Chapter Sixteen
I LEARNED MORE ABOUT Khalifa in the last three hours than I had in the last three months of being married to him.
First—he was loaded.
Not only did he buy my ticket, but he bought me a business class ticket. There was no hesitation, no “it’s too expensive,” no “you can pay me back later.” Just a casual “I added you to the booking,” like he was ordering an extra drink on a flight that was, apparently, made of sovereigns.
I blinked at the confirmation email, trying to process the price tag.
Who knew universities were out here paying in gold bullion for lectures about deceased monarchs and men who “discovered” continents that were already inhabited?
Somewhere, a history department accountant was laughing maniacally while my student loans devoured my paychecks, leaving me in shoes from three seasons ago and calling it a vintage aesthetic.
It wasn’t fair. I deserved my income. I spent several hours a day bringing life into the world, juggling hormones, tears, and husbands fainting in delivery rooms, while he yapped about dead civilizations for a few classes and somehow made a fortune.
Second—I didn’t know if it was my recent, very unfortunate realization of his...physical appeal, or the fact that my brain had decided to develop a completely uninvited, severely stupid mini crush, but I was noticing things I hadn’t before.
Like how he walked. Purposeful, unhurried, confident in a way that made up for the half-inch height difference between us—and maybe even added a few inches on top of that.
Or how his shirt clung to his shoulders, how his forearms flexed when he lifted my suitcase into the overhead bin, how his veins caught the light just so.
I hadn’t realized until now that I’d gotten shallow enough to stop noticing a man if he wasn’t over six feet tall.
But there it was, my shallowness, waving like a little white flag.
And, most annoying of all, it wasn’t just me noticing.
The flight attendants noticed. The passengers noticed.
The woman in seat 2A who “accidentally” dropped her phone three times in his direction definitely noticed.
The world, it seemed, was already well-aware of Khalifa’s quiet grandeur—the kind of allure that didn’t beg for attention but still got it, effortlessly.
They stared, admired, smiled, blushed, batted lashes, licked lips.
Not that I cared, obviously.
I was completely, totally, one-hundred-percent indifferent.
And third—he was afraid of flying.
He didn’t admit it out loud, of course; Khalifa didn’t believe in communicating with actual words.
But his body hadn’t gotten that memo. His hand latched onto the armrest like he was trying to keep the entire aircraft in the sky by sheer force of will, his jaw ticked tighter with every sneeze of turbulence, and he kept “scrolling” through his phone even though he’d been staring at the same unopened email chain for so long it might’ve actually expired.
The discovery filled me with an embarrassing amount of satisfaction.
Not because I wanted him to suffer—well, not really—but because it made him human.
It cracked his perfect composure just enough for me to breathe easier.
For a man who lived like he’d been sculpted from marble and discipline, it was oddly comforting to know that he could be afraid of something as mundane as flying.
When the seatbelt sign blinked off, I leaned toward him, my voice deliberately casual. “So,” I murmured, “how’s your little anxiety attack going over there?”
He didn’t look at me. “I’m fine.”
“You’re gripping the seat like it’s about to run away.”
He glanced down, pried his fingers loose from the armrest, and said, “I like to hold on during takeoff.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, smirking. “Sure. Because that’s the safest way to prevent a crash.”
He exhaled through his nose, debating whether I was worth responding to. Then, finally: “Do you ever get tired of talking just to hear yourself speak?”
“No,” I said cheerfully. “It’s one of my best qualities.”
He didn’t answer, but I caught it—that tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth, the almost-smile he fought and lost.
And just like that, my heart betrayed me again, leaping in a way it absolutely shouldn’t have.
I shifted lower in my seat, folded my arms, and reminded myself of all the things I knew to be true like a mantra: He’s rude, he’s stubborn, he’s emotionally unavailable. Rude, stubborn, emotionally unavailable...
And yet, somewhere over the Atlantic, I found myself staring out the window, pretending not to notice his fingers tapping restlessly against his leg, as if the rhythm alone could keep the plane in the air.
I told myself I was only watching to make sure he didn’t faint or something—doctor instincts, of course. But deep down, where all my inconvenient truths lived, I knew the real reason.
I slid the little privacy divider between our seats open—hard enough that the flight attendant in the next aisle might’ve flinched.
The polished fiberglass panel clicked into place, mercifully cutting off his view of me.
Not that Khalifa had ever seemed particularly interested in looking at me, but still—I could feel the heat crawling up my neck, that stupid blush announcing itself like a siren.
For a few minutes, there was blessed silence. Then, inevitably, I heard the soft whir as the divider slid back closed.
He looked at me, eyebrows raised. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I snapped.
He leaned back, his lips curving in that insufferably calm way.
“You know, for a doctor, I’d assume you’d have easy access to get those mood swings of yours checked.
Pretty sure it’s an undiagnosed medical condition.
Or—wait—it is diagnosed, and you just forgot to tell me before I tied myself to you for eternal matrimony? ”
My jaw clenched. I didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, I reached for the separator and slid it open again.
He slid it right back closed.
I glared at the blank screen like it was personally mocking me. “Do you need something from me?”
“No. I’m just...concerned.”
I hesitated, caught off guard. “Concerned?”
“All you do is talk,” he said simply. “I’m not used to silence.”
“You’re not concerned that I’m not talking,” I said slowly, realization dawning. “You want me to talk. You need me to as a distraction from the fact that you’re trapped in a metal tube, thirty thousand feet in the air.”
There was a beat of silence—then, of course, he slid the divider open this time.
So I closed it again.
He sighed, scrolling through his phone like I wasn’t there, like I wasn’t clearly winning whatever weird psychological battle this was.
“Just say it,” I insisted.
“Say what?”
“That you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared. Maybe if you spent less time dissecting my imaginary panic and more time managing one of your own spontaneous attitude flare-ups, we’d both make it off this plane alive.”
“Spontaneous attitude flare-ups?” I echoed. “Did you learn that term at a meeting for emotionally constipated men?”
“Nope. It was a support group for guys whose spouses have zero filter between brain and mouth. Thought I’d get some tips.”
Oh, okay.
Noted.
A dazzling cabin crew member glided past our row, and I sat up straighter. “Excuse me, Miss?” I called, cheerful as a children’s TV show host. “Do you have any drugs?”
Her eyebrows shot up so fast I thought they might detach.
“Lillian,” Khalifa warned under his breath.
But I was already committed.
“My sweet husband here—” I reached over and patted his cheek, possibly harder than necessary.
“He’s deathly afraid of flying, and in a few minutes, he’s going to start projectile-ing from both ends.
So anything hardcore you’ve got—preferably the illegal kind—that’ll knock him right out would be amazing. ”
Khalifa went catastrophically crimson, his eyes cutting to me in a mortified glare. The flight attendant blinked. Twice. Her professional smile started to crack.
“Um,” she said carefully. “We don’t...carry anything like that on board, but—”
“I’m fine, ma’am,” Khalifa interrupted. “Please ignore my wife. She’s mentally unwell.”
She nodded far too quickly, like that explanation finally fit the situation, and hurried away. The image of Khalifa “projectile-ing from both ends” on a commercial flight replayed in my mind like a trailer for the world’s worst movie—and I lost it.
A full-body, shoulders-shaking, borderline-wheeze laugh ripped out of me. The bald guy in front of us half-turned, curious. The woman across the aisle gave me the tight grin people reserved for feral animals and untrained toddlers. Even the baby two seats down stopped wailing just to gape at me.
I slapped a hand over my mouth, which only made the sounds louder, somehow, like my laughter had decided to echo from inside my rib cage.
Khalifa closed his eyes. “Lillian,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “You’re drawing attention.”
I tried to swallow the rest of the laughter. It came out in little aftershocks—hiccup, snort, inhale.
“Okay,” I whispered, fanning my face. “Okay. I’m done. I’m composed. See?” Another tiny sputter escaped. “Mostly.”
He stared straight ahead, posture soldier-stiff, refusing to acknowledge we existed as a unit. Someone coughed. A soda can hissed open a few rows back. My breathing eventually evened out, the hysterics dissolving into a cheeky smile.
“Consider this karma for saying I have an attitude,” I said brazenly. “Besides, you forfeited your invisibility the moment we got hitched.”
“I didn’t realize public humiliation was included in the marriage contract.”
“Oh, it is. Right under ‘in sickness and in health.’ And also ‘in turbulence.’”
He gave me a long side-eye, but there was a reluctant spark behind it, like he was trying very, very hard not to laugh.
A second later, the plane shimmied, and the seatbelt sign dinged overhead.
Khalifa’s hand clamped around the armrest, knuckles white.
I’d been teasing him, pretending my heart wasn’t involved—a little shield for the confusing (but definitely there) feelings I refused to name.
I was basically a third-grade boy yanking his crush’s braid at recess, grinning like a maniac and hoping no one noticed the meltdown brewing behind my ears.
But the instant I saw the genuine fear in his eyes, all that nonsense collapsed, leaving only the impossible, duplicitous softness in my chest.
“We’re in Jell-O.”
He looked up, his brow furrowing. “Excuse me?”
“Jell-O,” I repeated, tucking my legs under me and turning to face him.
“Imagine a cup of Jell-O with, say, a piece of fruit inside. If you shake the cup, the fruit moves around, right? But it doesn’t fall out because the Jell-O’s holding it in place.
That’s the plane. We’re the fruit. The air around us is the Jell-O.
No matter how much the plane shakes, it’s still held up by air pressure. ”
“You’re telling me I’m a...grape in a cup of gelatin?”
“Beef gelatin,” I said with a nod. “But yes, you’re getting it.”
“Comforting,” he muttered. “Truly.”
“You’re welcome.”
He dragged a hand through his curls. “You know, you could’ve just led with that instead of yelling about illegal substances and getting us pre-approved for the no-fly list.”
I lifted a shoulder. “I could’ve. But then I wouldn’t have that look on your face stored for future enjoyment.”
He released a measured breath, that barely-there laugh I was starting to recognize. “You’re so weird.”
“And yet,” I said lightly, “here you are. Tied to me for eternal matrimony.”
This time, he didn’t bother opening the divider. And I pretended not to notice that his fingers weren’t gripping quite so tight anymore.