Page 47 of Burnin' For You
“Do you want to stop?” He said it, but—
“No. Of course not.” She leaned on a tree, then another as she made her way forward. But at the third tree, she did stop.
Let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry.” She turned to him, her expression angry, fierce. “I should have stayed back.”
He didn’t want to agree, so he pinched his mouth shut in a tight line.
“I’ll be okay—it flares up when I put a lot of pressure on it. I just need a second here.”
He glanced at the sun, hazy over the mountains. The line of smoke, bigger than before, tufted the horizon. The Davis Canyon fire was growing. They’d probably need a full team of jumpers to put it out now.
She straightened up from the tree. “I probably wouldn’t have made a very good smokejumper, limping all over the place.”
She started walking again, but her words had reached out, nudged him.
“We have plenty of turned ankles, wrenched knees, and pulled groins when we land—we’re often hobbling all over out here,” Reuben said.
She looked back then. “Really?”
He startled at the surprise that lit her eyes at his words. “Yeah. Of course.”
She nodded, then worked her way over a downed log. “I think I told myself my knee would have held me back. Used it as a justification.”
He had to ask—it was drilling a hole through him. “What happened, Gilly? If you passed the pack test—what did you fail?”
She sighed then. “Guess. And you can use the rappel as a hint.”
He traced the quick and easy memory of her abysmal descent down the cliff. Her lack of balance, the way the rope slipped too fast through her hand, her scream as she pulled the wrong rope, releasing the rappel. “Did you fail the letdown portion?”
“Nope. Butthatwas only from twenty feet up.”
Hmm.
And then—wait. Her expression when he’d told her they’d have to rappel.
“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
“That’s the one.” She shook her head. “I froze—not just once, but three times—right in the door of the plane, and that’s the deal. Three strikes you’re out, no matter if you’ve passed every test, scored better in every other category, and outlasted every man. And especially no matter if you’ve spent years dreaming about being a smokejumper. If you can’t get out of the plane…”
She raised a shoulder, and he had the strangest urge to reach out, to turn her around, look her in the eyes, and tell her that if he could, he’d figure out a way to get her out of a plane and onto their team.
Because no one should have to watch everything they thought they wanted slide by, out of reach.
“So you decided to become apilot?”
She laughed, the sound of it sweet, stirring. “I know, right? But my dad had this missionary friend, Dwayne King, who flew planes in Alaska, and he was visiting our church, found out about my failure, and said he’d teach me to fly. I spent the summer at his base, Kingdom Air, in Alaska and came back with my pilot’s license.” She held a branch for him. “The thing is, I’m not afraid in the cockpit. Just when I step out into thin air.”
“That’s when Istopbeing afraid,” he said, emitting his own low chuckle. “When I know I can disembark the canister in the sky, spread my wings, and fly.”
She made a little sound, one he didn’t know how to interpret.
“What?”
“It’s just—yeah. I’d love to do it. Just once. Jump out of a plane.”
Again, that crazy urge welled in his chest. And the words nearly emerged—I’ll take you jumping. “So why smokejumping, though?”
Now leaning on a tree, Gilly glanced back at him.