Chapter One
Charlotte
It felt like my hair was being pulled out of my head as I looked down through the clouds at the ground – a really fucking hard ground. I mean, I’ve walked on it since I was thirteen months old, I knew how hard it was, and the distance between my body and it right now wasn’t really compatible with me being a breathing and living human being. All it would take is the parachute failing, a flock of birds ripping through the thin fabric, being off by one second when the cord was pulled… I was too young to die.
Turning to look at the asshole beside me whose fault this all was, I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to say. Thankfully, he wasn’t aware of me doing this seeing as how he was still looking down at where I’d just looked up from.
Here’s the thing – I said I wanted to cross items off my bucket list, but I hadn’t really known what I’d wanted to do. Out of desperation, I’d gone online and done an internet search for bucket list items. Surprisingly, skydiving was number one on most of the lists. The reason it was surprising was because it meant that thousands of people around the world were listing things they wanted to do before they died, and number one was something that would kill them outright.
When Levi had told me his brother Noah was into jumping out of planes like a psycho kamikaze, I’d asked him about it, but he’d made it seem easy like jumping off a swing – the lying asshole of a bull. Yeah, he was the asshole of a bull, the tail end of the angry bovine creature with horns on its head. I wasn’t going to go into how crusty one of those would be, not with my stupid decisions staring me in the fact at that precise moment, anyway.
As soon as I found my way out of this mess, I was going to cause him pain. Then I was going to have another look at my list and take off things that might bring me death, especially as I was trying to get through all of this just in case that was what was coming to me. I should have gone for jumping into a pit of feathers, or lying in a room with puppies crawling over me – which, FYI, wasn’t on any of the bucket lists online, but it totally fucking should have been.
A hard tap to the shoulder almost made me embarrass myself.
“Are you ready, Charlotte?” Lucifer – or Pete if you went by what his parents had called him – yelled over the sound of the air rushing in around us.
I was still facing toward Levi, so I saw the guy attached to him doing the same thing. I’d never been the type who prayed, but I figured now was the best time to start.
Please, God, don’t let him say yes. Let him back out of it so that I’ve got a good reason to do the same thing.
“Charlotte?” Pete yelled, giving my arm a shake.
Just then, Levi and his guy scooted to the open edge of the plane and started preparing to jump. It was like I was watching it happen in slow motion now, and I was vaguely aware of a dark tunnel creeping in around my vision as they started to lean out of the side of the plane. That’s when something constricted around my chest, and I started panting, doing my best to get oxygen into lungs that felt like they were the size of a quarter as the tunnel closed in more quickly.
Just as they’d leaned past the point of return, the tunnel won and it was lights out. The last thing I heard as I slipped into the darkness, was Levi yelling, “I’ve changed my mind!”
Or, at least that’s what I thought I’d heard.
Levi
Keeping my eyes on the road, I silently seethed – yes, seethed – over today’s events. When I’d said I’d help her fulfill her bucket list, I’d thought she meant shit like tattoos and climbing a mountain, not skydiving. I’d figured that sending her to Noah and hearing him explain exactly what happened would make her change her mind, instead she’d been even more determined to do it thanks to his pep talk.
When I got home, I was going to kill my brother, hug my best friend who was also his wife, and then kill him all over again.
“It’s fun.” He’d said. “You’ll love it.” He’d said. “It’s as harmless as riding a bike.” He’d said. “You’ll want to do it again, and again, and again.” He’d said.
I should have just paid attention to Luna’s frantic head shaking behind him, instead of thinking that I could hack it.