Lili
THREE MONTHS LATER
I leveled the tiny plane as we flew east over the ridgeline, and the New River Gorge opened up beneath us like a wound in the earth, green and deep and ancient.
Conrad's hand was on my thigh. He'd put it there somewhere over Kentucky and hadn't moved it since.
He wasn't nervous — he'd flown in machines far less reliable than this one, maintained by mechanics far less meticulous than the woman currently at the controls. No, Conrad Holt had his hand on my thigh because he couldn’t bear to be away from me for a single unnecessary second.
His palm was warm through my jeans, his thumb tracing a pattern on my knee. "That's it," he said. "Down in the valley. Follow the creek south."
I followed the water. The Cessna handled the mountain air the way I'd known she would — responsive, light, precise. She was ours. The second I passed my final certification, Holt dumped his savings toward our new business in the form of a well-used plane that lived in his … our back yard.
Conrad had gone over every inch of her before he'd let me fly, and I'd let him, because watching Conrad Holt inspect an aircraft was really fucking hot.
"There," he said. "The clearing past the tree line. See the vehicles?"
I saw a cluster of trucks parked along a rustic runway behind a property backed up against the mountain.
I smiled at the house with a wraparound porch and smoke coming from the chimney. There was even a big white dog lying on the front steps.
I brought us down smooth. Conrad's hand tightened on my thigh as we touched down, and when I looked at him he was watching me with an expression I'd seen exactly once before — the morning after the storm, when I'd told him about my pilot's license and he'd looked at me like every question he'd ever had about me had been answered at once.
"Show-off," he said.
"You love it."
"I love you,” he said, the words familiar now but thrilling every time we said them to one another.
The dog bounded toward us as I killed the engine. A Great Pyrenees, enormous, white, with a graying muzzle and calm brown eyes. He sniffed Conrad's hand when he stepped down and then pressed his massive head against Conrad's thigh and stayed there.
"Edgar." Conrad's voice was rough with emotion. He knelt and put both hands in the dog's fur and Edgar leaned into him with his full weight. I got the sense my man and this dog had seen some things together.
"Holt." A voice came from the porch. Low, rough, the same voice from the voicemail after the storm in Colorado. Tanner Wolf came down the steps, a tall man in his forties, with salt and pepper hair and a bit of a haunted expression. A woman followed him—she appeared to be younger and more cheerful.
She surprised all of us by flinging her arms around Conrad. “You must be the famous Holt,” she said. “I’m Drew and I’m hitched to this one.” She hooked a thumb back toward the man Conrad insisted on calling by his canine last name.
Conrad extracted himself from dog and Drew and embraced his old friend. I saw my man’s shoulders quake with emotion before they pulled apart.
"You look good," Tanner said, stepping back.
"You look married."
"Feels about right." Tanner looked at me. His eyes were sharp and careful and not unkind. "You must be the one who grounded his fleet in a storm."
"Among other things," I said.
Drew came forward and hugged me like we'd known each other for years. "I'm so glad you came," she said. I liked her immediately.
The others were inside. Conrad brought me through the front door with his hand on the small of my back and I felt him brace himself — a small shift in his posture, a squaring of the shoulders, the way he stood when he was about to face something difficult.
These were the men he'd worked alongside.
The men who'd broken the same night he did.
"Boys," Tanner said, from behind us. "Holt's here. And he brought a lady.”
They were in the living room around a table that held more food than five men could eat and not nearly enough liquor to fill the silence between them. I counted four, plus Tanner.
Conrad introduced them one by one.
Atlas Blackwell was sitting in the corner chair closest to the wall. He was the trauma surgeon, the dark-haired man with sad eyes and a jaw that seemed like it’d been clenched since the mudslide.
Their friend Cormac Reed stood at the window. He was the flight nurse, I recalled as he shook my hand. Conrad had told me Reed’s fiancée had died in the mudslide. I could see the shape of that loss in the careful way he held himself, as if any sudden movement might reopen something.
Ford McKenna was in the kitchen doorway, holding a beer he wasn't drinking. Yet another medical man, the former emergency doctor had circles under his eyes even though I knew he wasn’t up late working shifts any longer.
These men were all grieving, retreated in the wild hills of West Virginia …
although Tanner found his way to the light.
That was obvious in the way he smiled at his wife, served food to his friends, made us all feel welcome in his home. The men of Raptor Creek were gentle in their sadness. They were kind to me and I could tell they loved Conrad Holt fiercely.
They asked us about our plans and we gave them a tour of the Cessna. The men started chatting about old times, and Drew pulled me aside to the kitchen. “So,” she asked, leaning against the counter and fanning herself against the warmth in the room. “Does yours speak in monosyllables, too?”
I laughed. “He’s working his way up to short sentences. What about Tanner?”
She grinned. “Last week he talked for twenty minutes."
I looked through the doorway at Conrad, who was sitting on the arm of the couch telling our host something about a helicopter engine, using his hands to describe it, and Tanner caught his wife’s eye across the room.
I felt the heat between them and recognized it—Conrad looked at me with the same ferocity. I knew in that moment we’d be fine, Conrad and me, because I saw what happened when two people tore down their fences and let their love connect them.
Eventually, Tanner announced that dinner was served, and we all sat around the table. Even Edgar the dog had a place near the head. We ate delicious food until Tanner stood, a glass of whiskey in one hand, his wife’s hand clutched in the other.
Someone passed glasses of spirits around the table and I bit my lip, knowing I shouldn’t drink mine but not wanting to draw attention away from the happy couple in this moment, in their home.
Tanner was talking about second chances and I couldn’t hear him because my throat closed in anticipation. At the end of his toast, I raised my glass and pretended to drink, setting the glass down as Conrad slide an arm along my thigh, his hand asking a question.
Conrad noticed everything about my body. He'd been studying me for months now — my hands, my mouth, the way I breathed, the way I moved. He knew me the way he knew an engine, every sound and hesitation catalogued.
"Lili."
"Yeah."
"You didn't drink."
The room was loud enough that nobody heard him. Drew was laughing at something Ford had said. Atlas was refilling his glass. Tanner had his arm around his wife and was looking at her like she was the only solid thing in the room.
"No," I said. "I didn't."
Conrad went very still. “It’s not like you to skip a toast. Unless…”
He arched a brow at me and I knew that he understood my reason. I closed my eyes and leaned close to him. “Please don’t make a scene. I was going to tell you after…”
“Baby,” he said, his voice sharp with emotion. I looked at him. His green eyes were bright and wet. “Are you?”
I nodded and whispered, “I’m pregnant.”
Conrad shouted. It was a sound — a whoop, raw, loud, joyful. Every head in the room turned. “We’re having a baby,” Conrad shouted. He slapped the table in joy as Drew’s hand went to her mouth. Tanner broke out in a grin and every one of these sad men looked glad in that moment.
Conrad pulled me to my feet and kissed me in front of all of them and said, against my mouth, loud enough for the room, "She's pregnant."
The noise that followed was not something I could have predicted from a room full of broken men. They were all hugging and laughing.
Atlas Blackwell stood up from his corner chair. He crossed the room to where I was standing, and he looked at me with those dark, clinical eyes, and I saw something shift behind them — something painful and private and old.
"You should stick around Raptor Creek for a while," he said. His voice was low and steady. "You'd have good medical care. A team she can trust."
He meant himself. He meant Cormac the nurse and Ford the ER doctor.
He meant the men in this room who had stopped practicing medicine because the last time they'd tried, disaster overtook their skill.
Atlas, it seemed, wanted to try again to see if he could have a different outcome with his friend. With our baby.
Conrad's arm slid around my waist. His hand splayed across my stomach. The room was loud with joy and I was crying and I didn't care.
“You make a great point, Atlas,” Conrad said. “We'll think about it.”
But we both knew what the answer was going to be.
* * *