Page 37 of The Singapore Stunt

“I thought I did. But all I really needed was this.” I squeeze him tighter. He presses kisses on the top of my head and whispers sweet nothings in my ears.

The words don’t matter. All that matters is that we are like this. In each other’s arms.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Mattias

There’s no turning back now. Kimberly is racing in my direction. I clear my mind of the physics behind my design. I forget about the wind speed, the air temperature, and the speed of the rotation of rudders on a helicopter.

I recall the training. I exhale and steady my heartbeat. In a perfect world, it will be in synch with hers.

She’s just over a dozen yards away on the other side of the pool. She wipes her hands against the top of her bare thighs and takes off. She hits her mark perfectly, her left foot landing on the edge of a hair, spinning in the air with a spin kick that sends a member of my stunt team into the pool. She lands on the walkway and grunts for the cameras. There are a half dozen extras chasing after her in the background. Her face displays the urgency of her movements.

Darting back and forth, she avoids punches and kicks thrown at her. Her counterpunches are crisp and clean. My team give it their all, pain etched on their faces as they fall one by one.

She navigates the narrow walkway at the edge of the third pool and closes to within ten yards of me. I’m already in position, bending my knees slightly for balance.

She performs a final shoulder roll, and Sonya kicks her in the rib. Her foot never makes contact, but the audience will never know. Kimberly sells the kick and sweeps Sonya’s feet. She looks back at the bad guys closing in and then looks at me, her eyes darting toward her only option: the edge of the roof.

She turns, performs a double kick, and then spins to sprint in my direction. I’m the last obstacle in her path. The last person she’ll see before…

I push the thought of my head as she hits the hidden trampoline and leaps at me. Her face is a mixture of desperation and determination, a movie poster pose that I know will go viral as a meme when the movie releases.

That’s when I realize our mistake.

We’ve performed this stunt nearly a hundred times between the compound and the trapeze site. Each time, she was dressed for comfort. Each time, she had a top and shorts that she wiped her hands on to make sure they remained dry in order to catch the ladder.

Shorts that she doesn’t have on today.

She did a wardrobe run-through of this fight sequence months ago back in LA, but the focus was on the outfit. How did it look on camera? How did it fit? Could she perform the movements without a wardrobe malfunction? But we never practice the stunt in the swimsuit.

Her muscle memory reminded her to wipe her hands dry, but she doesn’t have shorts on. She wiped her hands against her bare skin. The one covered in slick sunscreen and sweat.

It’s too late for me to abort. We’re too close to the edge of the roof. She’s already in midair. We are beyond the point of no return. If I stopped, she’d tumble over the edge of the roof to certain death.

There’s only one thing I can do. When we performed the dozens, Kimberly always read my eyes. Over dinner, she explained that in that moment, she felt like she could read my mind, whether to pull back a bit, which way to twist for the kick. I pray she is right.

I flick my gaze from her eyes down to her bikini bottoms for a fraction of a second. I can’t read her reaction because her foot crosses in front of my face less than an inch away. I roll like expected. My shoulders hit the hard ground. I don’t need to see her to know where she is. My feet fly up, landing on the tops of her thighs, applying the right amount of pressure to the kangaroo kick.

And just like that, she’s gone. Over the edge.

I hold my breath and do the only thing I can do.

Pray.

Chapter Thirty

Kimberly

I whirlwind my arms like a kid. I’m soaring. Just like Trace promised.

One Mississippi.

I ignore the sound of the whipping wind, the whirling blades of the helicopter, and focus on the ladder that is still a ridiculous distance away. I trust the process. Mattias has done everything humanly possible to make this stunt work. I think back to that last gaze from him. I felt the love. The caring, the concern. For all his talk of muscle memory, today he did something different. His daze didn’t remain locked on me. His eyes dropped down to my shorts.

Shorts!

I’m not wearing shorts.

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