Dalton
Nellis AFB
The air’s already dry and humming with heat, and it’s barely ten.
You can smell the jet fuel on the wind. Static displays are glittering like metal statues under the sun.
Vendors are yelling over speakers. Families cluster near snow cone carts and flightline barriers, and the whole place vibrates with movement.
Lila loves to call it controlled chaos in slow motion.
Her bread and butter, probably why she’s so good at her job.
Logan and Wells are suiting up inside the hangar, finishing their brief, and I’m technically on standby, which mostly means trying not to sweat through my flight suit while staying visible. Present but not needed.
I scan the crowd, spotting them before they see me.
Hadley bouncing along beside Ivy in a tiny sundress, sparkly strawberry sunglasses on her nose and a stuffed F-22 clipped to her backpack.
Ivy’s holding her hand, head turned toward a merch table, smiling at something Hadley’s saying.
She’s wearing cutoff shorts, long legs on full display, and a white T-shirt with an American flag on it knotted in the front.
Her light hair is braided down her back, a few pieces pulled loose by the breeze beneath a Raptor demo team hat, and there’s sunscreen smudged across her collarbone that somehow makes her even more distracting.
They’re...something. The kind of something I have no business staring at but can’t seem to make myself stop. And every time, it’s the same. Every time Ivy walks into a room, something in me tightens. She’s just out of reach. And I hate how much I notice.
I should look away.
I don’t.
Hadley spots me first.
“Dalton!” she yells, taking off at a skip.
I brace and crouch a little, catching her when she jumps right into my arms. She smells like lavender and sunscreen. Her cheeks are already pink from the sun, but she’s grinning like she just won a trophy.
“You made it,” I say, standing up with her in my arms and shifting her onto one hip.
Her sunglasses slide down her face and she presses them up with both hands. “We saw jets! And I got these sunglasses! And there’s ice cream.”
“Well then, you’ve seen the best parts.”
Ivy catches up a second later, slower, a little flushed from the heat.
“Sorry,” she says, tugging her shirt down slightly to cover the small, exposed sliver of her defined stomach. “She made a beeline.”
“I don’t blame her.” I offer her a cold water from the cooler beside me. “You good?”
“Thank you.” She takes it, presses it to her throat for a second before twisting the cap off. “I’m good. Hot. But good.”
I nod, eyes skimming the curve of her neck before I can stop them. “Welcome to Vegas.”
She smirks. “Remind me again why we thought this was a good idea?”
“You’re safer here. Surrounded by security, on a military base, with me.” That last part comes out lower than I meant. She blinks, then looks away.
“Yeah,” she says, voice quieter. “I know.”
Hadley wiggles impatiently, tugging my sleeve. “Is it time yet? Is Logan going to fly fast now?”
“Soon,” I say, setting her down gently. “He and Wells are getting ready.”
“Are they going to do the upside-down flip-spinny thing?”
I grin. “Probably.”
She gasps like this is the greatest news she’s ever heard.
I glance at Ivy, trying to read her. She’s got her sunglasses on now, big, round, movie star ones, but her jaw’s tight. Her body’s still. The tension’s back.
“You okay?” I murmur.
She nods once, sharp. “Just...watching the exits. Force of habit.”
I want to say something. I don’t know what. So instead, I offer her another bottle of water. It’s stupid, small, but it’s something. A gesture. A grounding point.
Her fingers brush mine when she takes it, and the contact jolts through me like the heat off the tarmac. Quick and unwanted and impossible to ignore.
Then Townsend’s voice blasts over the speaker system, announcing the demo team, and cutting through the static and crowd noise with that signature showman rhythm.
Hadley starts bouncing again. I let the noise cover the silence stretching between me and Ivy.
Let the jets take the sky. But even with all that thunder overhead, I can still hear the sound of her breath beside me.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, you’re about to witness the power, precision, and performance of your United States Air Force’s F-22 Raptor…”
The crowd tightens near the barricades. Kids on shoulders. Cameras up. Sunglasses turned toward the endless blue.
Beside me, Hadley is vibrating with excitement as Ivy reaches into her backpack and takes out her earmuffs. Hadley looks like she wants to protest but instead takes them and slips them on over her ears. Ivy checks to make sure they’re on properly before taking a step back.
Her face turns toward the sky, her sunglasses still hiding most of her expression. Her shoulders are rigid again, that same coiled tension I saw the day she moved in. And her fingers drum against her thigh. Not nervously, rhythmically. Like she’s marking time for a routine I can’t hear.
She’s not just watching. She’s bracing.
“You sure you’re okay?” I murmur again, low enough that Hadley doesn’t catch it.
Ivy exhales through her nose. “I don’t do well in crowds.”
We’re tucked under the demo team’s operations tent, pitched on a slab of tarmac just behind the show line.
The canvas walls flutter in the heat, blocking out most of the noise.
Only people with proper lanyards or base credentials can get up here—crew, pilots, a handful of public affairs staff, maybe a few VIPs.
Everyone else is a hundred yards and two security checks away.
She’s in the safest place she could be without being inside the jet itself.
I motion to the space around us. “You’re not in the crowd.”
She lifts her chin but doesn’t answer. Her gaze flicks toward the open tarmac where the two static Raptors glint like coiled predators in the sun.
I step a little closer, careful. My voice drops. “You’re with us.”
She looks at me, really looks. And just for a second, the lines of tension in her shoulders soften.
Overhead, the Raptors appear. Just a speck at first, then a metallic streak that splits the sky in two.
Hadley lets out a squeal so high-pitched I’m surprised the jet can’t hear her. “There! It’s spinning! It’s upside down!”
She’s not wrong.
Logan comes in low and fast, then rolls into a high-alpha pass that drops jaws across the tarmac. The roar of it punches through the air like thunder wrapped in steel. It’s controlled chaos. Grace and violence at once.
I flick a glance at Ivy.
Her lips are parted, barely. She’s not bracing anymore. She’s watching. Really watching.
“You ever seen one fly up close?” I ask.
She shakes her head, eyes still skyward. “Not like this.”
“What do you think?”
She hesitates. “It’s terrifying.”
“But?”
“…beautiful.”
My chest pulls a little. She probably doesn’t even hear herself.
I nudge her gently with my elbow. “Maybe you were a pilot in a past life.”
She snorts. “I’d look great in the flight suit, but no thanks. I prefer gravity.”
“Some of us like to defy it.”
“Yeah, well,” she says, glancing at me sideways, “some of us have enough chaos without strapping ourselves to it.”
The words are flippant. Her tone isn’t.
I open my mouth, but Hadley tugs on my leg before I can respond.
“Is that Logan? Or Wells?”
“That’s Logan right now,” I say, crouching a little to her level. “Wells is about to come back in from over there.” I point to the left of show center where Wells is racing back into view.
Her mouth makes a perfect O. “He’s so fast. Is he faster than you?”
I shoot Ivy a look as I answer, deadpan. “No.”
She laughs into her water bottle.
“Modest,” she murmurs.
“Truthful,” I counter.
The show keeps unfolding. The sound rolls over us in waves.
Engine whines, afterburner thunder, gasps from the crowd.
Townsend's voice hypes it all in the background, but I barely hear him anymore. All I see is the way Ivy slowly unwinds without realizing it. Her body loosens. She shifts her weight. Her hand slips down to rest lightly on Hadley’s shoulder.
I want to ask her what she’s thinking. But I don’t want to push her off-balance now that she’s finally finding her footing.
Still, something’s there. The heat between us is more than just Nevada sun. It’s that low, slow burn that keeps trying to turn into something else.
She senses me looking and tilts her head. “What?”
I shrug. “Nothing.”
“That’s the worst answer.”
“You didn’t ask a real question.”
Her eyes narrow behind the sunglasses. “So you were staring at me for no reason?”
I laugh. “I didn’t say it was for no reason.”
She’s quiet for a second. Then, “You’re so annoying.”
“And you’re sunburning. I told you SPF 30 wasn’t going to cut it.”
“I have good skin.”
“I noticed.”
That stops her. Just long enough to make her eyes flick down to my mouth before she catches herself and looks away again.
Logan and Wells peel off for the finale.
Hadley starts jumping again. Ivy exhales, hand going back to her hip.
And all I can think is that I want more of this. More of her like this. Unguarded. Sunlit. Giving me hell but not pushing me away. I don't know what any of that means yet. But I know I want to find out.