Page 84 of Promise Not To Fall

Do I trust anyone? I trust Rylee. But again, I know I trust Jake. Trusting someone is going home with them. Trusting them is giving them your hand and letting them place a firecracker in it.

You experience things in life. Scary things. Things that change you and everyone in your life. Rylee is experiencing that and making the best of it. Sometimes you have to plunge into the unknown and the unplanned to experience life. I learned—and it wasn’t easy—you can’t live the way I had been living. Well, you can, but you’d be missing the thrill that comes with spontaneity. Nothing compares to that.

As the weeks pass and the time to leave gets closer, I’m not thinking about how big a decision this is, just that I can’t wait to get there.

Laci took over for Revel within two days. When I took the job with Stevie, I already had two clients lined up for when I get to the Bahamas.

The day before I leave, I’m finishing up packing and Rylee informs me there’s a hurricane heading toward the islands. Just my luck. The one thing I’m deathly afraid of is heading right toward my soon-to-be home.

Rylee cries as she helps me pack up the apartment I’d called home for the past five years, stuffing memory after memory in a box. For the most part, I can’t think about what I’m doing. I have to shut my brain off and work on autopilot or I’ll chicken out—especially with a damn hurricane heading to the island.

I don’t tell Jake I’m coming. I don’t know why, just that I don’t. That’s probably a lie. I don’t tell him for fear of what he might say. This needs to be a decision I make on my own. Jake once said to me, “Don’t do it unless you mean it.” Those words hold more meaning than most will ever understand.

I hug Rylee when she drops me off at the airport Thursday morning. My flight is delayed an hour because of the weather. I thank her for everything, and she promises that, come February, she will come visit with her new addition.

“I feel weird leaving you while you’re like this,” I say quietly, trying not to break down into tears again.

Her hand drops from the steering wheel to her stomach. “I’m fine, Kendall. I really am. I’m happy things worked out this way. I’m glad I found out what Wesley is really like before I married him.”

Rylee made the right decision when she called off the wedding. I know how much it hurt her to do it, but I also know she’ll be okay. Rylee is a lot stronger than I ever gave her credit for.

Last night I got a text from Jake again. It was a picture of him on his jet ski, all tanned skin and sky blue eyes. I must have stared at the picture for ten minutes remembering every detail about him I miss. That smile, goofy and relaxed, his hair, a scattered mess of black silk, his dark beard that he never fully shaves, and, most of all, those eyes that always seem lighter in the day and darker at night.

When I’m on the plane that afternoon, waiting to take off on my newest adventure, I look down and read our texts again, seeing the shark fin in the distance behind his jet ski.

Jake: See, they’re friendly.

He’s in the middle of the ocean, and I can faintly see the nose of another jet ski in the distance. I had wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing in the ocean with a hurricane heading toward them, but I didn’t. I think I had been too caught up in his island looks to say anything.

Me: Clearing your head?

He hadn’t replied right away, but just as I had been drifting off to sleep, his next text came through.

Jake: Something like that.

I thought Jake was fine since I left. He isn’t. His text messages tell me so. It also tells me he doesn’t want me to forget. Why else would he send me messages months later?

I want to tell him I’m moving there, but I don’t. So many times I actually typed out the text too, but then decided that wasn’t the way. When I get there, then I’ll tell him in person.

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