I gave it to her, breaking the vow of secrecy I’d sworn to him, because I couldn’t bear to lie to her.
“Because he’s in a fucking wheelchair. He couldn’t land the rotation, and the crash paralyzed him.” There it was.
I expected her reaction to be nuclear. It was more of an electromagnetic pulse. There was no explosion, but the light in her eyes, the happy energy she’d had radiating around her all morning, died in a split second.
I would have rather seen her rage than watch those damn walls go back up.
She didn’t say a word, simply kissed me, the press of her lips heavy with fear and a touch of desperation. Then she turned toward where she’d sat all yesterday and walked away.
Yeah. I definitely would have rather had a yelling Leah than a silent one.
When I finally had my gear on, ready to hit the ramp for the first time that day, I looked to where her seat was, expecting to see an empty space.
She sat, her outstretched legs covered in white, gauzy pants, reading one of the literature books Penna had brought with her from our assigned homework.
It didn’t matter to her that what I was doing was dangerous, that any minute she could be sitting in the hospital with me—she was there.
Damn it, that pressure was back in my chest, ten times what it had been, burning with an intensity that only Leah could soothe, because she was the balm to everything that was broken inside me.
I prayed that I didn’t break her, too.
Chapter Twenty-One
Leah
Mykonos
He was insane. That was the only reason I could come up with for why he would do this to himself. Any one of these people could have messed with the zip-line rigs, or weakened his chest protector, and he was putting his life in their hands. Again. Watching him yesterday was hard enough, but this was torturous. He started his umpteenth run at the ramp—I’d lost count of how many it had been—and I held my breath as he went flying, tumbling through space, until he landed closer to the full rotation in the foam pit. Thank God the sun would be going down soon, because I wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take, let alone how much more I could stomach.
Penna leaned over the foam pit, analyzing what had worked, as Little John moved the crane to lift him out.
Paralyzed. The only other person was paralyzed.
Over a stupid trick.
Yep, insane. That was the only answer.
I flipped another page in Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and tried to pay attention, but it was useless. We’d already missed a couple of each class, and I didn’t even want to think about what it was going to take to catch us both up, but I was going to have to.
Paxton couldn’t afford to have anything else on his mind while he was hunting death.
Paralyzed. Ugh. I slammed the book and threw it on the blanket. All over a stupid documentary that he said was the least they could do for someone else. What would even possess him to want to try something that had done that to someone else…unless…
I sat up, watching the dynamic between the three of them, Landon, Paxton, and Penna. There was an empty space between them, like someone was missing from the conversation—because he was.
Because the fourth Original wasn’t taking time off. Nick had to have been the one hurt. He was the one paralyzed.
That’s why Paxton was so hell-bent on getting the trick down. Was he doing it to show up the friend who’d stolen the only girl he’d ever cared about? I doubted it. Paxton wasn’t that petty.
But the evidence suggested otherwise.
Add to all of that the nagging feeling in my stomach that not everyone here had Paxton’s safety as a priority, and I was a bundle of nausea.
When he blew me a kiss, I wrapped my arms around my knees and forced a smile. This was the last place I wanted to be, waiting for disaster to strike, but if I left it would distract him, and possibly bring on said disaster. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.
So I stayed.
My breath froze in my chest as he came barreling down the track, driving at the ramp faster than I’d ever seen him go before. He launched higher, and my teeth sank into my lower lip, as he flipped once…twice…three times…
And landed on both wheels in the foam pit.
The celebration began at once, the crew all whooping with arms raised. Paxton didn’t wait for the crane, just climbed out of the pit, jumping to the ground and ripping off his helmet mid-run.
Exhilaration burst through me like a joyful shock to the heart. He’d done it!
I was in his arms before I even realized that I’d stood. His mouth found mine, kissing me with both of his hands tangled in my hair. My arms were around his neck, and I held on for dear life, well aware of how dangerous everything was around him, knowing I had to savor each kiss, never waste any of them.
“You did it!” I yelled as he swung me around in his arms.
“Not quite, but almost,” he said, laughing, punctuating his comment with another kiss.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He has to actually land it on the dirt and ride off, now,” Landon answered, smacking him on the back. “That was amazing!”
Yeah, I was right.
They were both insane.
…
Fuck. This.
How long was he going to keep this up?
Day two of watch-Paxton-try-to-kill-himself, and our last day on Mykonos, had me camped out on a separate area of the track. They’d moved the ramp, which had taken hours, and packed dirt higher on the mound Paxton was supposed to land on.
Except he’d skidded out more than he’d landed it.