This book is for every single member of Colleen Hoover’s CoHorts.
Except the murderers. This book isn’t for those two.
I set the pen down on the paper. My hand is shaking too much to finish filling it out, so I inhale a few quick breaths in an attempt to calm my nerves.
You can do this, Maggie.
I pick up the pen again, but I think my hand is shaking worse than before I put it down.
“Let me help you with that.”
I look up to see the tandem instructor smiling at me. He grabs the pen and picks up the clipboard, then takes a seat in the chair to my right. “We get a lot of nervous first-timers. It’s easier if you just let me fill out the paperwork because your handwriting probably won’t be legible,” he says. “You act like you’re about to jump out of an airplane or something.”
I’m immediately put at ease by his lazy smile, but become nervous all over again when I realize I’m a horrible liar. Lying on the medical section would have been a lot easier if I were filling it out myself. I’m not sure I can lie out loud to this guy.
“Thanks, but I can do it.” I try to take back the clipboard, but he pulls it out of my reach.
“Not so fast”—he quickly glances down at my form—“Maggie Carson.” He holds out his hand, still holding the clipboard out of my reach with his other hand. “I’m Jake, and if you’re planning on jumping out of a plane at ten thousand feet while at my mercy, the least I can do is finish your paperwork.”
I shake his hand, impressed with the strength behind his grip. Knowing these are the hands I’m about to entrust my life to eases my mind a tiny fraction.
“How many tandem jumps have you completed?” I ask him.
He grins, then returns his attention to my paperwork. He begins flipping through the pages. “You’ll be my five hundredth.”
“Really? Five hundred sounds like a big deal. Shouldn’t you be celebrating?”
He brings his eyes back to mine and loses his smile. “You asked how many tandem jumps I’ve completed. I don’t want to celebrate prematurely.”
I gulp.
He laughs and nudges my shoulder. “I’m kidding, Maggie. Relax. You’re in good hands.”
I smile at the same time I inhale another deep breath. He begins to scroll through the form.
“Any medical conditions?” he asks, already pressing his pen to the box marked “no.” I don’t answer him. My silence prompts him to look up at me and repeat his question. “Medical conditions? Recent illnesses? Any crazy ex-boyfriends I should be aware of?”
I smile at his last comment and shake my head. “No crazy exes. Just one really great one.”
He nods slowly. “What about the other part of the question? Medical conditions?” He waits for my answer, but I fail to give him anything other than a nervous pause. His eyes narrow and he leans forward a little bit more, eyeing me carefully. He’s looking at me like he’s trying to figure out answers to more than just what’s on the questionnaire he’s holding. “Is it terminal?”
I try to hold my resolve. “Not really. Not yet.”
He leans in even closer, looking at me with an expression full of sincerity. “What is it, then, Maggie Carson?”
I don’t even know him, but there’s something calming about him that makes me want to tell him. But I don’t. I look at my hands, folded together in my lap. “You might not let me jump if I tell you.”
He leans into me until his ear is close to my mouth. “If you say it quietly enough, there’s a good chance I might not even hear it,” he says in a hushed voice. A wave of his breath caresses my collarbone and I’m immediately covered in chills. He pulls back slightly and eyes me as he waits for my response.
“CF,” I say. I’m not sure he’ll even know what CF means, but if I keep it simple he might not ask me to elaborate.
“How are your O2 levels?”
Maybe he does know what it means. “So far so good.”
“Do you have a doctor’s release?”
I shake my head. “Last-minute decision. I tend to be a little impulsive at times.”
He grins, then looks back to the form and checks “no” on medical conditions. He glances at me. “Well, you’re lucky because I happen to be a doctor. But if you die today, I’m telling everyone you lied on this questionnaire.”
I laugh and nod in agreement, appreciative he’s willing to shrug it off. I know what a big deal that is. “Thank you.”
He looks at the questionnaire and says, “Why are you thanking me? I didn’t do anything.” His denial makes me smile. He continues to scroll down the list of questions and I answer them honestly until we finally make it to the last page. “Okay, last question,” he says. “Why do you want to skydive?”
I lean over him to glance at the form. “Is that really a question?”
He points to the question. “Yep. Right here.”
I read the question, then give him a blunt answer. “I guess because I’m dying. I have a long bucket list of things I’ve always wanted to do.”
His eyes harden a little, almost as if my answer upset him. He returns his attention to the forms, so I tilt my head and lean over his shoulder again and watch as he writes down an answer that isn’t at all the one I gave him.
“I want to skydive because I want to experience life to the fullest.”
He hands me the form and the pen. “Sign here,” he says, pointing to the bottom of the page. After I sign the form and give it back to him, he stands up and reaches out for my hand. “Let’s go pack our chutes, Five Hundred.”
•••
“Are you really a doctor?” I yell over the roar of the engines. We’re seated directly across from one another in the small airplane. His smile is huge and full of teeth so straight and white, I would bet money he’s actually a dentist.
“Cardiologist!” he yells. He waves a hand around the interior of the airplane. “I do this for fun!”
A cardiologist who skydives in his spare time? Impressive.
“Your wife doesn’t get upset that you’re so busy all the time?” I yell. Oh, God. That was such an obvious, cheesy question. I cringe that I even asked that out loud. I’ve never been good at flirting.
He leans forward and yells, “What?”
He’s really going to make me repeat myself? “I asked if your wife gets upset that you’re so busy all the time!”
He shakes his head and unbuckles his safety harness, then moves to the seat next to me. “It’s too loud in here!” he yells, waving his hand around the interior of the airplane. “Say it one more time!”
I roll my eyes and begin to ask him again. “Does…your…wife…”
He laughs and presses a finger to my lips, but only briefly. He pulls his hand away and leans toward me. My heart reacts more to this quick movement of his than it does from the fact that I’m about to jump out of this airplane.
“I’m kidding,” he says. “You looked so embarrassed after the first time you said it, I wanted to make you say it again.”
I slap him on the arm. “Asshole!”
He laughs and stands up, then reaches for my safety harness and presses the release latch. He pulls me up. “You ready for this?”
I nod, but it’s a lie. I am absolutely terrified, and if it weren’t for the fact that this guy is a doctor and he does things like this for fun—and he’s really hot—I’d probably be backing out right about now.
He turns me until my back is to his chest and connects our safety harnesses together until I’m securely fastened to him. My eyes are closed when I feel him pull my goggles on. After several minutes of waiting for him to finish prepping us, he walks me forward toward the opening of the airplane and presses his hands against either side of the opening. I am literally staring down at clouds.
I squeeze my eyes shut again, just as he brings his mouth close to my ear. “I don’t have a wife, Maggie. The only thing I’m in love with is my life.”
I’m somehow smiling during one of the scariest moments of my life. His comment makes the question worth the three times he had me repeat it. I tighten my grip around my safety harness. He reaches around me and takes both of my hands, then lowers them to my side. “Sixty more seconds,” he says. “Can you do me a favor?”
I nod, too scared to disagree with him right now since I’ve practically placed my fate in his hands.
“If we make it to the ground alive, will you let me take you to dinner? To celebrate being my five-hundredth time?”
I laugh at the sexual undertone in his question and look over my shoulder. “Are tandem instructors allowed to date their students?”
“I don’t know,” he says with a laugh. “Most of my students are men and I’ve never had the desire to ask one of them out.”
I stare straight ahead again. “I’ll let you know my answer when we land safely.”
“Fair enough.” He pushes me a step forward, then intertwines his fingers with mine, spreading our arms out. “This is it, Five Hundred. You ready?”
I nod as my pulse somehow begins to beat even more rapidly than before, and my chest tightens with the fear consuming me, knowing what I’m about to willingly do. I feel his breath and the wind against my neck as he inches us to the very edge of the plane’s opening.
“I know you said you want to skydive because you’re dying,” he says, squeezing my hands. “But this isn’t dying, Maggie! This is living!”
With that, he shoves us both forward…and we jump.
As soon as I open my eyes, I immediately roll over to find the other side of my bed empty. I grab the pillow Ridge slept on and pull it to me. It still smells like him.
It wasn’t a dream. Thank God.
I still can’t wrap my head around last night. The concert he orchestrated with Brennan and Warren. The songs he wrote for me. That we were finally able to tell each other how we really felt without guilt being attached to those feelings.
Maybe that’s where this new sense of peace comes from—the absence of all the guilt I’ve always felt in his presence. It was hard falling in love with someone who was committed to someone else. It was even harder trying to prevent it from happening.
I roll out of bed and scan the room. Ridge’s shirt is next to mine on the floor, so that means he’s still here. I’m a little nervous to walk out of my bedroom and see him. I don’t know why. Maybe because he’s my boyfriend now and I’ve barely had twelve hours to adjust to it all. It’s so…official. I have no idea what it will be like. What our lives together will be like. But it’s an excited nervous.
I reach down and grab his T-shirt, then pull it over my head. I make a detour to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. I debate fixing my hair before I walk into the living room, but Ridge has seen me in worse conditions than the present one. We used to be roommates. He’s seen me in way worse conditions.
When I open the door to the living room, he’s there, seated at the table with a notebook and my laptop. I lean against the doorframe and watch him for a while. I’m not sure how he feels about it, but I love that I can watch him unabashedly without him hearing me enter the room.
He pulls a frustrated hand through his hair at one point, and I can tell by the stiffness of his shoulders that he’s stressed. Work stuff, I assume.
He eventually catches sight of me, and that seeing me in the doorway seems to ease his stress completely erases all my nervous energy. He stares for a moment and then drops his pen on the notepad. He smiles and scoots his chair back to stand, then makes his way across the living room. When he reaches me, he grabs me and pulls me against him, pressing his lips against the side of my head.
“Good morning,” he says, pulling back.
I will never grow tired of hearing him speak. I smile at him and sign, “Good morning.”
He looks at my hands and then back at me. “That is so damn sexy.”
I grin. “You speaking is so damn sexy.”
He kisses me, then pulls away and heads to the table. He grabs his phone and texts me.
Ridge: I have a ton of work to catch up on today and I really need my own laptop. I’m going to head back to my apartment so you can get ready for work. Want me to come over tonight?
Sydney: I drive by your place on my way home from work. I’ll just stop by on my way home.
Ridge nods and picks up the notebook he was writing in. He closes my laptop and walks back to me. He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me against him, pressing his mouth to mine. I kiss him back and we don’t stop, even when I hear him toss the notebook on the bar. He lifts me up with both arms, and a few seconds later, we’re across the living room and he’s lowering me onto the couch, and then he’s on top of me and I’m pretty sure I’m going to get fired this week. There’s no way I can tell him I’m already late for work when I’d rather be fired than have to stop kissing him.
I’m being dramatic. I don’t want to get fired. But I’ve waited so long for this and don’t want him to leave. I start counting to ten, promising myself that I’ll stop kissing him and get ready for work when I reach ten. But I make it all the way to twenty-five before I finally press against his chest.
He pulls back, smiling down at me. “I know,” he says. “Work.”
I nod and do my best to sign what I’m saying. I know I’m not getting it all right, but I spell out the words I don’t know yet. “You should have chosen this coming weekend to sweep me off my feet rather than a work night.”
Ridge smiles. “I couldn’t wait that long.” He kisses my neck and then starts to roll off me so I can get up, but he pauses and stares at me appreciatively for a moment.
“Syd,” he says. “Do you…feel…” He pauses, then pulls out his cell phone. We still have a huge communication barrier in that he doesn’t feel completely comfortable speaking full conversations out l
oud yet, and I don’t know enough sign language to hold a full conversation at a decent pace. I’m sure until we both get better, texting will remain our primary form of communication. I watch him text for a moment, and then my phone pings.
Ridge: How do you feel now that we’re finally together?
Sydney: Incredible. How do you feel?
Ridge: Incredible. And…free? Is that the word I’m looking for?
I’m still reading and rereading his text when he immediately begins typing out another one. He’s shaking his head, like he doesn’t want me to take his previous text the wrong way.
Ridge: I don’t mean free in the sense that we weren’t free before we reunited last night. Or that I felt tied down when I was with Maggie. It’s just…
He pauses for a moment, but I respond to him before he replies because I’m pretty sure I know what he’s trying to say.
Sydney: You’ve been living a life for others since you were a kid. And choosing to be with me was kind of a selfish choice. You never do things for yourself. Sometimes putting yourself first can feel freeing.
He reads my text, and as soon as his eyes flick to mine, I can see we’re on the same page.
Ridge: Exactly. Being with you is the first decision I’ve made simply because I wanted it for myself. I don’t know, I guess I feel like I shouldn’t feel this good about it. But I do. This feels good.
Even though he’s saying all of this like he’s relieved he finally made a selfish choice, there’s still a wrinkle between his furrowed brows like his feelings are also accompanied by guilt. I reach my hand up and smooth it out, then cup his face. “Don’t feel guilty. Everyone wants you to be happy, Ridge. Especially Maggie.”
He nods a little, then kisses the inside of my palm. “I love you.”
He said those words numerous times last night, but hearing them again this morning still feels like he’s saying them for the first time. I smile and pull my hand from his so I can sign, “I love you, too.”