aren't too many men in McDonough County who could do it.”
“You're so full of it. Does that mean you're the right age these days, or are you still too old for me?” she asked him pointedly, wanting to know just where they were going.
“I used to be. Mostly, I was just too stupid,” he said honestly; ‘they almost had to retire me when you went down, Cass. I thought I'd go crazy, thinking about you. I went nuts for a while there. I should have flown home as soon as I heard. Then at least I could have been in Honolulu when you got there.”
“It would have been wonderful,” she smiled gently, but she didn't reproach him. Not for anything. She just wanted to know where they stood now.
“I suppose Desmond was there with the reporters,” he said with a look of annoyance.
“Naturally. But I had a great nurse who kept throwing them out of my room before they got a foot in the doorway. She absolutely hated Desmond. That was when he was threatening to sue me for not fulfilling my contract. I think he's convinced I blew up his plane on purpose. It was the damnedest thing, Nick,” she said solemnly, “both engines caught fire. I don't think they've figured it out yet, and I'm not sure they ever will.” She looked far away for a moment as she said it, and he pulled her closer to him.
“Don't think about it, Cass. It's over.” So were a lot of things. A whole lifetime had ended for her, and now it was time for a new beginning. He looked down at her with a slow smile, feeling the warmth of her next to him, and remembered a summer night almost two years before that had sustained him ever since then. “So how long are you here for?”
“I get my orders on Thursday,” she said quietly, wondering what was in store for them, what he wanted from her, if it was going to be the same game as before, or if he had finally grown up now. “I'll be here anywhere from a week or two to three months. But I'll be back pretty often. I'm in the overseas ferry squadron, that's what we do, taxi service from New Jersey to Hornchurch.”
‘That's pretty tame for you, Cass. Most of the time at least.” He was relieved she hadn't found something more dangerous to do. She'd be just the one to do that. For Desmond, she had tested fighter planes to be adapted for the Army. But that was over.
“It'll do for now. What about you? Where are you now?” she asked him, with a look that searched his soul. There was no escaping her question.
At first he didn't understand what she was asking him, and then he laughed, and looked down at her. He understood perfectly. It was no accident that she had come here. The only coincidence was that he'd run into her so quickly.
“What are you asking me, Cass?”
“How brave are you? How smart have you gotten over here, risking your life against the Germans?”
“I'm smarter than I used to be, if that's what you're asking me. I'm a little older… just as poor…” He remembered his own words easily, and how foolish he had been when he said them. “How brave are you, little Cassie? How foolish? Is this what you want? After everything you've done and had and been in the last two years, is this what you still want? Just me and the old Jenny? That's all I've got, you know. That, and the Bellanca. It's never going to be fancy.” But they both knew she'd had that and it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted him, and everything he meant to her. Nothing more now.
“If I wanted fancy, I'd be in LA”
“No, you wouldn't,” he said quietly, with the stubborn look she knew so well.
“Why not?”
“Because I wouldn't let you. I'll never let you go back to that. I shouldn't have let you go in the first place.” They had both learned some expensive lessons. But they were wiser now. They had both come for, and paid dearly for everything they learned and wanted. “I love you, Cass, and always have,” he said quietly as he pulled her close to him, and she looked up at him and smiled. It was the face she knew so well, and had always loved since she was a child. The same lines around the eyes from squinting at the sun, the same face she had grown up with. It was a handsome face with character and purpose and kindness, the only one she wanted to look at for an entire lifetime. She had come here to find him again. And she had. With Nick, she had everything she wanted.
“I love you too, Nick,” she said peacefully as he held her close to him, feeling the warmth of her, the nearness he had longed for so often. It had been hell being away from her, a hell he'd made for himself, and bitterly regretted, but didn't know how to get out of. It took Cass to come over and find him.
“And if either of us doesn't come back from this?” he asked her honestly. “What then?” He still didn't want to ruin her life, tying her to him, and then dying. That was the price you paid sometimes for loving a flier.
‘That's a chance we both take every day. We always have. You taught me that. If this is what we want, we have to have the guts to live with that. And each let the other do what they have to.” It was a high price to pay for loving someone, but they had always been willing to do that.
“And afterward?” He still worried about all that, but she had crossed those bridges long since, and she wouldn't have cared anyway if he'd had absolutely nothing.
“Afterward, we go home, my father retires eventually, and he gives us the airport. And if we live in a shack because that's all you've got, so be it. I don't care, and if we do, we'll change it.” This time he didn't argue with her. This time he knew it was enough for both of them. They had had more, and less, in their lives, and it didn't matter to them. All they needed was what they had, each other, and a sky to fly in.
He kissed her gently, and afterward she looked into the autumn sky and smiled, remembering the hours they'd spent in his old Jenny. She reminded him of her first loops and spins, and he laughed.
“You used to scare the pants off me.”
‘The hell I did… you told me I was a natural.” She pretended to be insulted as they stood up and he walked her slowly toward her barracks. They had resolved a lot that morning.
“I just said that because I was in love with you.” He laughed happily, feeling like a kid again. She did that to him. She always had.
“No, you didn't. You weren't in love with me then,” she argued with a broad smile, wondering if he had been.
“Yes, I was.” He looked happy and at ease and young. And he felt immeasurable pride as he walked along with her.
“Really?”
They laughed and talked and teased like children. Suddenly, life was very simple. She had done what she had come here to do. She had found him, and everything he had always been to her. She was home at last. They both were.
Danielle Steel
