Damn Wright: The Wrights

by Jordan, Skye

  He’d given up.

  Again.

  She should be glad. It reinforced her decision to leave. But nothing about leaving Dylan felt right.

  “You look nervous as hell,” Maizey said.

  “This is excitement.” She pulled in a deep breath, purposefully blew it out, and amped her smile up a few hundred watts. “Yes-siree, this here, this is raw, unadulterated excitement.”

  She wasn’t lying. At least not completely. The buzz in her belly, that was excitement. Excitement for the adventure. Excitement over finally doing what she’d wanted to do for as long as she could remember. Excitement to experience new cultures and start this new chapter of her life.

  The rest… The rest was a muddy mess of fear and regret and loss. Along with a wildly unsettling sensation of leaving vital things undone. She couldn’t get over the very real fact that getting on that plane would end any possibility of reconciliation with Dylan.

  “You realize that excitement is just the flipside of terror, right?” Maizey asked.

  “Then it’s good I’m on the right side of that monster, isn’t it?” Emma put her hand on the door handle and willed herself to pull it open. This should be her crowning achievement. She should be over the moon with pride and joy.

  Instead, the signal from her brain to her hand got lost in the mess of anxiety flooding her nervous system. Silence settled between them while they both waited for Emma’s nerve to return.

  “It seems,” Maizey said, “the universe has given me this little window of opportunity to say something I’ve been wanting to mention for a while, but didn’t think it was my place to say.”

  Emma closed her eyes and groaned. “Just say it.”

  “When Dylan broke things off,” she started in a soft, nonconfrontational voice, “he was twenty years old and looking ahead at a stunted life of disability. You’re making this decision as a twenty-nine-year-old physician with the life of your dreams ahead of you. His decision to leave you then and your decision to leave him now are apples and oranges.”

  A lick of anger burned her breastbone. ”You think I’m keeping score?”

  “I think your emotions and the trip’s time crunch are coloring your judgement.” Her gaze was direct but compassionate. “I feel the need to point out that the very fact you’re getting on a plane to go to Somalia to work as a humanitarian physician is—”

  “Because of him,” she finished the thought for Maizey. One she hadn’t been able to shake since she’d been offered this gig. “I would never have had this opportunity if he hadn’t let me go. Yes, I realize that.”

  More silence fell in the car. Emma looked at the terminal and all the travelers rolling suitcases and carrying duffels. She fought to see past the haze of hurt and anger and fear, but the emotions created an opaque wall in her mind. She couldn’t continue to focus on the where, why, and how of the past. She could only focus on the future.

  “You should go,” Maizey said. “You’ve got to get through customs.”

  Fear squeezed the air from her lungs. “Right.”

  She’d made the decision and committed to the project. She had a team of other medical professionals expecting her, and a community of needy people waiting on her. People battling far more devastation than she ever would.

  Besides, she wasn’t the quitting kind. And she took pride in her ability to persevere despite mental and emotional hardships.

  Still, Emma’s body felt like lead. She forced herself from the car and made herself focus on all she was headed toward, not all she was leaving behind. She’d been through worse, and she knew from experience, leaning into the pain and honoring the struggle would get her to the other side. In forty-eight hours, she’d be immersed in another world. There was no better pain management than helping people in need.

  The next forty-eight hours, though, those would be hell on earth.

  But the sooner those hours started, the sooner they’d end.

  Emma pulled her suitcase from the trunk, gave Maizey a long, hard hug goodbye with a million promises to call and text and email. Then she was pulled into the stream of travelers.

  She checked her suitcase at the airline counter and rolled a carry-on beside her as she made her way through security. Then customs. The lines were interminable, and she was glad she’d come early.

  By the time she made it to her gate, she needed to eat and pee. She found several of her team members and left her carry-on with them as she made her way through more lines. But when she returned, she couldn’t eat. She tried to distract herself by chatting with the others, several of whom she’d worked with during her time at Cumberland General. Many of them had been on humanitarian missions in the past and gave her helpful tips for adjusting and an idea of what her first week would look like.

  When she couldn’t keep her mind from straying to the past, Emma excused herself and put her cell to her ear as she wandered toward the windows to look out over the tarmac to take her mythical call.

  She couldn’t just keep ignoring this turmoil. It was going to make her sick. She had to get her mind around what she was doing and why she was doing it.

  Emma ached to call someone and talk it out. Her mother. Her father. Maizey.

  Dylan.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this unbearable need to talk to Dylan.

  But she knew no one could help her right now. This was her decision, which made it her problem.

  The voice of the airline ticket agent overhead made Emma jump. And the announcement for boarding to commence clamped her heart in a vise.

  She turned and watched her coworkers collect their things and linger together near their seats. Her gaze darted toward the display, showing boarding to commence in seven minutes.

  She was seven minutes and two flights away from Mogadishu.

  Mogadishu, Somalia.

  Jesus Christ. She was really going to do this.

  “Damn,” she murmured to herself. “This just got extremely real.”

  Her stomach took several painful summersaults. She did what she did in any urgent situation in the ER: she hyper focused on what she was doing in that moment and what she needed to be doing in the next moment. Nothing more.

  That moment-to-moment pattern got her from the terminal to her seat on the plane. Her aisle seat helped with a stifling sense of claustrophobia. She was sitting next to two other women on her team, a fifty-five-year-old nurse and a twenty-two-year-old administrator. Across the aisle, three male doctors settled in—a cardiologist, a pediatrician, and a surgeon.

  For a second, Emma tried to imagine Liam coming on a trip like this. Almost immediately, a scoff bubbled out of her throat. If nothing else, Dylan’s reappearance had kept her from making that terrible mistake.

  And, damn, then she was thinking about Dylan again. How perfectly he would fit in with everyone and how reassured she would be with his experience and self-confidence.

  Then the plane was full. The flight attendants started closing overhead bins. Instructions for takeoff spilled over the intercom.

  And, shit, there was Dylan in her mind. Coming to the hospital to apologize. Picking up the responsibility of Aunt Shelly’s house and shouldering it for her. Turning it from a burden into a true gift. The gift of freedom.

  A cold sweat broke out across her chest and down her spine. She had that terrifying sensation of something irreplaceable slipping away. The feeling she got when she was losing someone young in her ER. The feeling she got when she watched the families of a loved one grieve.

  Heavy, dark, and so painful.

  Everyone was seated. No more passengers drifted up the aisle. Emma started calculating the fallout of pushing to her feet, grabbing her carry-on, and running off the plane. She’d be the laughingstock of the trip. Word of her freak-out would travel among other medical personnel. In this small community, the story would have reached Vanderbilt before she could make it back to beg for the job she’d turned down.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.


  She was trapped again. Only this time, it wasn’t because of her debt or her opportunities or even choices that hadn’t been hers. This time, it was her own stubbornness. Her own inability to forgive. Her own inability to trust.

  Dylan might have been the original cause of the damage, but she was the one who had made the decision to hold on to that damage. She was the only person standing in her own way.

  Emma’s face burned, and her head was light. She reached up to point the air nozzle toward her head, but only a trickle of air came out.

  Why was it taking so long to close the damn cabin door? Was this a sign she should reconsider? Like that moment in the car with Maizey when she’d imparted the observation that Emma had already made? That Dylan was the reason Emma was a doctor. The reason she had the ability to live out this dream.

  And she was bailing on him. So totally bailing on a man who’d done nothing but try to make up for his past mistakes since he’d returned.

  “He was twenty years old, looking ahead at a stunted life of disability. You’re a twenty-nine-year-old physician with the life of your dreams ahead of you.”

  Maizey’s voice repeated over and over in Emma’s head, getting louder and louder until she just couldn’t sit still any longer. The cabin door was still open for a reason. If the universe screamed at Emma any louder, it would boom like thunder.

  Fuck her reputation.

  Fuck her debt.

  Fuck her own stubborn need to stick by every damned thing she’d ever said she’d do.

  Emma freed her seat belt and pushed to her feet, flipping the overhead bin open, and shoving things around to reach her carry-on.

  “Emma, are you all right?” This came from the older woman in the row’s middle seat.

  “I can’t go.” The words were so messy, screwing up the life she’d so carefully built, brick by painful brick. “I made the decision too fast. I have too much to lose. I can’t go.”

  But one of the wheels of her carry-on was stuck. Sweat rolled down her spine. Emotions rose to the surface.

  “The cabin door is now closed,” came over the speaker, and a flight attendant came toward Emma from the rear of the plane.

  She looked at the woman. “I have to get off the plane. I’m sorry. I just, I can’t go.”

  The flight attendant’s pretty face tightened with concern. Passengers around her murmured.

  “I just have to get this damn thing…” She ignored everyone, braced her foot against the armrest of her chair, wrapped both hands around the handle of her carry-on, and pulled.

  A hand closed on top of hers. Big and warm. A man’s hand. “Let me help.”

  Emma’s head swiveled toward the voice. To Dylan. Standing right beside her wearing a backpack and a soft smile.

  “The cabin door is closed,” came over the intercom again. “Please take your seat.”

  “Sir.” The flight attendant drew Dylan’s gaze. “You need to return to your seat.”

  “Actually, I was hoping this could be my seat.” He looked at the older woman seated next to Emma. “Ma’am, I have a first-class ticket I’d like to trade with you.”

  “Oh.” Her face brightened. “Really?”

  “Really.” He handed her the ticket, and the woman looked from Dylan to Emma.

  Emma’s head cleared from the shock. “What are you doing?”

  He reached overhead and gave her carry-on a shove back into the bin. “Is your bag up here, ma’am?”

  “Yes, it’s the blue one.” She met Emma’s gaze, uncertain, but cautiously giddy. “Emma, is this okay with you?”

  Before Emma could answer, Dylan pulled down the blue bag and heaved his backpack into the empty space.

  Dylan looked at Emma. “Tell her it’s okay, Em.”

  “Yes, tell her it’s okay, Emma,” one of the doctors from the opposite row repeated. “Or we’re going to miss our connection.”

  “Of course, of course.” Emma stepped out of the way while her coworker cleared the seat and one of the flight attendants helped move the woman and her luggage toward first class. It was so good to see Dylan, her heart hurt. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s obvious there’s only one way we’re going to get this plane off the ground.” Dylan pulled something from his jacket pocket and dropped to one knee.

  The twenty-two-year-old admin gasped. A few other females joined the chorus. Murmurs erupted around the cabin, and people craned their necks and stood to get a look at what was happening. No one was complaining anymore. Even the flight attendant was staring, openmouthed.

  Emma’s gaze jumped from Dylan’s face to the diamonds sparkling on a ring in the box. Her heart floated into her throat, and she pressed a hand against her forehead. “Jesus Christ.”

  “I made the mistake of letting you go once,” he said. “I’m never—never—making that mistake again. If you marry me, Emma, I will follow you to the literal ends of the earth.”

  The plane went completely silent. Dylan’s face blurred in her vision, making Emma realize she was crying.

  “Yes,” she blurted, then started laughing. Laughing with utter relief. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  The plane erupted in cheers. Dylan slid the diamond band on her finger, stood, and pulled her off her feet in a bear hug.

  Over his shoulder, Emma caught sight of the pilot, who’d come into the back of the plane. He was grinning and clapping along with passengers and crew.

  “A celebration is in order.” The pilot’s voice boomed through the plane. “Drinks on the house.” The clapping passengers started laughing, because, of course, even coach passengers got a free soft drink. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Emma slid into the middle seat, and Dylan strapped in beside her. Then he lifted the arm between them, wrapped his arm around her and cuddled her close. “Jesus Christ, I thought I was going to miss the plane.”

  She tilted her head back, and he kissed her again. Everything in her world automatically righted. All her fears dropped away. All the guilt and hurt melted, leaving room for nothing but gratitude, joy, and love. So much love.

  She pulled away. “I thought I wasn’t going to be able to get off the plane.”

  He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear as they taxied to the runway. “Looks like we had the same idea.”

  “What about your job? And the house?”

  “Spent the last two days squaring things away. The minute you walked out the door, I knew what I had to do. The network let me out of my contract, and they’re looking for possible jobs for me in Africa. If nothing pans out, I’ll write freelance. And between Jack’s contacts and Miranda’s, the house will get finished as planned.” He stroked her cheek. “You were right. I have lived my dreams. It’s your turn. And since I don’t want to spend another minute away from you, that means right here, right now, I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

  She kissed his cheek and snuggled close. “We’re both right where we’re supposed to be.”

  He hugged her tight and murmured, “Damn right.”

  Epilogue

  One year later

  The Ethiopian taxi bumped along the rutted packed-dirt road in Gondar’s city center.

  Little more than a tin can, the vehicle was as small as an American Smart car, but not made nearly as well. With no doors—and no seat belts, for that matter—the air whipped through the taxi, blowing Emma’s hair into her face. She took a deep breath of the fresh fall air. The weather here could not be beat—usually in the seventies, with a crystal blue sky.

  Over the last year, Emma had become comfortable with things she’d never expected she would, like the freedom of owning nothing but what she carried in her suitcase, working in non-sterile conditions, trusting her well-being to a twenty-something kamikaze taxi driver, or falling in love with a culture and a people so opposite her own.

  The team had only been in Somalia two weeks before unrest broke out. They’d pulled up stakes and moved on to Ethiopia, which had become a country and a
people she loved.

  As they approached a busy intersection, Emma leaned into Dylan, gripped the edge of her seat with one hand and Dylan’s thigh with the other. Dylan tightened his arm around her shoulders, bracing her with his body.

  The driver hammered his fist against the horn while swinging around a small herd of cows and swerving to avoid a larger herd of goats, all while a dozen other vehicles were doing the same. Emma thought of the streets as an obstacle course, where all the obstacles were alive. At least, until they weren’t. The injury and death rate due to vehicle accidents here was only slightly lower than Somalia, which wasn’t saying much when the majority of Africa populated the top forty-three spots on that mortality list.

  She was surprised to discover that this type of driving didn’t bother Dylan in the least. She wouldn’t have expected that from a man whose life was forever altered because of one accident. But she’d learned a lot about Dylan over the last year. She’d discovered he could get by in a dozen languages and he picked up new dialects within a day of moving locations. He carried himself with quiet confidence that put people at ease, and he could get anyone—absolutely anyone—to tell him their life story. His writing was focused and deep, drawing emotion from the reader. And he handled emergency situations with as much ease and calm as Emma.

  But the most exciting thing in their near future was returning home to partner with other nonprofit humanitarian organizations to form more civilian rescue forces like the White Helmets in Syria.

  Out of all the moving things she’d witnessed over the last year, and there had been more than she could count, the one that left the biggest impact had been the transformation of the human spirit and the cohesiveness of a people when someone rendered aid or rescued one of their own.

  She and Dylan had embraced the idea of the British author who’d coined the phrase “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” They wanted to teach people how to take care of each other when emergency aid was out of reach.

  When the taxi left the city center and started down a straight road, she sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. “Survived another day.”