Chapter 24
If tacos can fall apart and get messy, but stay hot and still be amazing, then so can you.
— Quinn to Shayne
SHAYNE
“ Are you sure about this?” I asked him as I watched him start to copy me in setting up his harness.
He’d done this before, of course. He was in the military, and they’d done the jump process quite a few times from what he’d told me. But he’d never actually enjoyed it like I did.
Also , he was jumping solo despite not being certified to do so.
Which made me feel kind of worried because that wasn’t something that should be allowed. But jumping out of an airplane like this wasn’t something you forgot.
It was ingrained in your mind, forever there. Like riding a bike, but more.
He offered me a wink before saying, “ Just because it’s not something I do on my own, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it with you. If you love it, I want to do it with you. Simple as that.”
This man.
He had no idea what he did to me.
“ Okay ,” I said, deciding that I’d stop asking him repeatedly if he was sure.
He wouldn’t lie to me.
That I knew—at least now I did, anyway.
I finished my harness up, then wiggled my eyebrows at him. “ Ready to be flying free, big boy?”
He reached forward and picked me up, tossing me over his shoulder.
I giggled as he walked us to the plane where Tom was waiting.
“ You ready?” Tom asked, a twinkle in his eye.
“ Ready as I’ll ever be, sir,” Quinn said as he deposited me into the plane and followed behind me.
Tom followed suit and started up the plane, going through his checklist.
As he did that, I studied Quinn for a few long seconds before rechecking his harness.
“ Remember ,” I said as I pointed at the parachute on him. “ Parachute here.” I tapped the pull. “ Then there’s the secondary chute. If you need the secondary chute…”
He placed a finger over my mouth. “ I know, baby. I know.”
I’d gone over it with him twice now.
And four times yesterday.
He did know.
I blew out a breath and felt the familiar zing of exhilaration as Tom got us up into the sky.
It took no time at all before we were at our jump point.
“ Ready ?” I asked him, touching my helmet.
He caught my hand, then maneuvered us until he was right behind me. “ Let’s go.”
We jumped, me in his arms.
The rush of adrenaline hit me like a mainline straight to an artery.
The moment we went weightless as he all but walked us out of the plane, all was right with my world.
I needed this—the outlet.
I loved this.
I loved even more that he was doing it with me.
We started to separate in the air as planned, knowing the correct distance we needed to be away from each other before we were to deploy our parachutes.
However , just as happy as I was that he was with me, dread and horror overtook me as it came time to pull the cord for the parachute, and it didn’t pull.
I yanked harder, and it did nothing.
Harder .
Still nothing.
Horror like I’d never felt before started to burrow into my heart and lungs, seizing them up.
Panic overtook me.
Quinn’s parachute deployed, and he was sailing up high above me before my next breath.
I switched to the emergency parachute, and again, nothing.
Heart seizing in my chest, I prayed like I’d never prayed before.
Before long, tears were streaming down my face and into my goggles, but I still continued to pull.
“ Fuck !”
Every single possible troubleshooting solution went through my mind, and I tried them all.
Nothing worked, though, and the ground got closer and closer and closer.
Just as I resigned myself that I was going to meet a bitter end, a body hit me so hard that it knocked the breath out of my lungs.
Quinn .
“ No , don’t!” I screamed as he pulled the second chute.
It wouldn’t be enough.
I’d kill him.
His secondary parachute opened, and though it worked, it didn’t slow us down near enough.
My momentum, paired with the combined weight of us… it was too much.
“ Shit ,” I breathed. “ Please , let me go!”
He buried his nose into my hair and said, “ Never .”
TOM
I’d never seen anything like it.
I’d watched her jump from my plane so many times at this point, it didn’t even phase me when I lost her.
Circling back around to land, I was vaguely watching the two falling figures out of the corner of my eye as I got into place.
One parachute opened.
But the other…
I circled back around, heart in my throat, as I watched from the plane high above them.
The second parachute never opened.
And the black shape in the sky was going so incredibly fast.
“ Oh , no.”
GERMAINE
“ What are we all doing here again?” I asked the group as a whole.
My family, all of them, including kids and spouses and grandkids alike, turned to look at me.
“ We’re gonna watch him propose, remember?”
“ He already proposed, though,” I pointed out.
“ We know, dear,” my wife said. “ But he wants to do it again, big like. So we’re all here to witness it. Remember ?”
I did, but…
“ Why aren’t they both deploying their parachutes?” my eldest granddaughter, Addison , asked innocently.
The conversation stopped, and we both looked up into the sky.
Addison was right.
Only one parachute was open.
My heart started to beat harder inside of my chest.
“ What’s …”
I watched as the falling figure without the parachute kept coming, faster and faster.
“ Oh my God ,” Garnett whispered.
“ Jesus Christ ,” someone else whispered.
I watched as the one who was obviously my son, who had the deployed parachute, separated from it.
One second it was attached to him, slowing him down, and the next he was falling fast away from the discarded parachute.
“ Oh , sweet baby Jesus ,” Hollis whispered shakily, her newborn daughter in her arms.
“ Oh , God ,” Ellodie cried. “ We need to call ambulances. Now .”
I was on the phone and giving out information in seconds.
“ Holy fuck, he’s moving,” I heard one of my boys say. “ He’s going to catch her.”
He did, indeed, catch her.
They both went spiraling in the air, spinning so fucking fast that I didn’t think there was any way to stop it.
But miraculously, they did.
The spinning slowed and the secondary parachute shot from Quinn’s back. They both jerked upward, and their free falls slowed.
“ They’re still coming too fast,” Gable murmured, terrifying worry etched on his face.
The same worry was reflected on all of our faces.
“ Daddy , what’s happening?” Addison cried. “ Daddy !”
I heard Keene murmur softly to his little girl, and then she was taken away from the group, along with Tex .
Hollis went as well, depositing her newborn baby in Keene’s arms before hustling back.
“ I need someone to get the go-bag out of the cruiser.” Hollis stiffened. “ I need this entire area cleared. It looks like they could land anywhere close. Auden , get your Jeep ready to go. We’re going to need to use it to drive over the terrain to get to them. Garrett , get on the phone with the hospital, we’re going to keep a doctor on the line while we triage this and wait for the medics.” She looked at Ande then. “ Get your people on the line. We’re going to need Angel Flight .”
Everyone followed orders.
I stayed exactly where I was and prayed that what was likely to happen wouldn’t. That somehow, some way, a miracle would happen in front of my eyes. That I wouldn’t have to witness my son and the love of his life hit the ground right in front of me.
But that didn’t come to fruition.
Though the parachute did its job, it wasn’t enough with their combined weight.