Chapter Twenty #3
She nods. “Well would you look at that? Turns out your cooking skills aren’t a lost cause after all. He can be taught, ladies and gentlemen.”
“You think Adeline will believe us?”
“Nope,” she says.
We both chuckle for a second, and then we start on the food.
We eat, trading bites. She bumps my knee with hers; I lean into it like gravity.
When the truffles come out, she picks one up and holds it to my mouth.
Chocolate melts against my tongue while I look at her looking at me, and I have to breathe through it because now I’m thinking about the way she tastes with sugar on her lips and nothing else in the world to interrupt.
“How long have you been flying?” she asks when the silence gets too loud.
“Long enough,” I say simply, but I know that the curious look in her eyes means that being vague won’t fly with her anymore. I remind myself that there are reasons why I brought her out here other than just a helicopter ride. I take a deep breath. Here goes nothing.
“Right, well, after my first deployment. My commanding officer noticed that I had a head for instruments, hands that didn’t shake, and a lack of fear that's probably more reckless than brave,” I say.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the way I was raised that almost felt like I was on borrowed time anyway.
My commander suggested I apply for the SOAR Night Stalker program.
‘They could use a kid with a death wish’ were his exact words to me. So I did. And then I passed.”
She touches my left ear, gentle. “And your hearing?”
I could lie. I could redirect. But I make myself do neither. “Left ear went sideways after a blast. The right ear compensates. In the air, it’s all headsets and habit.”
“I think it’s more than that. It’s instinct, it’s second nature. You don’t look like you have to think about any of it. It’s so natural that it almost seems like there’s no end or beginning between you and that helicopter. Like you’re one unit.”
I didn’t have to explain it. She just sees everything that I feel but can’t verbalize.
And that’s when I know it. That’s the moment when I realize that Vivi’s the one…the only one, and I’ll have to give her up, but I won’t until the minute I have to. Not a second sooner.
“You said John is the only one who understood?”
I nod once, stare out over the water instead of at her.
“We were flying low over Kandahar—night op, low visibility. I had John in the back—my crew chief, my brother in every way but blood. We’d done this run a hundred times.
It was an extraction mission. Pick up our unit and get the hell out of there.
Just as John and I landed, the blast hit. ”
The sound and concussion of the hit is still in my bones, even years later.
“We hit hard but it would have been worse if we hadn’t touched down.
I woke up upside down, completely disoriented.
I didn’t know what was up or down at first. Alarms screaming in my headset, fuel in the air so thick it burned my lungs.
My shoulder was half torn out of its socket, my ear ringing so bad I couldn’t hear anything else.
For a second I thought we were both dead, and I woke up in hell. ”
Her fingers are still around her mug.
“Then I heard him first, yelling at me to get the fuck out. He called my name two or three more times, waiting for me to respond. By the time I got my bearings and got out of my seat, trying to see him through the smoke and fire, he was there—slumped forward, helmet cracked, blood down the side of his face. He must have passed out from smoke inhalation after he called out my name. He wasn’t dead.
Not yet. He was unconscious but breathing.
And that was it. My mission changed to saving him.
I cut him free the best I could with my arm still dislocated, got him over my shoulder, and ran.
” I remember it all so vividly that I almost want to stop telling her because it feels like I’m taking her there with me, and I don’t want her anywhere near it.
“I can’t even imagine what that must have been like,” she says, urging me on.
I don’t want to continue but I need her to understand why I am the way I am. I have to keep going.
“I could hear on the radio attached to John. The unit saw the explosion and called in a new extraction team. The explosion started a fire around us, and they couldn’t find a way in.
I ran in the direction they were giving coordinates for, though I had no way of knowing for sure if I was going in the right direction.
I was still suffering from vertigo, smoke inhalation, and bleeding internally.
If it hadn’t been for thinking I could save John, I don’t think I’d have made it twenty feet with my own injuries.
But I knew he needed me, and that was enough to keep moving. ”
“Adrenaline,” she whispers.
I nod.
“They say mothers have lifted cars off their children when adrenaline hits like that.”
“It’s the only way I would have made it out. Without that desperation to get John to safety, I wouldn’t have made it. The unit was too far away at that point. The new rescue team wouldn’t have made it to us before the inhalation or fire would have killed us.”
She blows out a heavy breath, and I feel that same weight in my chest.
“We made it to the extraction point. Got on the medevac. I thought we’d pulled it off. Thought we’d get to the medical base, and I’d sit by his bed and watch him wake up. But halfway there… he stopped breathing. I was holding him when it happened.”
Vivi’s eyes are glossy now, fixed on mine like she’s afraid to blink.
“Without John, I wouldn’t be here. He’s the reason I made it out.
The reason I keep going. Because I know that if John were still here, he would kick my ass if I ever gave up.
So I wear his dog tags so that I never forget.
And I buried him with mine.” I tap my chest where they hang.
“Every time I think I’ve got nothing left in me, I feel the weight of those tags, and I remember that I have more in me than I think I do. ”
For a second, she just looks at me. No blinking. No nervous shifting. No pretending like she knows what to say. Just that steady, unflinching gaze that makes me feel like she sees every piece of me, even the parts I keep under lock.
“After all of that, how do you get back in a helicopter like today?”
“Because I don’t associate the helicopter with John’s death.
That Black Hawk saved more lives than it ever lost,” I tell her.
“John and I were one of the most successful extraction teams out there. The hundreds of wins outweigh the bad. Completing a successful mission becomes an addiction. You always want just one more, no matter how many you’ve had.
It’s the losses that keep you up at night.
But we knew the risks. We knew one day it might be us. ”
“What made you do it for fifteen years like that?”
“Knowing that there are still men out there, special forces teams that need you to show up and get them out of hostile situations. Without you, they die. That’s what makes you get up every day and climb into a Black Hawk, not knowing if you’re ever coming back.”
“That’s why you're so protective. It’s deeply ingrained, isn’t it? Me, Adeline, the guys on the Hawkeyes. You show up when someone needs you. For a flat tire, for a late hit to your goalie, to a little girl who isn’t yours, but you love her as if she is.”
“I can’t turn it off.”
“That’s because it’s not taught…it’s who you are, Trey. And it’s beautiful.”
“I would have stayed in if Tommy hadn’t died. I’m not the one who made the call, he did. Losing John and Tommy all in a month was more than he thought I could recover from.”
“You retired for her?”
“I wish I could say I made the decision for her, but it was made for me. I was lying in a hospital bed—multiple surgeries on my shoulder, knee, ear…after the explosion. I had been there for a month in the VA hospital overseas in Japan, trying to come to terms with losing John, when my commander came in and told me that he had just gotten a call. My brother Tommy and his wife died in a car accident the night before from a drunk driver. I was now her guardian, and my commander issued a medical discharge.”
Her lips part slightly, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“I don’t tell a lot of people about my time in the Army,” I admit, my voice low and even.
“I don’t let them see any part of it, especially not Adeline.
But whatever the hell this is between us makes me not want to keep anything from you.
I want to tell you everything, even if it means you see the worst part of me. ”
Something flickers in her eyes—relief, maybe, or recognition—and then she moves. Sets her mug aside and climbs into my lap like she belongs there, knees bracketing my hips, hands cupping my face.
“I don’t know what this is either,” she says, her voice steady but thick. “But I know I feel safe with you. I want to know everything you’ll tell me. I want to take care of you like you take care of me.”
My hands come up to her waist, anchoring her to me. “Then give me two weeks. Every minute we can get before the world catches up. No holding back. No pretending.”
Her mouth curves, not quite a smile but close. “Two weeks,” she repeats. “All in.”
“All in,” I echo, and then I’m kissing her like the deal’s sealed in blood and heat. That neither of us can go back on our word. A vow. As good of a vow as I’ll ever get from her, until she vows her life to Jameson.
Her hands are in my hair, her knees bracketing my hips, the weight of her pressing me into the blanket.
She shifts just enough to drag across me, and my body answers in a way that has nothing to do with patience.
Her jacket slips to the ground, my palms sliding under her shirt, fingers splaying over the heat of her back.
She rolls her hips once, slow and deliberate, and my breath punches out. I grip her ass, guiding the next movement, and she follows, riding me through layers of denim until I can’t remember why we’re still wearing anything.
When I break from her mouth, she’s flushed, lips parted, eyes bright with want.
“Hold on,” I tell her, and she barely has time to draw a breath before I’ve got my hands under her thighs, lifting her.
She laughs—breathless, startled—arms looping around my neck as I carry her the few steps to the helicopter.
The jump seat creaks under us when I set her down, pulling her forward until she’s straddling me again, knees braced on either side.
The close quarters press us together from shoulder to knee, the faint tick of cooling metal surrounding us.
Her fingers hook in my shirt, yanking it over my head, and then her mouth is on my neck, teeth scraping lightly.
I get her jeans open, shoving them down just enough, my hands greedy on bare skin. She tugs at my zipper, freeing me, and then she’s sinking onto me, slow enough that my head falls back against the seat.
“There’s no condom between us, Vivi,” I warn, though I wish I could keep my damn mouth shut because, fuck me, she feels good bare around my cock.
She stops and stares back at me. “I’m on birth control.” Her words are cautious as if her answer might not be an acceptable one.
Instead, I respond by pulling her mouth back down to mine.
The first roll of her hips is almost gentle, testing, and then she finds her rhythm, grinding into a deep press, the angle perfect in this tight space. My hands find her waist, then her hips, guiding her even though she’s already moving exactly how I need her to.
The sounds in here are different—soft creak of the seat, the breathy hitch in her throat, the faint jostle of metal when her hips rock harder.
Every shift drags heat through me, winding tighter.
I slide one hand up under her shirt, cupping her breast, thumb brushing over a peaked nipple until she gasps.
Her forehead drops to mine, breath mingling, our bodies locked together in a rhythm that feels less like fucking and more like we’re claiming each other. Relentless until the air is thick with the smell of sex, and I could live in it. Live in this moment with her.
When she starts to tremble, I hold her there, rolling up into her until she comes with a soft cry that shudders through both of us.
I follow, burying myself deep, holding her in place as the release rips through me.
Filling her body with hot white heat. Filling her with me.
No protection between us. No barrier to keep me from her.
She stays draped over me, breathing hard, her hair falling around us like a curtain.
After a moment, she tilts her head, her mouth curving. “Tell me…is this the first time you’ve fucked in a helicopter?”
I huff out a laugh, still catching my breath. “Yeah. First time.” I brush my lips over hers, lingering. “But everything feels like the first time with you.”
Her grin widens. “Good answer.”
I kiss her again, slower this time, and when I pull back, I keep my forehead against hers. “This,” I say, “is by far my favorite memory in a helicopter.”
Her smile softens, and for a second, I let myself believe we’ll get a hell of a lot more firsts before the clock runs out. Two more weeks left.