The Wind We Learned to Trust

She can model the wind. He knows how quickly it can change. Neither of them is ready for what happens when trust becomes the only safe way forward.

Flight-systems engineer Avery Seo has one hundred reasons to stay on the ground: the family balloon workshop is drowning in debt, her employer is trying to claim the weather technology she created, and failure could cost the people she loves their livelihoods.

Her last chance is the Open Sky Challenge, a thirty-day balloon expedition across the American West. The only pilot available is Nolan Cade, a former champion who has not flown as pilot in command since the crash that changed his younger brother’s life.

Avery trusts data. Nolan trusts the weather he can see. Across mountain passes, salt flats, desert storms, damaged equipment, and remote landings, their professional rivalry becomes an alliance - and then a love neither planned.

But when secret contracts offer each of them a way to save someone they love, Avery and Nolan repeat the same mistake: deciding privately what the other person should sacrifice. Their final flight will force them to choose between the winning wind and the people who need them to land.