Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
OLIVER
“They’ll be fine,” Cole says as I pace the plane from the cockpit door to the flight attendant’s station at the back. “Dane did tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he’s worked with that driver before. Miss Lane will be fine.”
“I know. But this is my first time in a war zone.”
“That’s why we wouldn’t let you leave the plane and kept you at the airport. It’s the safest place in the city.”
A black shape moves toward us across the tarmac.
“Is that them?” I kneel on the sofa to peer out of the window.
“Yes.” Cole moves toward the front door, the flight attendant right behind him.
I thought my heart was racing before. Now, it’s like a bunch of little men with hammers are banging on the inside of my ribs but all are completely out of time with each other.
And someone somewhere has pressed the delete key that’s erased from my brain everything I’d prepared to say. All the words I’ve practiced over and over in my mind are gone and have been replaced by a big white hole of blinding light.
I race back to my chair and grab my bottle of water to moisten my now desert-dry mouth—at least enough for me to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth so I can attempt to form sentences, even if I don’t know what words to put in them.
The flight attendant cracks the door open, Cole sticks his head through the gap to check who’s there, then tells the attendant she can open it fully.
My heart lurches. Then there she is. Just feet away from me. Hot and sweaty, with dirt on her pale, loose pants and shirt.
I debated long and hard whether I should hug her when we met. And decided I’d walk up to her slowly and see if she showed any sign of wanting to hug me, allow her to make the first move.
Once the flight attendant has locked the door again, she, Cole, and Dane quickly move past us to the back of the aircraft and pull a dark curtain behind them.
Now there’s only the two of us.
And Lexi’s stopped moving, well outside hugging distance.
Of course she has.
Why would she want to engage in any form of physical contact when I pretty much dumped her by text? Even though it was the last thing on earth I wanted to do.
“Hi,” I say.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. “Actually, what am I doing here?”
“I’m glad you came. I thought you might not.”
“I almost didn’t. But, as you probably guessed, I was worried for Dane’s safety if he hung around waiting for me too long. I’m really only here to make sure he got back to you in one piece.” She looks down and pushes her hands into her pants pockets. “So, I guess I could go now.”
Oh God, no. I always knew it was a risk coming here, but now we’re in the same room, or plane, I at least want my shot at this.
“Please stay at least for a minute. Would you like some food? Or a drink? There’s lots of both.”
“Some water would be good.” She presses her fingers to her throat. “Still acclimatizing to the dust.”
I turn toward the back of the plane to request the water, only to find the flight attendant emerging from behind the curtain with a bottle in her hand.
“I heard,” she says.
Lord knows the secrets the staff on private planes keep and never spill.
“Perfect, thank you.” I take it from her, and she replies with a silent nod before disappearing again.
After loosening the cap, I pass the water to Lexi. As she drinks from it, she tips her head back, revealing a stretch of the smooth skin on her neck, tanned now.
It makes me wonder what else about her has changed in the month since we last saw each other at the church in Scotland. The contrast between that location and this could not be more stark.
Does she hate me now?
Does she love it here so much that she never wants to leave and there’s no hope of us ever being together?
“Thanks.” She screws the cap back on. “Oliver, why did you fly halfway around the world to see me?”
Okay, here we go. I step back to the sofa that runs along the side of the plane. “Let’s sit. Can we sit?”
“Sure. It’s been a long day.”
She waits for me to sit first, then perches on the edge of the sofa more than an arm’s length away, half turned toward me.
“Are you loving the job?” I ask. If she says yes, that it’s everything she’s ever dreamed of and what she wants to do for the rest of her life, then I will wish her well, say goodbye, and head back to New York as soon as we can get this plane off the ground.
I would never stand in the way of her life’s mission.
“It’s hard.” She looks down and watches her thumb trace the rim of the bottle lid. “Rewarding. But tough.”
Okay, there’s a chink of light there. She’s not brimming with enthusiasm, not fired up and high on the adrenaline of it all and gushing, bright-eyed, with exciting stories like I thought she might be.
She looks up, her eyes meet mine, and they’re exactly the same as the image that’s run across my mind multiple times a day and been impossible to erase when I close my eyes every night.
My stomach flips like a smitten teenager’s at the sight of their high school crush.
If there is a window of opportunity here, I cannot let it slip through my fingers.
“I have a proposal for you,” I say.
“A proposal?” Those beautiful blue eyes are wide now, shocked.
“I mean like a business proposal. Well, and a personal one, but…” The pent-up tension inside me sends me back to my feet. “God, I’m turning this into a confusing mess already. And it’s really not. Let me explain it properly.”
I take a breath and lean back against the TV cabinet across the aisle from her.
It’s only fair I step back to give her space to think, but the distance between us is something I’m already not enjoying.
“First of all, I’m sorry. Really fucking sorry for everything.
I should never have caved and let you fly to Scotland with me.
I knew it could only end up badly for you.
But I so desperately wanted to spend more time with you that when you showed up and insisted on coming, I was too selfish to find the strength to say no. ”
“And now here I am on your plane again.” She’s the picture of calm and composure. “But it looks like our roles are reversed this time.”
“I still have several apologies to make. I’m sorry for what Giles did.”
“That’s not your fault. I imagine a whole bunch of the heinous stories the press got about you probably came from him too.”
“And I’m sorry for my parents being incredibly rude and dismissive of you.”
“I imagine they’re like that with most people. I didn’t take it personally.”
“Most of all”—I crouch in front of her, rest my hands on her knees, and hope that she’s okay with it—“I’m sorry I didn’t come to say goodbye when you left.
I thought it was for the best to set you free.
And I was certain that if I saw you again, I wouldn’t want to let you go.
So for your sake…” My shrug is as hopeless as I feel.
“It’s okay.” Her gaze drops to where my hands are touching her. “You had to stay at the church for the official photos. It’s fine. It’s kind of your job. And you had to do it. If I relate to any part of your life, I relate to professional commitments.”
She’s being way more understanding than I expected. Not that she’s not an understanding person—she is. But after the way I ended things, I was expecting her to find even my breathing to be unforgivable. And that wouldn’t have been unreasonable.
“All I had time to do was book you a flight before I got sucked into all the gladhanding with the guests. And then by the time we got back to Glenwither for the reception, you’d gone.
” I shake my head at my own patheticness.
“I even scoured our room for anything you might have accidentally forgotten so I’d have an excuse to get in touch with you straight away.
But it turns out you’re a very efficient packer. ”
“It was more furious and upset than efficient, to be honest.”
“You had every right to be. Oh, and nice move on drowning the bug, by the way. That made me laugh when I found it.”
Ah, a small smile. And her eyes are softer now.
“I like it when you make me laugh,” I confess. “And I like making you laugh too. We had the best time in Scotland, didn’t we? I mean the parts where it was just us. Obviously, every time anyone else was around, it was shit.”
“I liked your sister. And the people at the bog treasure hunt were mostly nice.”
That seems to me like a crystal-clear dodging of the question. But I need clarity. I might die if I don’t get clarity. “So you didn’t like the parts that were just us? They weren’t special to you?”
She takes one of my hands between hers. “Of course it was special. I don’t go around doing things like that with any random guy. And definitely not with someone who represents pretty much everything in life that I loathe.”
“I think that’s a compliment. I’m going to take it as one, anyway.”
“Yes,” she says quietly. “It’s a compliment.”
“Great. Because if that’s the case, there’s no reason we can’t pick up where we left off.”
“That seems like a bit of a leap.” She lets go of my hand and recoils a little.
Fuck, that was clumsy wording. “What I’m trying to say is that if it’s only circumstances that are stopping you from being with me, we can change the circumstances.”
“Are you planning to move to Yemen?” she asks.
“No. And I’m pretty sure that would be entirely impractical. Cole and Dane wouldn’t even let me off the bloody plane.”
At least that makes her mouth curve upward slightly. “That’s a problem then. Because my job is here.”
“I know. But I don’t think you’re happy.”
“How could you possibly know if I’m happy? You’ve seen me for five minutes. Inside a luxury private jet. You have no idea how in my element I am when I’m out there.” She jerks her thumb toward the window.
“I’ve watched every video of you that’s been posted since you got here. And there’s no spark behind your eyes in any of them.”
“To be fair, in some of them there was gunfire in the background, and that tends to make you feel not particularly sparky.”
“I mean the regular ones too. There’s something missing from you.
Like a light’s been turned out. I thought this job would fire you up, live up to all your dreams. But if you want to know what I think—actually, even if you don’t want to know what I think—I think this isn’t what you hoped it would be.
And I think that discovering that the job you’ve spent your whole adult life striving for isn’t what you’d hoped it would be must be terrifying. Because what on earth do you do now?”
She looks down and rolls her lips inward. Which gives my heart hope that I’m right.
“So you’re suggesting I make being your girlfriend my new career plan?”
“No. I’m suggesting you make working with me your new career plan.”
“I’m sorry?” She looks up and meets my gaze, her brow furrowed. “Working with you? Working with you how?”
“I think we’re both looking for work that makes our lives meaningful. That we both want to do good. And I have an idea for how we could do that. Together. Which would also mean that we could be together-together too.”
“What are you talking about, Oliver?” She looks totally perplexed.
“Before I explain, I need to know whether you’d consider trying to figure things out with me. The life things. The being-with-me things. The you-and-me-together things.”
“I didn’t think those things were figure-outable.”
“Well, I think I’ve figure-outed them.” I reach up to her cheek and brush off crusty dust with my thumb.
“Tell me, in a perfect world, where it would be totally possible, where there’s no more bollocks from my parents, or the press, and where there’s definitely no fucking Giles, would you want to give the whole us-being-together thing a shot?
Try it out, see if we can make it work?”
“But I don’t think we can, Oliver.” She rests her hand on my arm and looks like she’s begging me to understand sense. “Our lives, they’re polar opposi—”
I lean in and silence her with my mouth.
It was meant to be for only a second, to stop her spiraling downward into telling me how we could never work. But now my lips are on hers, the familiar sweet scent of her skin combined with the aroma of a long, hot day fills my senses, and I know my life will only ever be complete if she’s in it.
But have I misjudged this?
It sounded like she thinks it’s only circumstances keeping us apart. Which I thought meant she’s not gone off the idea of me completely.
The lack of response from her lips makes my stomach lurch.
Fuck.
That’s it.
It’s over.
I’ve done everything I can, and the answer is no.