One year later
Randi
I woke in the darkness, knowing exactly where I was.
My bed, my home. My family, all together under one roof, at least for the weekend.
Rome was already up and moving. He’d left a cup of coffee on the table next to me, God bless him. I reached for it. Still hot. I’d just taken a second sip when my alarm went off.
Three in the morning.
I slipped out of the covers, pulling on my clothes quietly. Aiden and Kelly had been up half the night with the new baby, and I didn’t want to wake them. Mom might be gone, but our family was alive and growing. She’d always been crazy about babies, and she would’ve loved playing grandma.
All the fun and none of the work.
I reached for my necklace, fingering the emerald pendant she’d given me the day she died. Then I opened the clasp and took it off, setting it on the bedside table. The diamonds sparkled under the lamp, reminding me that every morning, I got to make a choice. I could either get up and go to work, or I could sell the jewelry and run away to a beach in Mexico.
For the first six months, I’d seriously considered it.
My new life was stressful and exhausting.
Some days, I’d been so frustrated that I wanted her to come back to life just so I could kill her again for leaving us in this situation. Other days I cried for hours. Through all of it, Rome had been there for me.
And not just Rome—others had stepped up, too.
Tinker, Peaches. My new boss, Dr. Andrews. And then there was the Reapers MC.
They’d surprised me the most.
First it was Gage and Tinker. The day after Mom died, Gage had suggested that the kids and I stay with them until we found a new apartment. Rome offered his place, too, but I felt like our relationship was way too new for me to be moving in my family. Tinker had been my first boss, and sort of a mother figure. Staying with her felt more natural.
What I hadn’t realized until later was that it hardly mattered where we landed. Rome and Gage had decided we needed help, and they were members of the Reapers MC.
That meant we had the rest of the club behind us, too, because the Reapers were a package deal.
It started when Tinker organized a group of six women to scrub the blood out of the carpet in our old apartment. Then they packed stuff for the kids and cleared out the fridge. Within a week, Tinker found space for us in the building she owned—I decided not to ask how she pulled that off—and then a bunch of guys wearing Reapers colors showed up one Saturday morning to move us in.
Just like that, we had a home.
Rome didn’t spend the night with me at first.
For one thing, Kayden kept having nightmares. Half the time, I’d wake up to find him sprawled across the bottom of the bed. But Rome was true to his word—he gave me time. After a few months, he started sleeping over once or twice a week. Then I got tired of him borrowing my toothbrush, so I bought him one. He needed a drawer to keep it in, of course, then one day I realized we’d been living together for five months.
Things went well. Lexi and Kayden liked him, and while our schedule could get weird, somehow we made it all work.
Life was good.
Then one evening—early in May—Rome announced that we really needed to jump out of an airplane together.
This struck me as a bad idea.
I was allergic to gravity, and I felt strongly that if God wanted me to fly, he’d have given me wings. But Rome wasn’t the kind of guy to give up easy—and he didn’t mind playing dirty. The next evening, he’d opened a bottle of wine, pulled me onto his lap, and then showed me a video he’d made with his brother, Damon. It wasn’t anything fancy—just a GoPro that he’d attached to his helmet the last time they’d gone skydiving together.
I watched two of them laughing and joking while they double checked their equipment. Apparently, Damon had gotten laid the night before. Rome gave him shit, said the girl must’ve been drunk.
Damon flipped him off, and then a few minutes later, they jumped out of the airplane.
The free fall seemed to last forever, although it couldn’t have been more than a minute. Damon pulled his cord first, and his chute burst free. Rome’s did the same. The camera pointed down, and I saw the entire valley laid out beneath them. Then Rome turned it on Damon.
In the distance, his brother waved, then flipped him off again.
They seemed to float slowly for a while, then suddenly the ground was rushing up toward the camera. My breath caught as the video jolted during the landing. Rome gave a whoop and reached down to unstrap his harness. A minute later, Damon tackled him, exuberant and full of life. The camera broke loose, falling into the grass.
Damon shouted, “That was sick! Can’t wait for the next time!”
The video ended abruptly. We sat in silence for a few minutes, and I thought about how young he’d been. Finally, Rome spoke.
“He was dead two weeks later. When I downloaded this after the jump, I nearly deleted it. I thought it wasn’t good enough—I figured we could make a better one next time.”
His arms tightened around my body, and I blinked back tears. Damon should’ve gotten more jumps and more videos.
“I’d give anything to skydive with him one more time,” Rome told me. “It’s better than anything you’ve ever felt in your life. Except for sex with me, of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed, realizing that he’d painted me into a corner. Sneaky bastard. “But your dick is magic. I don’t need to jump out of an airplane when I have you in my bed.”
Rome raised a brow, waiting.
“This is emotional manipulation, you know.”
“I fight to win,” he said without a hint of guilt. “So you gonna give it a chance, or what?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He gave me a smile, then nodded.
“Randi, you always have a choice,” he told me. “We can jump this week. We can jump in a year. Ten years from now. I’m here as long as you want me, but I’ll never force you to do anything.”
He was telling the truth, I knew that. He’d already given me a year. I thought about Damon, waving at his brother as they floated through the air.
“Was this really just two weeks before he died?”
“Thirteen days, fifteen hours and about forty-five minutes,” he replied. “Give or take.”
He’d looked so healthy in the video. So alive.
And he’d died playing Uno.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” I said. “But if I crash into the ground, you have to take care of Lexi and Kayden.”
Rome gave me a deep kiss, and I felt myself relaxing into his body. “We’ll be strapped together. If you crash, I’ll crash with you.”
“Way to commit,” I said, feeling slightly better about the whole thing. I wasn’t sure I could handle a parachute—I still lost my car keys at least twice a day.
Rome shrugged. “Beats getting stuck with Lexi. I’d miss Kayden, though.”
I looked at his face, seeing happiness there, but also grief. It would never go away entirely, I realized.
“I’m sorry you lost him,” I whispered.
“Yeah, baby. Me too.”
Now it was three o’clock in the morning, and soon I’d be jumping out of an airplane. I’d tried to reschedule when Aiden and Isaac announced out of nowhere that they were coming for the weekend. But Rome insisted that it had to be today.
Considering how much he’d given me over the past year, I decided to roll with it.
I opened the bedroom door, tiptoeing past Lexi’s bedroom (which Isaac and his girlfriend had taken over) and then Kayden’s (full of Aiden and his family). I passed through the living room to the kitchen. My littlest brother was sound asleep on the couch, but there was no sign of Lexi on the air mattress.
Little shit had probably snuck out to see that boy again.
I thought he was an asshole, but my sister was stubborn as hell. She insisted that he was one of the good ones. They hadn’t even slept together yet, or so she claimed. Hard to know.
At least we were on the home stretch—just one more year of high school, and then she’d be free to destroy her life any way she wanted.
“Hey,” Rome said quietly as I reached the kitchen. He stepped over to me, tipping my chin up for a kiss. I melted into him, then slid my hand toward the front of his pants. Maybe if I lured him into sex, he’d let me go back to sleep instead of doing this crazy thing.
He caught my hand, stopping it as he nipped my lip in punishment.
“Nice try, nympho. You can’t get out that easy.”
I pretended to pout, and he gave my ass a little smack.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
“No. Skydiving is against the laws of God and nature.”
“You don’t have to do it,” he reminded me. “But your brothers are here. If you chicken out, you’ll have to face them.”
He made a good point. Aiden and Isaac could be ruthless, and they got along with Rome way too well.
“Okay,” I told him. “Let’s go and get it over with.”
“You always make me feel so loved.”
“Asshole.”
He smacked my butt again, and we headed out the door.
The sun had just come up when our little plane took off.
It belonged to a friend of Rome’s dad, and somehow Rome had convinced him to get up at oh-dark-thirty so we could do this. One of his smoke jumping friends came along, too. They probably needed someone to deal with the doors and stuff… I’d decided I didn’t want to know all the details—thinking about details could lead to thinking about what I was about to do.
That wouldn’t end well.
I looked down at my harness one last time. Everything was strapped on tight, checked, and double checked, and now I was stuck sitting on his lap. I reminded myself that Rome had been jumping out of planes half his life, and that he’d qualified as an instructor years ago. He’d jumped into the back country to fight fires, and he’d jumped tandem with his mother on her sixtieth birthday. She’d survived the experience just fine—we’d had dinner with her last week. I didn’t have anything to worry about.
Skydiving was supposed to be fun.
The plane climbed higher—much higher than seemed prudent. Rome was oblivious, laughing and talking to the guy next to us. I ignored them, focusing on not passing out.
Then it was time.
Rome’s friend kicked the door open, and wind filled the plane. Rome reached for the rail along the side. I pushed back, not quite ready. I could see the whole valley down below us, just like I’d seen in his video.
Except this was real.
Was I actually going to jump off this thing wearing the world’s flimsiest harness, and just count on him not to get us killed? Shouldn’t I have more straps, or something? And duct tape. Wouldn’t this be safer with duct tape?
“Take a deep breath, Randi!” Rome shouted, breaking my string of panicked thoughts. “It’ll be just like we practiced. I’ll count to three and then we’ll jump. You can scream when you go out the door, but don’t forget to keep your eyes open. You’re going to love it!”
I forced myself to nod, and he reached for the bar again. It was time to go. I felt Rome’s muscles tense and tried to keep my eyes open, reminding myself to breathe. I’d made him promise not to go until I was ready.
Was I ready? No. But if I waited any longer, I’d turn chicken. I could feel a great big cowardly squawk building inside my chest, and he’d been right about one thing—Aiden and Isaac would be ruthless if I chickened out.
I was going to jump out of this plane, if only to spite them.
“Okay!” I shouted, giving him a thumbs-up. You can do it you can do it you can do it!
“You sure?” he yelled back.
“Yes!”
Rome hesitated. Why the hell weren’t we jumping? Didn’t he realize I was about two seconds away from peeing my pants? Go go go go go!
“Will you marry me?” he shouted.
My heart pounded, and the wind roared in my ears. I wondered if I’d heard him right.
“What?”
“Will you marry me!” he shouted again, and this time there was no mistaking it—he’d just proposed. Suddenly it all came together. My brothers turning up out of nowhere, and how he insisted that we do this at sunrise.
Right when the sun comes up, he’d said.
He’d been planning this all along, I realized, stunned. Oh, Rome McGuire was a sneaky bastard. A sneaky, sneaky bastard totally capable of dangling off the side of an airplane until I answered his question.
I tried to think, starting to feel giddy.
Rome wanted to marry me. Me, Randi Whittaker, along with all my baggage and extra mouths to feed. Only a crazy idiot would do that. Of course, he had just proposed to me while hanging off the side of an airplane…
We definitely had the crazy part covered.
“Randi?”
I realized I’d left Rome hanging. Literally. I needed to answer or I’d never get back to the ground.
“You’re insane!” I shouted. “But you have a magic dick, so I’ll marry you anyway! Now let’s jump before I pee my pants!”
I thought I heard him laugh.
“I got you, Randi!”
Then we were out the door and flying into the morning sun.
Together.
* * * *
Also from 1001 Dark Nights and Joanna Wylde, discover .