F-16 Crashes in Alaska.
Each news article said the same variation of that one line. They told me nothing. Absolutely nothing. A feeling of helplessness hit me, followed by frustration and rage.
I wanted to scream. I couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop the tremors wracking my body.
It was surreal, sitting here, seeing my life—my entire fucking world—on television like that. How many times had I seen a similar headline and not thought twice about it? How many times had I heard a story about a soldier who died serving his country? And each time I’m sure I’d thought it was sad. But I hadn’t ever thought about it like this. Hadn’t ever thought about the fact that at that very moment there was someone waiting to hear if their loved one would come home.
It had never seemed real before. And now those four words were a knife in my chest.
I needed someone to call me. Someone to tell me Noah was okay. I needed to hear his voice. I needed to know if the pilot had made it. They could eject. Noah had told me about that. What if the pilot had ejected?
Why didn’t they say something?
If it wasn’t Noah, if God, please, if Noah was okay, then it hit me that those four words still meant that someone else was sitting at home with the same terror and panic I felt. I thought of all the families I’d come to know, of guys like Easy, of the kids I saw at the barbecues and parties. And it hit me like another knife to my chest that even if Noah was okay, we’d lost someone tonight. Or almost lost someone.
Oh my God.
Dani.
If anyone would have news, it would be Dani. It was early, but maybe she was up. Or maybe someone had called her. Surely, she would have heard something. I needed to call Dani.
I dialed her number, taking deep breaths, struggling to keep my tears under control, to keep my voice from cracking. She answered on the first ring.
“Jordan?”
“Did you hear?” The words were a whisper that sounded like they came from someone else.
“Yeah.” Her voice was calmer than mine, but I could hear the fear there. “I haven’t heard anything beyond what’s on the news, though.”
“What do we do?”
Her voice was grim. “We wait. Notification can take a while. They have our contact information from the emergency forms the guys filled out. They’ll notify the family when they have information. Until then, none of the guys will be able to call out or contact anyone. It’s standard procedure to make sure the family is notified through official channels. The news won’t release a name until twenty-four hours after the family has been notified.”
“Will the news tell us—” My voice cracked. “Will the news tell us if the pilot’s okay?”
“The Air Force is usually faster when it comes to that.”
“So we wait.”
“Yeah.” Dani’s voice shook. “Do you want to come over? If you have your cell, that should be enough. You can leave a note on your door or something to let people”—we both knew what she meant—“know where you are. Just make sure you bring your cell in case Noah or someone needs to get ahold of you. I don’t want to be alone. I need to handle some squadron notification stuff to explain that there’s been an incident and we’re waiting for information.”
The last thing I wanted was to be by myself tonight. And I figured if I was going to be with anyone, at least it would be with someone who understood this feeling pummeling me.
“Okay.”
* * *
We sat next to each other on Dani’s couch, our bodies huddled together, our cells clutched in our hands, a blanket wrapped around both of us. Our eyes were glued to the TV.
It had been five hours. Nothing.
Dani had been investigating on her own, but we still didn’t have any information. All we knew was that a jet had gone down. We didn’t know if it was one of ours or what was happening with the pilot.
It was the scariest five hours of my life.
I called Noah over and over again. And still we waited.
We didn’t even speak, didn’t give a voice to the fears filling our heads. At some point, I reached out and grabbed Dani’s hand. She didn’t let go.
Part of me felt like I was dreaming, like this couldn’t be reality. I kept thinking it was all a nightmare. He had to be okay. And yet no matter how many times I tried to convince myself it was true, I couldn’t quite remove the knot of fear from my chest.
The doorbell rang.
For a moment we both froze, the sound intruding on the haze we’d wrapped around ourselves. For a moment, that sound could be anything. And then it was everything.
We both rose from the couch as if in slow motion. We didn’t speak, didn’t even make eye contact. But we stayed together, our hands locked, as we walked toward Dani’s front door.
Ice filled me. Our hands squeezed tighter. I was too overwhelmed to cry, too scared to think beyond what was on the other side of that door.
Dani stopped in front of her front door and took a deep breath, her body bracing as she reached for the doorknob.
And then the door opened and I felt all the tension in her body pass through to mine.
Three service members in uniform stood in the doorway.
No.
For a moment, I didn’t hear anything. I could see their lips moving, but the sound was gone. It had been swallowed up. I knew Dani was speaking, and yet nothing made sense.
No.
I kept repeating his name like a chant through my head—Noah, Noah, Noah.
No.
And then I heard it, their words finally breaking through the haze.
“Mrs. Peterson, we regret to inform you . . .”
No.
No.
I felt Dani’s weight give out through our locked hands, her body hitting the floor, taking me down with her. The casualty officers rushed forward, but I moved, wrapping my arms around Dani as she screamed.
No.
Not Joker.
No.
TWENTY-THREE
JORDAN
Part of me stayed with Dani in the home she and Joker had built together. Part of me was in Alaska with Noah, desperate to hear his voice.
We didn’t have any information besides the fact that Joker had crashed and didn’t survive. They were going through the recovery process now, searching for his remains, but the communication blackout had yet to be lifted. We couldn’t call the guys and they couldn’t call out. I clung to the knowledge that Noah was okay, even as Dani clung to me in her grief.
I held her hand while she called Joker’s parents, knowing I’d never forget the pain in her voice and on the other end of the line. I’d never experienced anything like this in my entire life. Never known a loss this great. There were simply no words. There was just an unspeakable pain. I focused on the little things, on helping Dani, focused on anything but the fear, and panic, and sheer devastation that filled my body. I operated on adrenaline and little else, determined to keep it together, determined to give Dani someone to lean on.
The squadron’s Director of Operations’ wife had been mobilized already and was taking over the military protocol stuff. Things I had no clue how to handle and arrangements Dani didn’t need to worry about. I tried to do what I could to just be there for her—fussing over her until she ate, until one of the flight docs came and sent her to bed with a sleeping pill. I’d promised I’d stay with her until her family arrived, and that’s how I found myself on the floor of Dani’s elegant guest bathroom, my hand over my mouth attempting to muffle my tears, my body shaking, my cell clutched in my hand as the adrenaline seeped and oozed out of me, leaving me hollowed out and exhausted.
There had been times in our long-distance relationship when I’d missed Noah, when I’d needed to talk to him. But there was nothing like this moment, this need. I would have given anything to hear his voice,
even for a second. The rational part of my brain knew that he was alive and that he was safe, and that should have been enough, but it wasn’t. The part of me that felt nearly paralyzed with terror needed some tangible proof that he’d survived beyond someone else’s word. I felt like I was floating in a sea of loss and I needed his touch, his voice, to keep me from drowning.
I clutched my phone even tighter, my knuckles white, the pain breaking through the haze. My heart pounding, I dialed his number again, chanting the same phrase over and over again.
“Please pick up, please pick up.”
He answered on the second ring, and with the sound of his voice, I became tethered.
“Jordan.”
He said my name like a prayer and a plea, his voice taking on a reverence I’d never heard before.
I tried to answer, tried to gather the courage that had helped me keep it together with Dani, but this time it fled and a sob escaped instead.
“I’m okay.”
The words and the fact that he was alive, breathing through the phone, answering me, confirmed what he said. And yet his tone suggested he was anything but.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t call you earlier. We aren’t allowed to make any calls when these things happen.” He paused, and then he broke my heart. “I was flying.”
Pain lanced me.
“Noah.”
His voice broke. “I was number three. Joker was leading.”
There was a lump in my throat that I couldn’t get past. He’d been flying when his friend had died. They’d been flying together. It could have just as easily been Noah. And even though he had come back safely this time, how did one even come back from something like that? How would he come back from something like that?
“What do you need from me? What can I do?”
He paused for another moment, and I got the feeling he was gathering his strength, that he was held together by strings, too.
“Have you seen Dani yet?”
“I’m at her house now.”
I didn’t tell him the rest, couldn’t tell him the rest. I couldn’t say the words, couldn’t explain that I hadn’t known if it was him, that I’d been here waiting to hear if the man I loved would come home to me, only to watch as my friend, someone I respected and cared about, lost her husband.
Our conversation was more about what we didn’t say, than what we did. He seemed hesitant to talk about the accident, like if he did, he’d simply shatter. And I wasn’t ready to share the fear that had lodged its way into my heart the second I’d heard Meg say those fateful words:
There’s been a crash.
“She’s sleeping. One of the flight docs came and gave her a sleeping pill.”
It was almost a minute before Noah spoke.
“Can you stay with her?”
“Yes. Her parents are coming out soon. Joker’s, too. I promised I’d stay with her as long as she needed.”
“There will be funeral arrangements that need to be made. We’ll start working on it. And getting the body home.” His voice cracked. “We should be returning to Bryer in a couple days. We’re trying to figure out the plan now.”
I wanted him home. I wanted to put my arms around him, to feel that he was real, that he was whole, that he was safe. And at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel the pang of guilt at the fact that I would get my homecoming, that I would get to see him again when Dani would never have that same chance with Joker.
“Okay. Just let me know what you need.”
“I will.”
Silence filled the line again, the emotion throbbing between us making it almost impossible to speak. It was strange; I’d expected to feel differently. You would think that the fear of almost having lost him would have made me want to tell him how much I loved him, would make me want to say all the things that I might have never had a chance to say. But it didn’t. I didn’t know if it was the grief of watching Dani lose Joker, or the exhaustion of the day, or the fact that this moment felt almost too sacred to profane with words. There was nothing I could say that felt adequate, nothing that would describe the pain in my breast or the panic coursing through my body. There were no words you could give to this kind of loss.
So we stayed on the phone with each other for an hour, not really even speaking. I sat on Dani’s bathroom floor, listening to the sound of Noah’s breath, that reassuring whoosh of air that told me that all was right in my world, that as long as he inhaled and exhaled, I would not come undone. I learned to count time in breaths, that my life could be measured by the flow of air from his lips to mine.
And with each breath, I felt revived.
NOAH
I got off the phone with Jordan, feeling like I’d just come out of surgery, my battered body patched back together with the unique brand of magic only she possessed.
I was so fucking tired.
So fucking empty.
Held together by a girl thousands of miles away.
I headed toward the O-Club, not quite ready for the scene that would greet me when I got there, but somehow needing it just the same.
The entire squadron was at the bar, minus the most important member. It was a gathering like all the ones I’d been to hundreds of times, but this one was completely different. There was a pall over the crowd, as visible as if we’d all been dressed in black.
We’d come to honor one of our own.
I took the shot of Jeremiah Weed that one of the lieutenants handed me, my gaze running over the crowd, searching for Easy and Thor. They stood together yet apart from the group, the grief on their faces a punch to the gut. Thor looked green, as if he would throw up at any moment, his expression ragged. Easy looked destroyed, a version of my best friend I’d never seen before and never wanted to see again.
I headed over to them, my feet lead, my body protesting. I didn’t want to be a part of this club, didn’t want a piece of the memory we all shared.
We were the three who returned, when it should have been four.
We didn’t speak, the feeling too raw. Instead we stood next to each other, shot glasses in hand. I looked down, watching as the liquid trembled in the hollowed-out Gatling gun shell that had been cleaned and fashioned into a shot glass. A gift from Dani and Joker last Christmas. And then I realized the tremor was coming from me. The hand that had always been so steady at the stick shook like a fucking leaf, my knuckles white.
Someone led off a song. One I’d heard sung at piano burn after piano burn, when we all came together to honor those who had made the ultimate sacrifice to the sky. Those moments had always resonated with me. The reality of our jobs, the knowledge that even though we flew as if we were gods, untouchable, we were all too mortal. But now . . .
Now we sang for Joker.
The music filled the O-Club bar, the lyrics the standard fighter pilot fare—plenty of fucks dropped, female body parts mentioned—an ode to the world we lived in, to a life on the edge. But even though the lyrics harkened back to wilder days, the tone told a different story. We sang, our voices thick with grief, thirty something voices united in pain and loss.
And as the sound crested, spilling out the doors, voices getting louder, the chant taking on a life of its own, I swore I could feel Joker standing beside me like he’d done so many times before, slightly off key, shot glass in hand.
And so as we came to the end, as we lingered over those last notes as though we were reluctant to let them go, I lifted my glass in the air, toasting one of the greatest men I’d ever known.
And then I shot the liquor back, the bitter taste sending a fire down my throat as I said good-bye.
JORDAN
At some point in the night, I made my way to Dani’s guest bed. I woke the next morning, my body stiff from hours spent sitting on the bathroom floor, my heart aching.
I walked into the kitchen, surprised to see Dani sit
ting on one of the stools at the granite countertop, a mug of coffee in hand.
She looked much as she had last night. Pale. Worn. Devastated.
I walked toward her and gave her a hug, words failing me.
“I always knew,” she whispered.
My stomach clenched.
“He talked about getting out in two years.” Her voice shook. “I couldn’t get excited about it. I couldn’t see us in that life. Couldn’t imagine him coming home at 6 p.m. in a business suit.” A tear trickled down her face. Then another. “I always knew we would end up like this.”
I wrapped my arms around her again while she sobbed, her slim frame shuddering in my embrace. I didn’t speak, but then again, there weren’t words for this. I didn’t know how long we stayed like that, but eventually she pulled back, her eyes red and swollen.
“What time are the jets getting in?” she asked, her voice strained.
I froze. “Dani . . .”
“What time?”
Noah had texted me this morning to tell me that they had the arrival plans sorted out; I was planning on going to the squadron to pick him up. They were working on the memorial service for Joker, and I’d told him I’d talk to Dani about what she wanted to do. It was definitely not a conversation I was looking forward to; I had no idea how to even broach a topic like that. But now we were talking about the rest of the squadron coming home, and I didn’t know how to handle that one, either.
“The first cell lands tomorrow at four,” I answered, my voice cracking with each word.
“Who’s in the cell?”
God. I couldn’t make myself say the words. Couldn’t push them out. It felt wrong for his name not to be in that list.
Her gaze met mine. “Who’s in the cell?”
“Noah, Thor, Easy, and Merlin.”
Her whole body shuddered, her chest rising and falling as she sucked in air.
“We don’t need to talk about this, Dani. Not now. Don’t worry about the landing. We have it sorted out.”
“It’s Joker’s squadron. Those are his guys. I’m his wife.”
Fly With Me Page 20
