Time slowed. Erin heard each distinct note in a bird’s song, the scrape of metal against concrete as her bike skidded away from her, the thud-bump of her body bouncing over the road, her leathers scudding into the gravel. Between the moment she knew she’d lost control of the bike and the moment she went airborne, she ran through John Donne’s “The Good-Morrow.”
I wonder, by my truth …
I’m in love with Jack Powell. Cerulean. That’s the name of the color of the sky. I’m head over heels in love with him. I told him … no … I gave him my word that this would just be casual.
I gave him my word.
I’m flying.
Darkness.
A sepia-toned tunnel opened suddenly to green feathered shapes drifted blurrily against blue, then darkness again.
She strained toward the light widening through her visor to hear fuckfuckfuckfuck … don’tdieErin … staywithmesweetheart …
* * *
Jack’s bare head, hair cowlicked in seven different directions, his phone pressed to his ear as he hunkered down at her side. I need an ambulance. Motorcycle accident on Highway 6 …
The tunnel closed in on her …
* * *
Blue again. This time she knew it was the sky, framed by her helmet, and the green things were leaves budding on cottonwood trees, and the white fluff was clouds. All of this was blocked in large part by Jack’s beautiful, weathered face, solemn and serious. “Did I hit it?” she asked, her voice shaky.
“Hit what?” he said distractedly, his big hands pressing gently into her thigh.
“The rabbit. I didn’t want to hit the rabbit.”
“That fucking rabbit,” Jack said. “I’m going to find it, gut it, and roast it on a fucking spit,” he said as he peered down at her.
“Poor little bunny,” she said muzzily.
The hands pressed into her chest were rock steady, she realized. Why that occurred to her now rather than back at the airstrip she didn’t know. Maybe because a near-death experience clarified thinking? His hands were totally steady, heel resting on her sternum, fingers curled over her breast, covering her heart. She looked up into his blue-gray eyes, and knew she’d told this truthful, honorable man a lie. Yes, the rabbit startled her, but only because she’d been distracted by the one thing she’d promised not to do. It wasn’t adrenaline. It wasn’t the high of skydiving, or riding the Duc. She’d fallen in love with Jack Powell, U.S. Navy SEAL.
“Stay with me, sweetheart,” Jack said.
I can’t, she thought.
“Where does it hurt? Anything broken?”
Oh. He meant her body. She thought about that really carefully. “Everywhere hurts,” she said. “My hip, where I hit the ground. I feel like someone took a stick to me. My leg is throbbing. My back.”
“You crashed through the underbrush, and you’ve got a serious case of road rash,” he said. “Stay still. You might have spinal cord damage. Paramedics are on their way.”
“I hear sirens,” she said.
“I called 911 then called a friend in the police department,” he explained.
“How embarrassing,” she said.
“Everything okay down there? Need me to call 911?”
A strange man’s voice, calling down from over the guardrail. He was upside down in Erin’s field of vision, which made her dizzy. She closed her eyes again.
“Already did,” Jack said tersely. “Can you get her bike out of the road?”
“No problem,” the guy said, and disappeared.
“That’s nice of him,” Erin said, “but he was making me dizzy. How’s my bike?”
“You paid your insurance, right?” Jack asked.
Yesterday. She’d dropped off a check with the agent on her way to work yesterday, looking for reasons to run errands, go out of her way, because she loved riding her Duc. “That bad?”
“Your naked bike is now naked to the point of being totaled,” Jack said.
“That’s really embarrassing,” she said, and closed her eyes again.
The sirens finally stopped. Doors slammed, then two paramedics were crashing through the underbrush to drop to their knees beside her.
“Female, thirty-four, laid down the bike and slid under the guardrail, awake and aware,” Jack said tersely, then rattled off her pulse, breathing, pupils, feeling and movement in fingers and toes. After what seemed like an interminable discussion she was on the backboard being carried up the embankment to the side of the road. “Where are you taking her?”
“County’s closest. Where’s her bike?”
Jack pointed to the Ducati, now leaning against the guardrail Erin had slid under.
“Damn, girl,” the paramedic said as she fastened the straps around Erin’s torso. “Got a death wish?”
“I just wanted to live,” Erin said, and closed her eyes again.
* * *
She let herself drift on the ride to the hospital. Jack was there when they opened the ambulance doors in the ER entrance, helmet in hand, striding along beside the gurney as they wheeled her in the doors. A nurse held up a hand when they trundled her right into an examining room. “Who are you?”
“I’m her…”
Enabler? Lover? Fellow adrenaline junkie? Dream man? Funny how some people took on easy titles—husband, parent, friend—but others resisted easy categorization. “He’s my friend,” Erin settled for. “Let him in. Please.”
A doctor showed up almost immediately, tall, thin, dressed in scrubs, scanning her with a practiced eye. “Hi, Erin,” he said, flicking a penlight at her eyes. “I’m Doctor Clay. How are you feeling?”
“Like I laid down my bike and slid into a ravine,” she answered.
He smiled. “What happened?” he asked.
I fell in love. “A rabbit ran in front of my bike. I swerved and lost control. Actually,” she said, “I overbraked my rear tire and underbraked my front tire. Stupid mistake.”
The nurse whisked the curtain around the gurney, then handed Dr. Clay a pair of scissors. They both started cutting Erin out of her clothes. “How long have you been riding?”
“About a week?”
He chuckled, but his expression went a little blank as he carefully peeled back her shirt. On the other side of the gurney a nurse was doing the same thing to her ruined jeans.
“You’ve got quite a collection of bruises,” Dr. Clay said. His voice was mild, but the look in his eyes was anything but as his gaze flicked from her collarbone to her hips.
“Oh. I jumped out of an airplane right before I wrecked my bike,” she said, trying to figure out how she’d managed to mark up her throat. Oh. Jack’s mouth. “Those … the others are … were … consensual,” she finished weakly, her face in flames. Jack was studying the floor, his arms folded across his chest, his feet spread. She couldn’t tell if he was amused or mortified.
“Good,” Dr. Clay said. The nurse draped a hospital gown over Erin’s body, then pulled up a blanket. “I want to run some tests, get X-rays, that sort of thing.”
A couple of hours later an orderly wheeled her back into her room, where Jack was waiting, sprawled in a chair with his head back and his eyes closed, both helmets on the floor beside him. His eyes flashed open when the orderly said cheerfully, “Here we go.”
“You’re still here,” Erin said, straightening out of the wheelchair, wishing she had on clothes, not the hospital gown. She winced when her bruised, scraped hip took her weight. Jack was by her side in an instant.
“Of course I’m still here. I’ve got her,” he said, his strong arms under hers, helping her up into the bed. Her breath hissed out when she stretched out again. Jack tucked the sheet and blanket firmly around her lower body.
“Hey, you,” he said softly. He took her hand, thumb stroking over the backs of her fingers.
She dragged in a shaky breath. “Hi,” she said. She couldn’t easily meet his eyes, not knowing what would show in hers. She felt like she’d been dragged through the day by the scruff of her neck, the jump, the accident, the completely unexpected realization that she’d fallen in love with Jack.
“I called a truck to take your bike to the dealership. They’ll call you with an estimate for repairs, if they can fix it,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said faintly.
A figure dressed in the khakis and button-down of an insurance salesman appeared in the doorway. Erin blinked for a second, then recognized her ex-husband. “Erin. What the hell,” Jason said resignedly.
Just when she thought the day couldn’t get any worse. “Why are you here?” she said, perhaps not all that kindly, but they were divorced.
“Apparently I’m still listed as your emergency contact,” he said, approaching the bed and eying Jack, then the motorcycle helmets sitting side by side on the floor. “Erin. You didn’t.”
“Not your business anymore,” she said. “But yes, I did. I said I’d do it, and I did it.”
“At least you’re not on my insurance,” he said.
She was spared the necessity of responding when two more people appeared in the doorway. “Jack. Thank goodness you’re okay!” the woman said, squeezing the hand of the man accompanying her.
“Rose,” Jack said, straightening. “What are you doing here?”
Ah, the sister. Erin wished for a split second that she was meeting the dazzling Rose under better circumstances, but then remembered it wouldn’t matter, because none of this was leading anywhere in the long run.
“Hawthorn’s brother, the police lieutenant, called Keenan saying one of the guys on his team was involved in a motorcycle crash. Jack. I’m so glad you’re okay. We’ve all been so worried about you.”
His voice trailed off. Jack’s gaze was fixed on the tight grip his sister still had on the other man’s hand. “You can let him go now, Rose. I’m fine.”
His sister’s chin lifted. Rather than stepping away from Keenan, she stepped a little closer. “I can’t, actually,” she said.
Jack sat up, then straightened, sending the rolling stool crashing into the wall. “What the hell?” he said, the phrase half question, half threat. “Keenan. Jesus!”
“Keep your voice down,” Rose hissed. “This is a hospital, and it’s not what you think.”
“It’s not?” he said, incredulous. “It sure as hell looks like what I think it is! When did this start?”
Rose opened her mouth. Keenan gave her hand a squeeze, then said, “In Turkey.”
Jack stared at him. “You bastard. You promised me you’d take care of her! Instead you get up to who the fuck knows what, and you don’t even tell me about it?”
At You promised Erin’s heart skipped a beat, but Jack’s shocked, disbelieving tone, made it stop dead in her chest. The only thing left behind when someone broke a promise was blood and tears. She knew that tone. Knew it well.
Keenan’s eyes narrowed, but Rose’s hand tightened on his. “Don’t even start, Jack,” Rose snapped, then drew a deep breath. Jason looked like he wanted to buy some popcorn and settle in for the show. Keenan looked like he’d been carved from the same mold as Jack, and Rose looked like she was on the verge of losing her temper in a really spectacular way.
The door opened slightly, and the scissors-wielding nurse poked her head in to survey the room. “I thought I heard raised voices,” she said mock-incredulous. “But I’m certain I was wrong, because this is a hospital, and people are trying to heal here. Including her. Surely you’re not all upsetting her. She’s had a very long day already.”
Jack looked abashed. Rose shot him a glare. Keenan, who Erin could already tell would be ice cold in a crisis, didn’t move a muscle. Jason smirked at Erin, as if to say See what kind of chaos you create when you start down this road?
“We were just leaving,” Rose said, eyeing Jack. “I hope you feel better soon,” her tone gentling in a heartbeat as she smiled at Erin. “Don’t let this stop you from riding. It happens to all of us.”
“Ma’am,” Keenan added formally to Erin. “We’ll talk later,” he added in Jack’s direction, then guided Rose out the door.
“You bet your ass we will,” Jack muttered.
Jason opened his mouth.
“Go home,” Erin said. “Please.” Exhaustion loomed over her, powerful, deceptively frothy at the top, and while she appreciated Jack’s silent, looming, intimidating presence at her bedside, she wasn’t looking forward to the conversation they had to have, right now.
Jason scuttled out, avoiding eye contact with Jack.
He hooked the rolling stool with his foot and sat down beside her bed again. He ran a hand through his hair, then blew out his breath. “Do you want some water? They gave you pills for the pain.”
She’d refused anything with narcotics in it, accepting only prescription-strength over-the-counter medications, but even without codeine, she was getting sleepy. “I’m fine,” she said, and tugged her hand free from him. “You can leave, too. No need for you to hang around.”
His forehead furrowed. “Who’s going to take you home?”
“I’ll call Carol.”
“Okay. Sure. Why?”
She looked down at his hands, still resting beside her arm on the thin hospital blanket. “Let’s not make this into something it isn’t, Jack,” she said quietly. “I’ve done the things I said I was going to do. We should go ahead and end it now.”
Shock flashed across his face before the shutters slammed closed. “Erin, what the hell—”
She refused to flinch, just took his hand because it was the last time she’d ever get to touch him, her amazing, courageous man. “Look, Jack, you’re steady as a rock. Which is great. We’ve both done what we said we needed to do. It’s best if we make a clean break. Right now. Thanks for everything,” she finished, because her throat was closing off, and even though her heart was breaking, she refused to show it.
“Sure,” he said. He straightened, sending the rolling stool back against the wall.
Erin was too strung out to flinch at the crash.
“Fine. Yeah. Whatever. Have a nice life.”
It was a good thing she was so tired, she thought fuzzily as she slid down a long, dark tunnel into sleep. Maybe when she woke up this all would have been a dream.
* * *
Jack spent the next two days researching and writing his final paper. After he sent the paper to Professor Trask, he turned to his bike. But hours of speeding down tree-lined country roads, catching the glint of animals’ eyes in the ditches as he revved the engine to its max only proved to Jack what he already knew: he was rock solid again. No more nerves. Helping Erin paddle around in an adrenaline junkie’s kiddie pool somehow helped him, too. And now she’d cut him off with only the most pathetic it’s-not-you-it’s-me for a reason.
Finally, around ten, he parked the bike in front of his favorite bar, dug his cell phone from his jacket pocket, and scrolled through his recent calls to Keenan’s number.
“We’re not doing this over the phone,” Keenan said by way of greeting.
“Shut the fuck up and meet me at Jackson’s Hole,” Jack said, shrugging out of his sheepskin jacket. It was officially too warm to wear it now, even after the sun went down. A whiff of Erin’s subtle perfume still clung to the interior. Jack tried not to press his face into it and breath so deep he could fill the hole inside himself.
“Okay,” Keenan said mildly, and hung up.
Jack was three whiskeys in by the time Keenan arrived to toss his car keys and cell phone on the polished oak bar and settle onto a stool. He ordered a beer, then turned his gaze to the baseball game Jack wasn’t really watching.
“How’s Erin?” Keenan asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” Jack said. “She kicked me out right after you and Rose left.”
Keenan raised an eyebrow, although at Jack’s statement or the second baseman’s fielding error, Jack wasn’t sure. “That day at the hospital. You weren’t mad about me and Rose. You were upset because someone you cared about was in a motorcycle crash,” Keenan said matter-of-factly.
“I was pretty upset,” Jack said, and knocked back another shot, thinking of red-light districts on four continents. “I know what you’re like.”
“Was like. I’m not like that with her,” Keenan said. “She’s different.”
Jack snorted.
“Dude. Get your fucking head out of your fucking ass. Do you think I’d move halfway around the world just to fuck someone? Knowing it would cost me your friendship? Your respect?”
Jack blinked. Remembered Keenan’s asshole father, the one who prized the military above everything else, and got himself killed taking just one more tour, one more deployment, when he was long past his prime as a Ranger. Remembered how Keenan hadn’t made any plans beyond contractor work in the Middle East. Jack wanted that work, that life. Keenan had been doing it because he thought there was no other option. “Wait, you’re here for Rose?”
“Jobs are jobs,” Keenan said offhandedly, eyes on the game. “I’m here for Rose.”
“Well, fuck.”
“I’m going to marry her,” Keenan added.
“Does she know this?”
“Not yet.”
“Good luck with that.” Jack finished the rest of his beer. “If you hurt her, ever, you answer to me.”
“Like Rose isn’t perfectly capable of dismembering me on her own,” Keenan said. “Look, I totally respect that. Message received, loud and clear. Now leave it the fuck alone. She’s mine. I’m hers. It’s between us now.”
“Fine, fine.” Jack sighed, and signaled for the bartender. “Just bring me the bottle,” he said.
“That’ll definitely take the edge off whatever’s eating you,” Keenan said.
“She dumped me.”
“Wait, what? When?”
“Just after she kicked you all out of the hospital room. She said we had a good time together, but she’d checked everything off her list, and we should just end it now.”
“What list?” Keenan said, obviously struggling to keep up.
“She had a list of things she wanted to do after she got divorced. Buy a bike, go skydiving, start dating again.”
“That’s weird,” Keenan said. “She didn’t look like someone who wanted to end a relationship. While you were yelling at me and Rose, I was watching her. She didn’t have much color to begin with, but she went white when you started going off about keeping promises.”
Keeping promises …
The penny dropped with the impact of a five-hundred-pound bomb, shaking the ground under him. “She made a big deal out of not breaking her word to me,” he said. “Her ex called her a quitter, said she was breaking her word, going back on her vows. She said her word meant everything to her, and she’d never make another promise she couldn’t keep. She promised me this would be casual.”
“Was it?”
He thought about it, about the rush of her bike, about the wildly exuberant way she threw herself into the dive, about the heat of her mouth against his. “Not even. Not to me, anyway.”
“It wasn’t to her, either,” Keenan said, then added when Jack raised an eyebrow, “After a few weeks with your sister I know exactly what a determined woman looks like.”
Jack contemplated this for a minute.
“You look like yourself again,” Keenan said finally. “What happened?”
Erin happened. “Who knows? I got over it,” Jack said shortly. He’d been steady as a rock the last two days, pushing his body through SEAL workouts, finally feeling like himself again. “Maybe I just needed some time.”
“Time’s helpful,” Keenan said blandly. “You going to stay in school? Because Grey Wolfe still hasn’t replaced me.”
“I called them yesterday,” Jack said. “The job’s mine if I want it.”
“Great. Take over my lease, would you? It’s a great apartment, best location in all of Istanbul, and the neighbor’s cat is a real sweetheart. Comes over for double feedings, sits on your lap and purrs.”
Jack threw him an incredulous stare. “A cat? You were looking after a cat?”
“Don’t knock it,” Keenan said. “You’ll like having company when you get home. Keeps you from being too lonely.”
“Don’t push it,” Jack said. “Just because you’re in love … with my … I don’t want to think about it … doesn’t mean I’ve got to pair off.”
“Sure,” Keenan said in the tone of voice he used when their CO asked for the impossible in less than twenty-four hours. “You’re a lone wolf. I feel you.”
“Please don’t,” Jack said, his brain spinning up images of pairing off with Erin before he shot himself down. No way would she want the life he was after. She was all about commitments, keeping her word. She had a job, a life here … No. She had a wrecked motorcycle and a ten-year-old car and lived in a borrowed house because she thought all she could have was a life among someone else’s souvenirs.
But she could have so much more.
Fuck this. “Keep it,” he said to the bartender when he brought the bottle of whiskey to their end of the bar.
“Where are you going?” Keenan asked.
Jack slapped some bills on the bar to pay his tab, then shrugged into his jacket. “I’m going to convince Erin to break her word.”
* * *
He rode through Lancaster’s dark streets, listening to the roar of bike, idly racing a couple of kids off the line, slowing down almost immediately to turn into Erin’s neighborhood. He thought of her sitting in that house, looking around at the life she dreamed of living, the life she thought would never be hers. He thought of what he could offer her that might tempt her to break her word.
A light was on at the back of the house, the casement cranked open in the window he’d identified as her bedroom, curtains blowing through to the backyard. She hadn’t put the screens in yet. He killed the bike’s engine and kicked down the stand, then swung his leg over. Maybe she was in bed, maybe she was in pain—he’d make this as easy as possible for her. He sidestepped between two lilac bushes and rapped on the window frame. “Erin,” he said quietly, trying not to scare her.
The breeze blew the curtains back just enough to show her sitting up in bed, dressed in a soft T-shirt and pajama pants, a book open in her lap. She looked up, then eased out of bed and came over to the window.
“Jack,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
The scent of lilac was heavy in the night air. “Change your mind, Erin.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to keep your word. Break your promise to me. Change your mind.”
She shook her head. “You’re just saying that because—”
“Come with me to Istanbul,” he said. “That’s what I’m saying.”
She blinked. Stared. “Istanbul? As in the capital of Turkey?”
“I start work there in a couple of weeks. I can’t promise I’ll be around all the time. I might not work for weeks, and I might work for months straight. But Istanbul is a seriously cool city. Lots of history. You can travel. Istanbul sits at the intersection of Europe and Asia. Greece, Italy, France, Germany, Egypt, Morocco, all just a couple of hours by plane. I’m taking over Keenan’s lease. He said the neighbor’s sweetheart of a cat adopted him. Think of the kitty. Someone has to feed the poor, helpless kitty while I’m working…” His voice trailed off.
Her eyes were widening, color flooding her cheeks. “You … want me to come with you? Quit my job? You’re the SEAL, Jack. I’m just an ordinary woman, and ordinary women don’t quit good jobs.”
Fuck that. Sideways. “Erin. You’re not ordinary.”
“With you I’m not ordinary.”
“So be with me. Always.”
Her eyes widened, disbelief and hope warring on her face. He tried to think like an ordinary person, about pension plans and 401k programs and money in the bank. “Take a sabbatical,” he hedged, “like your professor friend. Be extraordinary. With me.”
“Librarians don’t get sabbaticals,” she said, but he could see her brain churning. “But I might be able to arrange a leave. Or … I could quit my job.”
She was trying it on for size, and if he knew anything about Erin Kent, it was that once an idea took hold in her mind, she wouldn’t let it go. “Or quit, if you can’t take a leave. I know it sounds crazy, but contractor work pays well, and I—”
“I have savings,” she interrupted.
“And I love you,” he finished.
“And I’m getting an insurance check for my bike,” she said over him, obviously warming to the possibility, then blinked. Really looked at him. “You love me?”
“I do,” he said, listening to the crickets, the leaves rustling in the warming breeze, the evening primrose under Erin’s window giving off a soft, innocent scent. Spring in Lancaster was a potent time. He reached down and snapped off a blossom, then held it out to her. “I do, Erin. I give you my word.”
“I give you mine,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”
“Use some of the insurance money to buy a plane ticket,” he said, warming to the idea. “And delete that Tinder profile. I don’t want to date you. I want to live every single second of the rest of my life with you. Dating is for ordinary people. You and me, we’re not ordinary.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. He saw wild hope and soaring joy in her eyes. “We aren’t,” she agreed.
“Change your mind, Erin,” he murmured.
She leaned forward and kissed him. “Hi, Jack,” she said. “I changed my mind.”
“Good,” he said. “Stand back.” He hoisted himself up and swung a leg over, letting himself into the room, into her life.
Forever.