“I want to tell you yes.” How could I explain this to him? “I really do. I’ve only gone places by myself for work without my family. They’re going to think I’ve lost my mind if I tell them I’m going with you.”

“You’re twenty-four not ten.”

Those words hit my chest with the force of a thousand of Thor’s hammers. Hadn’t I told him all this before? How much I hated getting treated like a little kid? It was my fault, I knew it. I let them all boss me around. I’d let them all clip my wings, and then I’d finished off the job myself.

“I know we’d get along. I know it. You know it. I’ll send you my social if you promise not to post it on the Internet or pull out a bunch of credit cards under my name. You can have my dad’s address and all the beach house information where we’ll be staying. It’s a big house. You can have your own room.” There was another pause, but it was his calm, steady breaths that I couldn’t help but pay attention to. He breathed like my sister. Like someone who didn’t get out of breath running up stairs. “I know you’ll get along with all of us.”

My heart thought it was a downhill skier going for the gold. How I could be so excited and so scared at the same time, blew my freaking mind.

Why wasn’t I telling him this was crazy?

Why?

Because it was crazy freaking stupid, but not in a bad way. I wanted to go so badly I could taste it. That part of me that wasn’t scared of what he would think of me, of what could happen if we didn’t get along in person, wanted to go so badly it made the rest of my brain shut up.

How could I tell Aaron I didn’t usually even get to choose my seat when I flew with my family? Just thinking that made me feel so young and—

“Ruby, don’t worry about the money. We can figure it out. I’m not expecting anything from you. I told you the truth when I said you’re my closest friend. You are. I tell you more than I tell anyone else. How the hell could I let anything happen to the one person who’s made me laugh when it was the last thing I wanted to do?”

My whole world seemed to stop.

And he kept going, oblivious. “If you really don’t want to go, I don’t want to force you or give you a guilt trip. Come because you want to. If not, we’ll make it work some other time. All right?”

Chapter 15

“We are just about to begin our descent into Panama City….”

If I hadn’t had so much one-on-one time with heart palpitations when I was younger, I would have thought for sure I’d started having them when the pilot’s voice came over the air.

Because holy crap.

I was here. About to be here. In Panama City. Where Aaron was going to be.

I was a chicken. This was my truth. I wasn’t afraid to admit it. It was me. Ruby Marisol Santos was a certified, grade-A chicken. Not even the good kind of chicken that was grass fed and antibiotic-free because I’d been on antibiotics a few months ago. I was the worst kind of freaking chicken.

The human kind.

I wasn’t prepared for this. It wasn’t every day, or every month, year, or decade that I stepped out of my comfort zone. Flying solo to vacation with people I’d never physically met wasn’t something I did or even thought about doing. I’d been verging on freaking out for the last twelve hours. I’d sweated, chewed most my fingernails down, sweated some more, panted so hard you’d figure I’d run a mile in heels, and had my heart racing so fast I could never tell anyone that knew me, otherwise they would send me to a cardiologist.

Yet here I was. Trying my best to not be what came so naturally to me: a chickenshit.

After spending an entire lifetime trying to tell myself I wasn’t scared of things while also actively avoiding those things that might terrify me, I usually didn’t find myself in situations that had me wondering what in the world I’d been thinking, because I wouldn’t put myself into that position. That just wasn’t what I did, and it shamed me.

But someone I trusted had told me I needed to live my life to the fullest. I wasn’t brave or ballsy like a lot of people who went after the things they wanted all the time. Maybe because there wasn’t a whole lot I wanted, but I wasn’t sure. Quitting my job and coming here were the two bravest things I had ever done in my life, hands down. I’d tried being that resilient, go-getter type person once, and only once, and it had backfired on me like no one’s business. But, I’d watched my little sister fall enough times and watched her get right back up to know that you needed to do that, every single time. You needed to pick yourself right back up, even if you were bruised and hurt and just wanted to lie on the ground and stay there forever because it wasn’t as uncomfortable as you thought it’d be.

Or because you were scared of falling again as you tried to pick yourself back up.

Not that I knew from experience or anything.

Which was why and how I found myself stuck in the middle seat of an airplane, smashed between one stranger trying to hog my armrest and another stranger using my shoulder as a pillow. Not surprisingly, when you try to buy a ticket the day before you want to leave somewhere, you aren’t exactly going to find a nonstop flight at a decent price, much less score a window seat. But I’d been okay with that. All that had mattered was that I was on my way.