Chapter Eleven
MILES
PRESENT
“Smooth take off, Captain.”
“I hate when you call me that,” I shake my head at my co-pilot.
“Why? You’re my captain now.”
I glare over at where Wesley is sitting beside me.
The two of us met in our last year at the academy, but we didn’t really become friends until last year, when we met up again at the Everglades private airstrip in Florida.
It’s where most of us get our extra airtime in.
We were both scheduled for takeoff at the same time, so Captain Williams suggested we go together.
And when Williams suggests something, you don’t say no.
We’ve been friends ever since, spending the majority of our extra flying time together rather than separately.
He’s a bloody good pilot, and a good guy to be sitting next to for hours on end.
He’s the one friend I’ve been able to keep while doing this job.
Being all over the world every single day isn’t exactly the best environment to be making friends, let alone anything more.
“What did you get up to after your sister’s wedding?”
I sigh. “Not much, really. ”
I spent the day after at Hotel Dolce with Isla before she and Caio headed off to Australia for their honeymoon the next day. Then I made the drive from Ruby Cove to Rome and met Wes here for our flight to Tokyo—my first flight as captain.
He scoffs. “I can’t believe you didn’t get a plus one.”
“I did, I just didn’t want to bring you to my sister's wedding.”
He flips me the bird before his attention falls back to the endless sky out the cockpit windshield. “Screw you.”
“Love you too, man.” He shakes his head. “What about you? Did you get up to much in Rome?”
He gets this cheeky smile that is so undeniably Wes. “I just roamed around Rome, you know? Saw the sights.”
“And by the sights you mean…?”
“The colosseum. What else?”
I roll my eyes, nudging him with my elbow. “Yeah, okay, buddy. We can go with that.”
Wes has always been a ladies' man, there aren’t many places that he goes to where there aren't at least three women moving in his direction. Me? I usually watch his drink while he flirts away, and occasionally finish it for him.
“What’s that look on your face?”
I reach to grab a sour peach from the bag next to me. “What look?”
“That one,” Wesley says.
I roll my eyes, chewing on the candy. “What look, Wes?”
“The look that says something happened at your sister’s wedding that you haven’t told me about.” He’s supposed to be resting while I monitor the navigation systems, but he won’t shut up.
I sigh, not knowing what to say. “Come on, open up to Papa.”
“You’re so weird.” I reach for another peach.
I always have a bag of candy with me on my flights.
I always have. I don’t know why, it’s something I did on my first few commercial flights to calm my nerves, giving me something to chew on instead of the inside of my cheeks in anxiety.
Now it’s just become a habit, I always have a bag of candy on my long-haul flights.
“Talk.” Wesley snatches the lollies from my grasp.
I blow out a breath. “My ex was there.”
“Ooooh…”
“Well, she’s not even my ex, not really, but calling what we had a fling feels wrong.”
“Is she the one that got away?” he asks.
“I’m the one that got away. Bolted really. I broke her heart, and mine.” The cockpit is quiet for a moment, as if neither of us knows what to say next.
“Why?” he finally asks.
“Huh?”
“Why did you bolt?”
I suck in a breath, I didn’t expect him to ask me that. “I, uh…”
I find my throat dry all of a sudden, not sure if I want to explain the way that I broke someone’s heart.
“We have got another thirteen hours on this flight, you may as well air it out.” I hear the way he’s playing it down, giving me the opportunity to open up to him without any pressure.
But I’ve never talked to anyone about Marina, I’ve never told anyone what I did or why I did it.
It’s only ever lived in my head and my heart for the last four years. Maybe I should let it out for once.
“I met Marina four years ago in Sorrento. Back when Williams stood me down over the summer, I stayed at my place over there. On one of my first nights, I went down to this bar—Bub’s pub.”
“Bub’s pub? ” he asks.
“I didn’t name it, okay?”
“Alright,” Wes says. “Carry on.”
“It was the first place I came across. I just wanted one drink and to watch the game before I crashed for the night. But when I walked through the door, it felt like I’d been smacked in the face by a star.”
Just talking about it sends me straight back to that moment.
But within a millisecond, those feelings of adoration swirling in my belly are replaced with dread, with regret, and shame.
That’s pretty much the pattern that repeats any time the image of Marina appears in my mind.
Warmth, comfort, longing, followed by a cold, lonely disappointment in myself.
And now that I’ve seen her again, that pattern is repeating more often than it used to, and those feelings have only intensified.
Wes is quiet for a while and I feel like I’ve overshared. I’ve never talked to him about my love life, but that’s mainly because it has ceased to exist since Marina. I’ve barely looked at another woman since then, so focused on the career I chose over her to think of being with anyone else.
I look over to where Wes is sitting beside me, and he’s looking at me with a look I haven’t seen on him before. Sympathy.
“Go on,” he says.
I take a deep breath. “There was a woman behind the bar,” I say, fixing my gaze back on the clouds in front of us.
“Her curls were wild, and she had an apron slung haphazardly around her hips. She was talking to an old guy who was sitting on the other side of the bar. Something he said made her laugh, and I was caught. I was stuck, halfway to the bar, I just froze. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.
The fact that I’d randomly stopped in the middle of the bar must have caught her attention, because she looked over at me and smiled.
That had jolted me back into action, I walked embarrassingly fast over to the bar.
” I laugh halfheartedly. “I didn’t even catch the game that night.
I was too enraptured by her, by the way she moved, and the way she spoke.
” I mindlessly shake my head. “I went back there every day after that, for that entire summer, I spent every spare second I had with Marina. Even once Williams cleared me to take on a few flights, I asked to be based out of Sorrento until I was back to full duties. You know my parents, how they see me, being with Marina, I felt like just Miles. Not the golden boy, not the great success, just the guy. I couldn’t shake her, I was so wrapped up in her that I nearly handed in my resignation. I had it typed up and everything. ”
“Damn,” Wes says.
“Yeah. It was then, at the end of the summer, that Williams wanted to bring me back full-time, that he wanted to talk to me about my career path, and all of a sudden, it felt like my life rushed back in. That I was in Italy, and I was about to give up everything I’d ever worked for for a woman who lived on the other side of the world.
And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine my life without this job, you know? I had to come back.”
I got so worried about what she would think, or how upset she would be that I just left. I didn’t want to watch her heart break, so I got on my flight back to the states without saying goodbye, and I haven’t seen her since that day.”
Wesley blows out a breath. “Shit. You’re like the nicest guy I know, but that was heartless.”
“I know.” I throw another sour peach in my mouth.
“Damn. That was selfish.”
“I know, Wes.” I rub a hand over my face as if to hide the shame that is written all over it.
He carries on. “You probably broke her heart more that way than if you’d just been honest with her.”
“God, Wes, I know!”
He wearily grabs a sour peach. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I sigh, my tone apologetic. “I just—seeing her this weekend brought everything back for me.”
“So what happened?”
“She was pissed.”
He scoffs. “As expected.”
I glare sideways at him before my memory drags me back to last night. “I forgot how magnetic she is. Even though she hates my guts, all I wanted to do was be near her. Even though every time she looked at me, it was with disdain, I still wanted her attention on me.”
“You still love her, don’t you?”
That thought has been sending my gut into a spin for the last few days. “I don’t think I ever stopped. ”
“You’re fucked.”
“Yup.”
He hands me back the packet of candy. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to fly this plane to Tokyo and drown my sorrows with a night of non alcoholic beers before my flight to L.A. tomorrow.”
“That’ll fix your problems for sure,” he says, focusing his gaze out the window.
I’m highly aware that it will fix approximately zero of my problems, but I’m lost on what to do to make this situation any better. Marina doesn’t want to see me, and here I am, halfway across the world, doing the career that was the sole reason I ran in the first place.
“I need more candy.”