Page 45 of Fall For Me
I think on it for a few seconds. “The ring I used to wear on my index finger was my wedding ring.”
“No.”
“Yes. It was a reminder to never let another woman in. Any time you’d make me feel something, I’d fiddle with it, trying to ward off whatever witchy juju love spell shit you were trying to cast on me.” She tosses her head back and laughs as I continue, “Didn’t fucking work.”
“Where is it now?”
“Don’t even know. I tossed the damn thing out the window a few days after I picked you up from Nate’s club.”
“Oh.”
“Your turn,” I press when she doesn’t offer up her next confession.
“I can't think of anything that you don’t know about me. Um . . . I never trained for wing slut lying,” she spouts off so fast that her words run together and I don’t quite catch what she said.
“Say that again?”
She releases a sigh. “I said. ‘I never trained for wingsuit flying’.”
My heart stops. I flip on my blinker, take the next exit off the highway, then pull over onto a side street. Shifting the gear into park, I rest my head back against the seat and close my eyes tight. My jaw clinches so hard I can practically hear my molars breaking. I’m caught between being fucking furious that she put herself in danger like that and relieved that she’s alive to tell the fucking story.
“What are you doing, Sean? We need to get to the hospital!”
“No.”
“But—”
“Give me just a minute,” I rasp, trying to reel in my emotions with the memory of that day flashing behind my closed eyelids.
The parachute all twisted up, her struggling to untangle the cords, the way she hit the ground. My stomach ties in knots, and my chest tightens to the point I can't fucking breathe.
“¡Qué chingados!”
(What the fuck!)
God. She could’ve died. I rub the ache in my chest.
“Sean?”
I hold my hand up to stop her from talking while I calm the fuck down. Goddamn, reliving that memory scares the fuck out of me. It takes a while for me to collect myself, but once I’m sure I have my head on straight, I open my eyes and turn in my seat to face her.
“I’m sorry,” she rushes out. “I didn’t think you’d get mad.”
“I. Am. Fuming. You could’ve died. You said you trained. You lied to me.”
Unbuckling her seatbelt, she clambers over the console, and as she does, I press the button to move my seat back, knowing she’s heading in my direction to sit in my lap.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, burying her head into my neck. “I know it was stupid and reckless . . .”
“And dangerous, not to mention illegal.”
I’m down for her doing whatever the hell she wants, but not at the cost of her life.
“All of that too.” She agrees, sitting back and looking at me with pleading eyes.
She hates it when people are upset with her and I hate it when she looks at me like that. Everything I’m thinking and feeling seems to fly right out the window. Not this time.
“Tell me how you learned to wingsuit fly and fix your parachute like that when the cords tangled up.”
