25. Gianna
— ? —
Gianna
Orion Barnes had never flown commercial in his adult life.
I knew this. He’d mentioned it once, casually, the way rich people mention things they don’t realize set them apart from everyone else. His worst days had still been better than my best ones. He didn’t fly commercial. Why would he?
Why indeed.
The middle seat was torture.
He was too tall for it, too broad. His shoulders hunched forward, his knees jammed against the seat in front of him, his elbows pinned to his sides by a stranger’s armrest on one side and mine on the other.
Two and a half hours of cramped discomfort with recycled air and a screaming toddler three rows back and no way to escape.
The flight attendant offered him a tiny bag of pretzels like it was a peace offering. He accepted it with the grave dignity of a man being handed a participation trophy.
“This is eight pretzels,” he observed, peering into the bag.
“That’s the standard amount.”
“Eight pretzels is not a snack. This only makes you hungrier.”
“Welcome to commercial aviation.”
He ate all eight pretzels one at a time, making each one last as long as possible. It was the most methodical pretzel consumption I’d ever witnessed.
Alex slept through all of it on my chest, which his father seemed to take as a personal insult.
“How is he sleeping?” Orion whispered. “There’s a child screaming three rows back. The man in front of me reclined his seat into my kneecaps. Someone is eating what I think is a tuna sandwich. How is he sleeping through this?”
“Babies are adaptable.”
“I’m adaptable. I’m very adaptable. I adapted to ranch life. I adapted to boardrooms. I am not adapting to this.”
“You’re doing great.”
“I’m suffering.”
“Quietly, though. I appreciate that.”
He didn’t complain once.
Well. He complained exactly as much as I’ve described. But he didn’t ask to leave. Didn’t suggest we book a private flight for the return trip. Didn’t make me feel bad for wanting this.
I watched him fold himself into the tiny space with something like wonder.
This man who’d flown private since before I met him.
Who’d probably forgotten what it felt like to breathe the same stale air as two hundred other passengers.
Who was currently being elbowed by a stranger every time she reached for her drink.
“This is how most people travel,” I pointed out.
“Most people are extraordinary.”
He meant it, I could tell. Not flattery or performance. Just genuine respect for everyone who did this regularly without thinking twice about it.
The woman in the aisle seat, the one who’d been elbowing him for two hours, overheard. She looked at him with new respect.
“First time in coach? You look… so out of place,” she said.
“First time,” he admitted.
“You’re handling it well. Most first-timers cry after thirty minutes.”
“I cried internally. Does that count?”
She laughed and stopped elbowing him quite so much after that.
At the Porter house, the reception was what I expected.
Clara softened the moment she saw Alex, cooing and fussing and immediately whisking him away to show him off to the neighbors.
Malcolm was cooler, watching Orion with that measuring gaze that said he hadn’t forgotten anything and wasn’t planning to.
But he let us stay. And that night at dinner, he actually spoke to Orion. Asked about the ranch, what Orion had been doing while his mother ran the company, whether he planned to go back.
“That’s not my decision to make,” Orion said, and looked at me.
The way he said it made my mother’s eyebrows rise. Made my father’s expression shift into something I couldn’t quite read.
The next morning, I found him in the backyard.
He was fixing the fence. The one my dad had been complaining about for two years, the one with the broken slats and the sagging gate. Orion had stripped down to a white undershirt in the Georgia heat, sweat soaking through it, his hands dirty with soil and splinters.
For a moment I just stood at the window and watched. The way his shoulders moved. The sure, competent way he handled the tools. The undershirt clinging to muscles I remembered tracing with my fingers, what felt like a lifetime ago.
I’d forgotten he could do this. Build things, fix things. That underneath the billionaire was still the rancher who’d grown up working with his hands.
My father was working beside him, not talking. Handing him tools when he needed them, holding boards steady while Orion hammered them into place. Two men building something together in silence.
I watched from the kitchen window until Mama came up beside me.
“He’s different,” she said quietly.
“I see that.”
Mama was quiet for a moment. “I’m not saying forgive him. That’s yours to decide. But I’m saying I see it too. Whatever’s changed in him, I see it.”
After dinner, I was helping Mama with dishes when I saw Daddy take Orion out onto the porch. Through the open window, I could hear them.
“She’s the only daughter I’ve got left.” Daddy’s voice was gruff. “Demi saw to that. Whatever we pretend at holidays, she’s not my daughter anymore.”
Silence.
“You hurt her again,” Daddy continued, “I’ll make you regret it.”
“Yes, sir.” Orion’s voice was steady. “I’d deserve whatever you did.”
“So are you planning to marry my daughter again? Or just live on her couch?”
“That’s her call.”
I set down the dish towel and walked to the back door. Stepped out onto the porch.
Both men turned.
“I withdrew it,” I said.
My father looked confused. “Withdrew what?”
“The divorce petition.” I looked at Orion, who had gone completely still. “I was going to tell you on the plane. Then you got the middle seat and I wanted to watch you suffer a little longer.”
His face went through about six emotions in two seconds. Shock, hope, joy, and more shock. Something that looked suspiciously like tears. And then, finally, a laugh that sounded almost disbelieving.
“You made me sit in a middle seat for hours while you knew?”
“Consider it the last test. You’re lucky I’m easy on you.”
“I ate eight pretzels, Gianna. Eight.”
“And you passed with flying colors.”
A beat of silence.
Then my father laughed, a real laugh, the kind I hadn’t heard from him in months.
And Orion looked at me the way he had outside the dance hall. Like I’d handed him something he’d stopped letting himself want.