KENNEDY
I didn’t knowhow I would survive Quincy’s pregnancy. I seriously thought I was going to have a coronary imagining everything that could’ve gone wrong back there. She could’ve died in multiple ways. A fucking helicopter crash, for starters.
Now, as we waited with local law enforcement–we’d called in Megan and her partner Dan from the sheriff’s office–for the Navy to show up and deal with our prisoner and dead bodies, I had to force myself not to replay the past scenes and think about how lucky we got.
Because it was “we” now. Me, Quincy, and our baby.
I heard the beat of helicopter wings and let out a slow exhale. Quincy was back. After all that, my beautiful, brave pilot had taken one of the helicopters the other merc team had shown up in to go pull out the Search and Rescue team with their stranded hikers. We’d gotten word of the retrieval, and with a perfectly good helicopter at the ready, she’d offered to go and get them.
Not that she hadn’t been shot out of the sky and been part of a shootout. And pregnant.
She wanted to help. Needed to. The idea of forcing that team to walk out to help wasn’t something she could do if she could get to them herself.
I hadn’t been thrilled about her doing that and had wanted to go with her. I’d acted like a fucking two-year-old having a meltdown, and I hadn’t gotten my way. There hadn’t been room.
That was the reason. No seat for me.
I’d let her go. I laughed just thinking that because I hadn’tlether do anything. It was her job to help people, just like it was mine. Except she was the only one who could fly. The only reason she’d crashed–fuck, I was going to have nightmares for months over it–was because of the team Williams had sent in. She was safe. So off she went, and I’d had to stand on the sidelines and wait.
Hayes had slapped me on the shoulder and offered a commiserating look, but that hadn’t done anything to help. It had been hell on my nerves, but I had to let her go, just as she let me go off on jobs. Jobs that were fucking dangerous.
Less than an hour after she left, she landed on the helipad and turned off the bird. I had to admit, it was a nice one, and I wondered if it was finders-keepers in situations like this. With our helicopter in the trees a few miles up the mountain, this one might be ours now. I jogged out to meet her.
“Thanks, Kennedy, we owe you that beer,” the Search and Rescue guy called out as he helped the three hikers–I’d only thought there had been two–out of the helicopter and toward a waiting SUV. They didn’t appear all too injured—one was hobbling and another held a shirt to his bleeding head. They’d go to the hospital to be checked out and hopefully told to stay out of the woods from now on.
I caught her waist as she climbed out.
“I don’t need help, Kennedy,” she chided, but there was a smile on her face.
“I know, but you’re getting it, anyway.” I slid her body down along mine, so she landed on her feet without an inch between us.
She lifted her face, and I cupped the back of her head to show her how relieved I was that she was back. I kissed the hell out of her, my tongue sweeping between her lips, my teeth tugging on her lower lip. By the time I was through, her lips were swollen, and her eyes glassy. “Wow. I should crash more often,” she said.
I bristled and had an internal freak-out.
“Don’t even say that,” I growled through gritted teeth. Yeah, there would be a lot of nightmares.
She shook her head and cupped my cheek. “Kidding. Just a joke.”
“Listen… we should talk.”
Her gaze darted away. “Yeah.”
There was something softer about Quincy. That wary defensiveness she usually carried like armor had dropped away.
I laced my fingers through hers and started walking, slowly, toward the bunkhouse. “I’m sorry I was a dick when you told me about the pregnancy.”
She slowed and glanced up at me. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. That was wrong. Of course, you have a right to know and to be involved in any decisions I make.”
The remaining anger I’d felt when she’d told me she was pregnant and had chosen to leave without telling me fell away.
“If you have to go to San Diego, I’m coming, too,” I said. “I want to be with you, Flyer. I need to be your wingman. If that means leaving Alpha Mountain, so be it. You and the baby are all that matter to me.”
Quincy stopped altogether and turned her face up to mine once more, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “I want to be with you, too,” she said. “You were right–I was afraid of things getting serious, or of getting hurt, or whatever. I thought you would resent us for changing your life. But I should’ve given you more credit than that.”
“You know what happens now, don’t you?”
Quincy caught my teasing tone and smiled. “Is it theI’m rightdance?”