Flight Path to Forever – Chapter 4
The storm had blown itself ragged overnight, leaving the sky scrubbed clean and brittle. A crisp scent hung over the helicopter pad as Sloane followed Zach toward the service elevator. The metal grating beneath her boots still held puddles of melted snow, and every step sent tiny echoes bouncing off the concrete walls.
Both of them were running on two hours’ cot sleep and Dmitri’s espresso drip, the kind of bone-deep tired that made everything feel slightly unreal. Sloane’s muscles ached from the overnight rescue—a hypothermic kayaker who’d underestimated March waters.
The elevator doors opened with a mechanical wheeze, and Ruby jogged up waving a neon-pink flyer like a battle flag. “Heads-up—Hospital Auxiliary voted to hold the Spring Thaw Fundraiser this Saturday. That’s forty-eight hours, if you’re counting.”
The flyer’s garish brightness hurt Sloane’s sleep-deprived eyes. She squinted at clip-art coffee cups and cartoon snowflakes melting into spring flowers. “Didn’t we just defrost?”
“Fundraiser season waits for no one.” Ruby twirled, somehow energetic despite the early hour, her scrubs still crisp while Sloane felt like she’d been tumbled in a dryer. “Bake sale, silent auction, dunk tank, and—drum roll—dueling coffee booths. Maggie versus Dmitri, straight caffeine showdown.”
Zach groaned, the sound echoing off the elevator walls. “Collateral damage imminent.”
Sloane could picture it now. The town’s two coffee champions facing off like gunslingers, espresso shots at twenty paces. The thought was amusing.
Ruby thrust a clipboard at Zach with the enthusiasm of someone who’d clearly had more coffee than the rest of them combined. “You promised to captain the dunk-tank rig.”
“I said I’d look at the dunk tank.” His voice carried that particular brand of resignation that came from being volun-told for community service.
She spun on Sloane with predatory precision. “And you, new girl, volunteered for decoration committee, congrats! Mandatory meeting at nine.”
Sloane blinked, her brain struggling to process the words through the fog of exhaustion. The elevator’s fluorescent lights seemed too bright, casting everything in harsh relief. “I don’t remember volunteering.”
“Blame Zach. He wrote your name in when you fell asleep on the break room table.”
Heat crawled up Sloane’s neck. Not embarrassment, exactly, but something more complex. She turned to find Zach watching her with that same unreadable expression from yesterday, the one that made her pulse skip despite her exhaustion.
His hair was still mussed from their helmets, and stubble shadowed his jaw, making him look rougher around the edges than usual.
He lifted a shoulder, unrepentant. “Figured you needed roots. Nothing grows roots like hot-gluing bunting at 3 A.M.”
The words hit her sideways. Roots. The concept felt foreign and appealing all at once. She’d been so focused on keeping her head down, doing her job, not getting too attached to another place that might not last. But here was Zach, casually signing her up for community involvement like she already belonged.
“Hot-gluing bunting,” she repeated, testing the words. “That’s your idea of integration?”
“Wait until you see Ruby’s glitter cannon,” he said, and something in his tone made her stomach flutter despite the exhaustion weighing down her limbs.
The elevator lurched to a stop, and the doors opened onto the main floor with its familiar antiseptic smell and the distant hum of morning shift change. Sloane stepped out, the flyer still clutched in her hand, evidence of her accidental membership in something she wasn’t sure she was ready for.
But as she walked down the corridor beside Zach, their steps naturally falling into sync, she realized that maybe she wanted to find out what growing roots felt like.
The Laughing Moose had become command central with colored lights and cardboard boxes. Maggie presided over a war map, actually a baking-paper sketch of the parking lot layout, marking booth locations with jelly beans.
Dmitri stalked in, arms loaded with burlap bean sacks. “I want booth by entrance,” he declared, scattering stray snow on the floor. “Traffic is key.”
Maggie tapped a jelly bean north of the dunk tank. “Already taken. Children’s Face Paint goes there.”
“They can move,” Dmitri growled.
Sloane stepped between them, palms out. “Easy, espresso gladiators. We can put Dmitri’s kiosk opposite Maggie’s, turn the walkway into a Coffee Row. Two options double sales, right?”
Maggie’s eyes narrowed, calculating, not hostile. Dmitri’s glower thawed a millimeter. “We rotate tip jar for hospital charity,” he said.
Maggie offered her hand. “Deal.” They shook, pragmatism forged in caffeine.
June caught everything on her phone. “Viewers are losing their minds! Hashtags #peacebrew and #caffeinatedtruce trending!”
Gus barreled through the door, brandishing a Polaroid of a snow-smeared footprint. “Proof again! Squatch prints behind the dumpsters!”
June squealed delighted commentary. Maggie herded Gus toward the exit, promising a ‘cryptid testimony’ booth if he brought soap for his boots.
Decoration command relocated to the ambulance bay, where fluorescent lights cast harsh shadows over tables groaning under boxes of string-lights and gingham. The concrete floor held the day’s chill, seeping through Sloane’s boots as she, Zach, and Ruby formed an assembly-line: zip-tie, drape, staple, repeat.
The repetitive motions should have been mundane, but every brush of Zach’s fingers against hers as he passed down light strands sent electricity racing up her arms.
He climbed the ladder with practiced ease, muscles shifting beneath his thermal shirt. Sloane steadied the base, ostensibly for safety, really to watch how concentration pulled his brow into a slight furrow, how stubble caught the overhead light along his jaw.
“You missed a zip-tie,” he said, glancing down.
She flicked one from her wrist, where she’d been collecting them like jewelry. “No such thing as a missing tie only future potential.”
“Poetic.” A smile tugged at his mouth as he tightened a strand, the tiny LED bulbs catching like stars. “Hand me the next clip.”
Their fingers grazed as she passed it up; a spark jumped. Not static this time, something deeper. She didn’t yank away and neither did he. For a heartbeat, his thumb traced across her knuckles, and she forgot how to breathe properly.
Ruby’s throat-clearing echoed off the concrete walls. “Not you two generating enough voltage to power the whole town.”
Heat crawled up Sloane’s neck. Zach descended a rung, bringing him closer to eye level. “Just team-building.”
“Uh-huh.” Ruby’s grin said she was cataloging every stolen glance, every lingering touch. “Building something.”
The last strand went up with military precision, but Sloane’s hands trembled slightly as she secured the final clip. When she leaned back to appraise their work, multicolored lights cast a warm glow that softened the bay’s institutional edges.
“If these lights survive coastal winds, I’ll consider it a medical miracle,” she said.
“They’re tougher than they look.” Zach hadn’t moved from the second-to-bottom rung. They stood nearly eye to eye now, close enough that she could count the flecks of gold in his hazel eyes, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his skin. Her pulse hammered against her throat.
“Thanks for, um, signing me up,” she said, voice softer than intended, words barely louder than the fluorescent hum overhead.
“You’re welcome.” His gaze dropped to her mouth—one beat, two. Time crystallized around them. Ruby’s distant whistle as she packed supplies, the tick of the wall clock, the almost-inaudible buzz of the lights they’d just hung. Sloane’s world narrowed to the space between them, to the way his eyes darkened as he leaned infinitesimally closer.
Her breath caught. His hand found the small of her back, steadying, drawing her nearer. The ladder creaked softly under his weight. She could taste anticipation on her tongue, feel the whisper of his breath against her lips—
The radio squawk shattered everything like glass.
“Hope-One, copy emergent call—fishing vessel, severe laceration with arterial bleed, one mile offshore, heavy swell. Coast Guard unavailable. Launch ASAP.”
The transformation was instantaneous. Zach’s expression flipped from almost-kiss to mission-mode without missing a beat. He stepped off the ladder with liquid grace, already mentally airborne.
“Duty calls.” The words came out rougher than usual.
Sloane exhaled shakily, her pulse vaulting from romantic anticipation to operational readiness. The almost-kiss hung between them like a held breath, unspoken but impossibly present.
Ruby tossed them a mesh bag of heat packs. “Don’t die; dunk-tank assembly’s at eighteen-hundred sharp.”
Sloane caught the bag and fell into step beside Zach as they jogged toward the stairwell. Their strides matched perfectly, breath synchronizing, the near-kiss quivering in the space between them like something alive.
They burst onto the rooftop where the wind had shifted, carrying salt instead of snow. Below, the inlet stretched steel-grey and restless, waves promising trouble.
Sloane cinched her helmet, the familiar weight grounding her as she climbed aboard the Bell. The turbine’s roar filled the space that had almost become a kiss, drowning out everything but the mission ahead.
“Souls two,” Zach told tower, his voice steady and professional. “Destination Northern Star.”
The rotors blurred to invisibility. The hospital fell away beneath them, shrinking to a collection of lights and rectangular shadows. Somewhere behind them, string-lights fluttered in the wind, bunting snapping like tiny flags, and the echo of almost lingered in the air like the scent of spruce on a cold morning.
You have been reading Flight Path to Forever...
Trust was everything when lives hung in the balance, especially when your pilot made your heart race faster than any emergency call.
Flight nurse Sloane Winters came to Alaska seeking peace, not passion. But working helicopter rescues with Zach Reeves—a brooding former Special Ops pilot whose rare smiles could melt glaciers—was testing every professional boundary she’d ever set.
Their chemistry in the cockpit was electric. Their banter over late-night coffee was addictive. And the way he looked at her during quiet moments between missions? Pure temptation wrapped in flannel and flight gear.
Zach was everything she shouldn’t want: complicated, emotionally guarded, and her direct partner on life-or-death rescues. But beneath his controlled exterior lurked a vulnerability that called to every nurturing instinct she possessed.
The attraction was mutual. She could see it in his heated glances, feel it in the way he found excuses to touch her hand, hear it in the rough edge of his voice when he said her name.
But something was holding him back. Some shadow from his military past that made him believe he wasn’t worth fighting for.
He was wrong. And she was about to prove it.
