Page 60 of Dare to be Different

“I fucking heard that, Bossy!” Kade shouts.

Before she’s even got her coat off, Kade has her ponytail fisted in his grip. Their eyes connect and sparks fly, and I wonder if it’s as visible and palpable to other people as it is to me every goddamn time I’m around Remy lately. Jed looks over from the kitchen table, and when he sees his girl and his brother caught up in a battle of wills, he just grins and goes back to eating.

I sit down with everyone who is awake, ready to eat and go to bed. But I’m back on my feet a second later when Four runs down the hall, half-dressed.

“Zahn!” he shouts, eyes scanning the table until he finds me as I stand. He sags, almost like seeing me is a relief, but he tenses again on the next breath. “S&R just got a MAYDAY call from your company. How many pilots do you have out right now? Where’s Remy?” He’s walking to the door, finishing getting dressed.

My heart fucking explodes. “He should be back anytime now. He’s due to land at seven.” My phone is in my hand and I’m calling Remy on repeat, texting whoever I know at the airfield and calling the airfield in Nome to see if he left okay.

No. No. No. No. No. This cannot be happening!

“Four?” I beg him for information as he opens the front door. My palms are sweating and my mind is racing, and I think my heart is breaking.

He turns, palming my cheeks. “Keep trying him. I’ll tell you as soon as I know something, but if you hear before me, please tell me so I can fucking breathe, okay?” His eyes meet mine. “He’s gonna be fine. It might not even be him.”

It is him. He’s the only pilot we have in the air right now.

Chapter 24

I’ve been a pilot since I was nineteen. Never, in all those years of flying and training, did I feel fear like I felt a few days ago when my plane went down. But today, with the snow whipping around me and the desolation setting in, the real fear begins.

Because there’s a chance I won’t be found.

My route was going fine, and then there came a fucking private jet flying way below their intended altitude according to air traffic control, and I had to drop my flight depth so fast that my shitty little plane couldn’t handle it. I flew through their air pocket, and once I started spinning and losing the engine, I couldn’t recover.

I’m fine. My head got knocked around a little, but I managed to steer the old girl into a brutally elegant crash landing. She’s fucked, but I’m alright. My biggest problem is that my distress signal worked for a little, but then it went blank and my radios are mangled. I’m sitting in the middle of nowhere with a ruined plane, a bunch of cargo, and no idea where I am or how far I should travel from the site of the wreck.

Protocol dictates that I should stay with the plane so it’s easier for them to find me. If I get lost as a single person in the mountains, I’ll be a lot harder to find than the site of a smoking crash. But the smoke went out yesterday, and the small fires I’m trying to keep lit aren’t leaving big enough smoke signals in the air.

It’s been three days, and if I make it through another night without being attacked by wildlife, freezing to death, or passing out without waking up, I’ll have to start moving tomorrow. Doesn’t bode well for me that my biggest hope is the asshole pilot who caused the crash. If he has a damn heart, he’ll have at least called in the location he saw my plane go down.

I’m on my back, shielded by snow, poking at the fire to keep it burning, trying to appreciate the view. At least the evergreens and the mountains are a pretty sight, with a dark blue sky as the perfect backdrop. Looks like more snow coming in, and that won’t work well for my fire, but I can’t think about doom right now. I need some beauty.

I smile as I drift in and out of light sleep, the flashbacks of a million memories with Zahn highlighting the back of my eyelids. When we got our pilot’s licenses, we took turns flying a rented plane to a remote mountainside, and we just camped out for a few days to celebrate. But when we started our company, Zahn suggested we go back there to live it up before we had to be responsible business owners. This kind of feels like that. I wish he was here.

My ears catch the sound of propellers, and my eyes squint into the sky, trying to make out the sound. The wind picks up, and then a helicopter is hovering above me. My heart jolts with relief, but my body isn’t responding the way I want it to. I’m trying to stand, to wave my arms, to signal with a burning stick or something, but instead, I stay on my back and watch the helicopter go in and out of sight.

Then a body is coming down to me, and I try to grin at the green eyes and the smirking face. “Zahn,” I say, reaching for him. When his feet touch the ground, I latch onto his gear and start tearing up with so much relief that I’m shaking.

“Hey, Rem,” he says. “It’s Four. Can you see me?”

I blink away the blurriness and look at him. Shit. It really is Four. They look so much alike.

“How you doing, Rem? Any injuries? Hypothermia?” He starts checking me over and my fingers never loosen on his suit. “Hurt? Hungry? Freezing?”

“Zahn?” I say.

“Oh, he’s going out of his fucking mind trying to find you.” He smiles at me. “Come on, man. Tell me what’s hurting. How are you feeling?”

“Piss-ssed off,” I chatter. “Took y-you assholes long enough.”

He laughs, looking at the wreckage. He throws a beacon into the plane to signal the location, snaps a few photos of it once I tell him I’m fine, and then he’s strapping me into something while my mind finally gets permission to shut down and leave survival mode.

“You’re really okay, Rem?” He touches me everywhere, checking for blood again. “Really? Don’t lie to me to act tough.”

I’m dazed and confused, but I’m fine. “Headache. That’s it.” I had food on the plane, so I’m not even that hungry.

“Well, let’s get you the fuck outta here then. Zahn’s seriously losing his shit, but we can make him sweat it out a bit longer,” he jokes. “No, I’m kidding. I’d never do that. We’ll call him as soon as we’re in the air.” He straps me into the basket. “We’ve all been going crazy, Rem. You’re fucking family, and we were so scared.”

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