast, Katy is several inches shorter than my sister—making the height difference between her and Paloma almost comical. She has a classic hourglass figure with a narrow waist and curvy hips that have my fingers itching to settle in their dips and valleys. She beams at me from across the room, her smile smacking me right in the chest with the warmth of a summer morning.

Desperate for a brief reprieve from the shrill laughter, I excuse myself to the kitchen to prepare the nachos, while Ruth holds court from the sofa. What I don’t expect is a small hand on my shoulder, and the smell of fresh citrus filling my senses as I pile tortilla chips on a serving platter.

“Are you okay? You looked… like you were struggling.” Katy takes a moment to find her words.

“Just a little loud,” I answer carefully. Truth is, since coming home, being surrounded by noise is hard. Silence is equally hard. I haven’t found a happy medium yet. Everything is either overstimulating or not stimulating enough. Everything either reminds me too much of what I’ve lost or too much of what I’d rather forget.

“Yeah, they— we ”—she pauses to correct herself—“can be a little… boisterous. Unhinged. Mostly Paloma, but we all take our share of the blame. Still, if it’s too much—if we’re too much—I can ask them to tone it down. I’ll ask them.”

Her brown eyes bore into me, and I’m pretty sure she can probably read my whole soul. Hell, if she continues to bite her lip like that, I might just let her. I might just let her get a little too close, and fuck the consequences. Her eyes are earthy and deep, searching my face with concern.

“Don’t,” I plead. “Don’t do that. It’s fine, really.”

Her eyes search my face further. Mine connect with them and in a split second, the dizzying notion that we might have known each other for a hundred lifetimes crashes into me. Something in the universe wants me to know Katy Keller.

“If you’re sure,” she says eventually. But it doesn’t escape my notice that she laughs a little more quietly for the rest of the night.