Page 22 of Shade

It was battered, with one corner torn where somebody had stood on it, but every page was there. She stared down at it. Then she opened it to the very first page, a flight with her grandfather when she was sixteen, and her hand went over her mouth.

“Don’t go,” I said.

She looked up at me.

“You’re safe now. You could walk out that gate tomorrow and you’d be fine. I’m asking for me.”

My voice came out rough. I’d never asked anybody for anything in my life. Not my old man, not the army, not this club. I took what I was given and did what needed doing, and I never wanted more.

“You asked me what it meant when I said you were mine.” I made myself keep looking at her. “It means you’re the first thing I’ve ever wanted for myself. The only thing. I’ve wanted you since you stood on that airstrip with my gun in your face.”

Her eyes filled up.

“I love you, Mya,” I said. “I’m no good at saying it. I’ll probably never get any better. But I love you, and I want you to stay.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment. I stood there and waited.

“There’s no planes in Salvation,” she said, very quietly.

“There’s an airfield in Deming. It’s an hour on my bike.” I took a breath. “I’ll take you there every damn day if that’s what it takes.”

She made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob. Then she put her hand flat on my chest, right over my heart, the same place she’d pushed me away from a day ago.

“I love you too,” she said. “You big, grumpy idiot. I’ve loved you since you tucked that blanket around me and then lied to my face about it.”

I kissed her.

This time I had nothing left to hide behind, and I didn’t want anything. I kissed her slow, with both hands in her hair, until she was holding on to my cut to stay upright. Then I picked her up and put her down on my bed on top of that neat pile of clothes, and every one of those folded shirts ended up on the floor.

She laughed against my mouth. I’d have given anything I had to hear that sound for the rest of my life.

Later, she fell asleep on my chest with her bandaged arm across me.

I lay there in the dark and listened to her breathe. I’d kept a lot of people alive in my life. I’d never once thought about what came after.

Now I knew. I was looking at it.

EPILOGUE

MYA

Six weeks after I crashed a plane on that old mine airstrip, I finally got Shade up in one.

I’d been flying out of Deming for a month by then. There’s a little charter outfit at the airfield there, two old hangars and a coffee pot nobody ever cleans. They needed a pilot who’d take any job going. I needed to be back in the air more than I needed to breathe. I drove myself there every morning in an old pickup I’d bought off Pete’s cousin, an hour each way.

Today, for once, I rode in on the back of Shade’s bike. I’d spent two weeks talking him into this. My mom had spent the same two weeks on the phone telling me he sounded like trouble, and asking when she could meet him.

I walked out across the tarmac to the little four-seater in a new flight jacket with my grandfather’s wings moved onto the sleeve, and another little patch on the other side that said PROPERTY OF SHADE. The stitches in my arm were long gone. All I had left was a thin pink line he still ran his thumb along in the dark.

He followed me to that plane like he was going to his own funeral.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Fine.”

He wasn’t fine. He climbed into the seat beside me and buckled himself in like the belt was the only thing between him and death. When I started the engine, he grabbed the edge of his seat with both hands and his knuckles went white.

I stared at him.