Page 70 of Simply Yours

“Did something go wrong with the plane?”

“We can’t afford bad publicity?—”

“Baird, you okay, buddy?”

“Miss Barnes, are you going to be ill?”

Caitlin was on all fours there on the runway, wobbly and dazed, feeling like a newborn foal that had barely survived its first few steps. Beside her, Jason swayed slightly on his feet, his expression still somewhere between terror and disbelief.

And then—she looked up at him.

Their gazes met, and a realization struck them at the same time. She climbed to her feet, not breaking the look between them, almost in a silent communication between them.

An understanding.

If life had gone differently… if fate had played a crueler hand… Jason might have actuallybeenin the Air Force. This moment—this horrifying, hilarious, utterlyridiculousmoment—could have been a soul-crushing realization. Instead, it was a mental door slamming shut, closing off one of his ‘What if’ possibilities in his head. Maybe he wasmeantto be home. And that?

Thatwas funny.

Ironic.

Jason cracked first, his lips twitching before he dissolved into helpless, manic laughter. Caitlin followed an instant later, clutching his arm as giggles overtook her, their shared hysteria consuming them both.

They clung to each other, gasping for breath between bouts of laughter, as bystanders awkwardly thrust sodas and free T-shirts at them—anything to keep them from leaving a bad review.

They wouldn’t.

Because they had just learned something important.

They werenotaviators.

And that was absolutely, perfectly okay.

Thirteen

JASON

Jason leaned back in his chair, the warmth of the kitchen wrapping around him like a well-worn quilt. The scents of home—fresh bread, roasted chicken, and the faintest trace of his mother’s lavender-scented hand soap—lingered in the air. The laughter of his siblings bounced off the old wooden beams of the farmhouse, the easy kind of joy that could only exist in places where love had sunk deep into the very bones of the building.

And right there, in the middle of it all, was Caitlin.

He found himself watching her—not just noticing, but reallywatching. The way her eyes crinkled when she laughed, the way she leaned in conspiratorially with Becca and Toni as if sharing the world’s best-kept secret. She fit so effortlessly here, slipping into place like she’d been molded for it.

Something thick settled in his chest.

This.

Thiswas what mattered. Not the never-ending list of responsibilities weighing on his shoulders, not the constant battle to keep everything from falling apart. Life wasn’t about duty or regrets. It was aboutthis—about the people sitting around this table, about lifting them up instead of simply keeping things from crashing down.

Family.

And Caitlin—she was part of that, wasn’t she? In some way, she always had been. First as Matthew’s tagalong best friend, later as the steadfast presence at birthdays, weddings, and homecomings. She’d been woven into their lives, threading herself through the years in a way that felt so natural he’d never thought to question it.

But now… now it was different.

He wasn’t looking at her as the girl who used to run barefoot through the fields, trying to keep up with Matthew’s wild ideas. He wasn’t even looking at her as the woman who had gone off to make something of herself in the Navy, only to come home with a quiet sort of steel in her spine that hadn’t been there before.

No, now he was looking at her ashis.

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