extended into all areas of my life. Beyond the brotherhood with the men I worked with summer after summer, I never gave a damn about anyone or anything other than growing my wings.
But at what cost?
The fondest memories I have about growing up on the farm were riding a tractor and hearing the whoosh of a jet fly overhead. I dreamed of a day where nothing would hold me hostage to a place where I didn’t want to be, so when I inherited that farm, I used it to fund my purchase of Northern Star Flights about eight years ago.
I first came to Alaska because I heard it was possible to make more money than I’d ever dreamed of in comparison to working on the damn farm. I fell into my job working at the Lumberjack Show for a great wage and tips making close to four times what I would have back home. When I found out it was possible to work on my dreams simultaneously with the limitless sky, nothing held me back from returning summer after summer. Then, that final summer, I met Kara. I fell into a lazy kind of infatuation with her. It was impossible not to after I got to know the real heart that beat beneath the brilliant mind. Days off became about touching her smooth skin, watching her eyes glow as I made her body burn under the cool air.
And then, she began to mean more. And that terrified me.
The future wasn’t thoughts of blue skies, but amber crystals. So, I ended us because nothing was going to hold me back. I couldn’t be tied down, physically or emotionally, to feeling trapped again. The idea of flight was the only thing that ever gave me hope freedom existed.
Kara being out of my life would ease the ache of not having her, I told myself back then. After all, flying was supposed to be my everything. It wasn’t supposed to be a woman, unless that woman vibrated beneath me with at least 160 horsepower. Flying was supposed to fill all the holes left inside of me. It was supposed to take me beyond feelings and pain and doubt.
Clutching Jed’s letter, I admit to myself it failed.
“Did he know?” I whisper aloud.
“Know what, buddy?” Brad asks. We’re all back at the B&B huddled around the fireplace.
“That if I knew about my son, I’d have given it all up? I never would have left him the way—”
“The way your parents left you?” Kody finishes grimly.
“Yeah.” I tip my head back against the chair. My mother got tired of being, well, a mother. And my father got tired of trying to raise a son alone, so he dumped me at his sister’s—whose best was slightly above marginal when it came to feelings. “And yet, I ended up doing exactly that to Kara.” Guilt overwhelms me, and I still haven’t opened the other envelope.
Nick speaks up. “Did you, Jennings? You didn’t know.”
We’re sitting around the fire after having changed into warm sweaters and jeans. I’m trying to work up enough courage to go find a private space to read Jed’s final words to me because I’m afraid of what they’re going to say. The envelope on my lap has some weight to it.
“No,” I agree. “But would that ease your feelings of guilt if you were the ones holding these?” I hold up the letters.
Brad looks away, unable to agree. Kody shakes his head. Nick just remains silent and stoic as always. I go on. “If what Jed said in his first letter is right, Kara has irrefutable proof she tried to reach out to me. I have nothing to be angry about, and yet a part of me…”
It’s Brad who finishes my thought. “Is.”
I nod. “I am. I missed out on everything.”
“That sounds like you’re hurt,” Kody pipes in.
“I’m that too,” I acknowledge.
“Then maybe it’s time for you to go read what’s in there,” he suggests.
Sighing, I drag my legs from the ottoman they’d been resting on. “I guess it is.” I head toward the door, stopping only when Kody calls out, “Where are you going?”
“Outside. I need to be as close to the sky as I can be right now.” Without another word, I head toward the back door where I can read Jed’s last words to me.
The spring air whips through my hair and sends a chill through me. “Should have grabbed my coat,” I mutter to myself. Dropping down onto a bench, heart