My phone vibrated, and I pulled it back long enough to see the picture Brie had taken yesterday appear in our text thread. “That’s Finley right before orientation,” I confirmed.

“Jax!”

“What?” I finished tying the first boot and started on the second. “She’s not wearing an Easter dress because it doesn’t have a thousand bunnies on it, or eggs, or a giant cross. It’s a party dress. And those aren’t Converse; they’re her favorite pair of Vans.”

“And you let her wear that? Do you know what the teacher must have thought? What the other kids must think about her?”

“That’s their problem,” I retorted, taking a page out of Morgan’s book as I tied the second boot. “Look, Claire, she wore whatever made her feel good about herself. If you have a problem with it, then I guess you should have been here to tell her that what people think is more important than how she feels.”

“I cannot believe that you just—”

The alarm went off, and I jolted from the bench, racing for the hallway.

“We’ve got a mayday!” Sawyer called out, running my way, where all of our flight gear was stored.

It was go time.

“Claire, I’m going to have to call you back. There are people who need me to save them from an actual issue.” I hung up and pocketed my phone without another thought about Claire as I ran back to the locker room. Sawyer and Garrett both came through the door as I grabbed my flight bag, then pressed a kiss to my fingers and touched the picture of Finley I kept taped on the inside of my locker door.

Then I put her out of my mind, too, and focused only on the mission in front of me.

“Let’s go save some lives.”

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Morgan

I’m leaving you the truck. The best memories I have of it are with you in the passenger seat, so it seems fitting.

I stared at the door handle of Will’s truck and reached, only to drop my hand yet again. Sam had told me to take it easy while she was visiting Grayson’s grandparents for the weekend, but I wasn’t going to show up at Dr. Circe’s office next week having failed with the simple homework assignment of opening the damned door.

But what if I opened the door and had another anxiety attack? Even worse, what if Jackson saw it? How was I supposed to go out with the man if I wasn’t even healthy enough to open this door?

A set of tires crunched the gravel of my driveway, and a blue sedan stopped right in front of the truck. Christina climbed out.

Great, now I had a witness to my failure.