The Things We Leave Unfinished by Yarros, Rebecca (best free e reader .TXT) 📗

“Leave your key.” Never again. This was the last time she’d blow into my life and leave once she got what she wanted.

She gasped. “Leave my key? To my grandmother’s house? My father’s house? You are a lot of things, Georgia, but cruel isn’t one of them.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Do you know how that makes me feel?” Her hand flew to her chest.

“Leave. Your. Key.”

She blinked back tears as she pried the key from the ring, then dropped it into the crystal vase on the entry table. “Happy now?”

“No,” I said softly, shaking my head. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be happy again.

I stood there frozen in the same entry hall she’d left me in so many times before and watched her struggle with her suitcases without offering to help.

“I love you,” she said, waiting in the doorway for my reply.

“Have a safe flight, Mom.”

She bristled and closed the door.

Then the house was quiet.

I didn’t know how long I stood there, watching a door I knew from experience would only open again when it was convenient for her. Knowing I was never what she’d wanted and cursing myself for letting my guard down and believing otherwise. The grandfather clock ticked steadily from the living room, somehow steadying my heartbeat. It was a hundred-year-old pacemaker.

Every other time she’d walked out, I’d had Gran’s arms around me.

Alone wasn’t a harsh-enough word for whatever this was.

I pulled myself together and turned back to head for the kitchen, only to be stopped by a knock at the door.

I may have been naive, but I wasn’t green. Mom had forgotten something, and it wasn’t me. She hadn’t abandoned her plans. Hadn’t had a change of heart.

But still, that damnable kernel of hope flickered in my chest as I opened the door.

A set of darker-than-sin eyes stared down at me under a cocked brow as his mouth slowly curved into a wry smile.

Noah Harrison was on my porch.

“Try to hang up on me now, Georgia.”

I slammed the door in his gorgeous, smug, romance-minded little face.

Chapter Ten

September 1940

Middle Wallop, England

Jameson had been born to fly the Spitfire. It was agile, responsive, and moved like it was an extension of his body, which was just about the only advantage he had in combat.

Was Great Britain cranking out planes at an unprecedented rate? Yes. But what they needed were pilots with more than twelve hours in the cockpit heading into a dogfight.

The German pilots were more experienced, with more hours, more aces, and more confirmed kills in general. Thank God the Nazi long-range capabilities were shit, or the RAF would have lost the Battle of Britain more than a month ago.

But they were still in it.

Today had been the hardest yet. He’d barely rested between launches, and that had been at airfields that weren’t his own. London was under attack. Hell, the whole island was. It had been for the last week, but today the skies were heavy with smoke and aircraft. The Nazi assault seemed endless. They were pummeled by wave after wave of bombers and their fighter escorts.

Adrenaline sang through his body as he zeroed in on an enemy aircraft somewhere to the southeast of London, coming up on the fighter’s tail nice and close. Closer made it easier to hit his target. It also made it easier to go down with them. The enemy began a steep climb, taking them nearly vertical as Jameson chased him through a heavy layer of clouds. His stomach pitched.

He had a few seconds, no more.

Already his engine sputtered, losing power.

If he went fully inverted, he’d lose the whole thing. Unlike that Messerschmitt, he didn’t have fuel injection under his hood. The carburetor of his little Spitfire had a very real chance of being his doom.

“Stanton!” Howard shouted through the radio.

“Come on, come on,” Jameson growled as his thumb hovered over the trigger. The instant the fighter appeared in his crosshairs, Jameson fired.

“Yes! Got him!” he shouted as smoke streamed from the Messerschmitt, his own engine gasping its final warning.

He banked hard left, narrowly missing the plummeting fuselage of the enemy fighter. Gasping, he leveled out, then descended through the clouds, letting the engine and his heartbeat steady itself. One more second, and he would have flooded the engine and joined the Messerschmitt as a crater in the English countryside.

Two confirmed kills. Three more, and he’d be an ace.

An aircraft pulled alongside him, and he glanced left to see Howard shaking his head.

“I’m telling Scarlett you did that,” he warned over the radio.

“Don’t you dare,” Jameson snapped, glancing at the photograph he’d wedged in the framework of the altimeter. It was Scarlett, mid-laugh, captured just after the sisters had joined the WAAF. Constance had given it to him after Scarlett refused, saying he knew exactly what she looked like without carrying her picture into battle. Of course he knew what she looked like. That was why he liked looking at her so much.

“Then don’t pull that again,” Howard warned.

Jameson scoffed, knowing they’d have words about it at beer call. Scarlett had enough on her shoulders to worry about without throwing his flying habits into the mix. As long as he came home to her, how he did it was a moot point as far as he was concerned.

Especially since he was due to leave RAF Church Fenton in a few days and had yet to think of a way to bring her with him. The Eagle Squadron, composed of other American pilots serving in the RAF, was actually happening.

He was being transferred.

“Sorbo leader,” the call came over the radio, “this is fighter command. We have forty-five plus on approach at Kinley at angels thirteen. Vector 270.”

“Received,” their wing commander answered.

They were headed back into the thick of battle.

…

Two days. That’s how long it had been since Scarlett had word of Jameson. She knew the squadron had refueled elsewhere during what had been the longest two days of her life. The air raids from