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Happiness was buoyant in my chest. If I could spend the rest of my life like this, Lila next to me with that look in her eyes like I hung the moon, life an open road before us…that would be everything.

Why should you get everything? They didn’t.

Shame cut through the happiness like hot steel. My hands gripped the steering wheel, leather squeaking, as the thoughts pummeled me.

You don’t deserve to be alive.

You should be grateful.

You’re not enough.

On and on in an endless loop. I didn’t deserve to be happy. I should feel bad for being happy when other people couldn’t be happy because they were dead. But feeling bad about being happy made it worse. Who the hell did I think I was, feeling bad? I should only feel good things. Feeling bad meant I was ungrateful.

“Are you all right?” Lila asked.

“Yeah,” I said, and I told myself it wasn’t a lie. It had to be the truth because anything less than all right made me a worthless waste of life. “Do you want to stop for lunch, or push through to the ranch?”

I could feel her gaze on me, but I kept my eyes on the road.

“Let’s push through,” she said.

It was warm for October. A couple degrees shy of seventy in the valley, which meant Raven’s Roost, with an altitude of three thousand feet, was above freezing. Light, steady winds. A blue, cloudless sky.

Perfect wingsuit weather.

I really wished I hadn’t noticed. Once I noticed, I couldn’t stop noticing. It was an incessant itch in my skull I couldn’t quite reach, niggling behind my brain as I made us sandwiches.

Wingsuit BASE jumping was a stupid thing to do. The mortality rate proved it. Only a complete asshole would risk his life doing something so meaningless. I was ungrateful.

But I craved it with the desperation of an addict searching for one last hit before rehab.

“I’m meeting Tamilee at the health center in fifteen minutes for another self-defense lesson,” Lila said. “Do you want to come?”

Holly was handling my chores today with Ezra, and normally I would jump at the opportunity to wrestle Lila to the ground, but I shook my head. “I think I’m going to go for a hike.”

“I don’t blame you. The weather is perfect.”

“Yeah.” Guilt lashed at me. I rubbed the back of my neck, not meeting her eyes.

She tilted her head. “Are you all right?”

“Of course.”

I waited until she was gone, then grabbed my gear.

Raven’s Roost was my favorite jump point. It rose above the valley with wide expanses in all directions, giving me clear visibility of my flight path and landing zone. After over fifty flights here, I knew the trigonometry by heart. I didn’t need daredevil tricks; I just wanted to fly.

The exit was always the hardest part for me. I wasn’t scared of heights, but my rational brain tended to put up a fight and remind me that leaving solid ground was a very stupid thing to do. I was glad that first step scared me. What worried me was that one day it might not.

My toes on the edge, I crouched, breathed, and leaped.

There was a split second between earth and sky, before the suit inflated but after it was too late to do shit about it, of pure, blind faith, because no matter how thoroughly I checked the gear, you never really knew it would all work until it did. An eternity went by in the blink of an eye.

And then like clockwork, my nylon suit inflated with rushing air. The wind welcomed me, held me. I was airborne.

My mind quieted. Guilt and loss did not exist here. There was only wind and peace.

I dove down, pointing with my head where I wanted my body to follow, and picked up speed. Speed was my friend. Speed was what kept me flying instead of crashing into the trees below.