3. Flying Above Him
Chapter Three
FLYING ABOVE HIM
Today I learned private aviation has a scent.
Where commercial flights smell like coffee, recycled air, and impatience, Matteo’s jet smells faintly of leather, citrus, and something warm and clean I can’t identify.
A flight attendant named Julie greets us by name, as if I belong there. Not Mrs. Pratt, attached to Ethan. Not the economy passenger who caused trouble at the counter.
Just Sophie.
The cabin is tan leather and polished wood, with seats wide enough to curl into and a small table set with sparkling water, folded napkins, fresh fruit, and a silver bucket holding champagne.
Through the oval windows, the airport looks less like a place I was humiliated and more like a map I’m already leaving behind.
Matteo steps aside so I can enter first, but I hesitate. “I don’t know where to sit.”
“Anywhere you like,” he says.
I choose a seat by the window. My carry-on disappears into a storage compartment. Julie offers champagne. I almost say no because that’s my instinct in unfamiliar luxury, but then I think of Willow in 3B.
“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”
Matteo’s smile is small but unmistakably pleased.
He takes the seat across from me, not beside me, and for some reason that matters more than if he’d tried to play prince charming too aggressively. He’s not crowding me. He’s not using rescue as an excuse to occupy every inch of my attention.
As the jet begins to taxi, my phone buzzes.
Ethan: We need to talk before this becomes something you can’t undo.
Another message follows.
Ethan: You’re being manipulated. Matteo has his own agenda.
Then:
Ethan: Willow is crying.
I stare at that one for a long time, sure I’m reading it wrong or that he’s sent it to the wrong person.
Willow is crying.
Not I’m sorry. Not I chose badly.
A laugh slips out of me that’s brittle and too loud, and Matteo looks up from his tablet. “I assume that isn’t a pleasant message.”
“Willow is crying.”
His expression doesn’t change much. “How unfortunate for Willow.”
That does make me laugh. A real one this time, though it breaks a little.
Julie pours champagne, then discreetly retreats toward the galley before the jet lifts from the runway.
My stomach dips as the city falls away beneath us, all roads and terminals and tiny moving vehicles.
Somewhere down there, Ethan is either boarding without me or scrambling for a version of the story that makes him the injured party. Maybe both.
For the first time all morning, I unclench my hand.
Matteo waits until we’re level before he speaks. “Eat something.”
It’s not a command exactly, more like a practical kindness.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I believe you. Eat anyway.”
I look at him, and he lifts both hands. “That was too bossy.”
“It was a little bossy.”
“I apologize. May I rephrase? You’ve had a shock, and champagne on an empty stomach is a terrible idea. There are pastries, fruit, eggs if you want them, and something Julie called a breakfast tart that may change your life.”
My mouth twitches. “That’s better.”
“Good. I’m teachable.”
His charm catches me off guard because it isn’t slick. He isn’t performing for the cabin. He’s simply there, his dark eyes warm, making room for me to smile if I can manage it.
I eat half a pastry because he’s right. Then I eat a little fruit, then more than I intend, because apparently heartbreak burns calories.
After breakfast, I open my laptop.
“Would you like privacy?” Matteo asks.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
He nods. “I’ll work. Interrupt me if you need anything.”
I connect to the jet’s Wi-Fi and begin with what I have: shared credit card alerts, hotel confirmations Ethan forwarded without thinking, old calendar entries, travel emails, household expenses. At first, the evidence comes in fragments.
A first-class upgrade charge from six months ago labeled client transport.
A spa package at a resort in Palm Beach during a conference Ethan told me was “brutal, no downtime.” A boutique purchase in Charleston on a weekend when he claimed weather had delayed his return.
Private car transfers with two passengers, not one.
I make a list in a blank document. Dates. Amounts. Descriptions. Explanations he gave me at the time.
Then I find a photo.
It’s in a shared cloud album linked to Ethan’s tablet, probably saved automatically.
Ethan’s wearing a hotel robe, grinning with a champagne flute in his hand.
Willow is tucked under his arm in a slip dress, her lips pressed to his cheek.
Behind them, there’s a balcony with the kind of ocean view he told me he’d been too busy to enjoy.
I click the next image because pain has a terrible curiosity.
It’s another selfie from a different hotel room. Willow’s wearing his dress shirt, and Ethan’s hand is on her bare thigh.
Then I find a screenshot of a text exchange, maybe saved by accident.
Willow: Poor Sophie back in steerage tomorrow?
Ethan: She’ll survive. She always does.
Willow: You’re terrible.
Ethan: You like terrible.
Willow: I like first class.
Ethan: Then stay close to me.
I stare at the words until the letters blur.
She’ll survive. He knows me well enough to know that I endure things, and he’s mistaken that as permission to treat me badly.
When Matteo says my name, I realize I’ve made a sound.
I turn the laptop toward him without speaking, and he reads their exchange. The warmth leaves his face and is replaced by something cold.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I shake my head. It’s not much of a reply, but it’s all I can do without crying.
He doesn’t insult Ethan, and he doesn’t call Willow names. He doesn’t make himself larger in the room by being outraged, but his hand closes slowly around the armrest.
“He made me the joke,” I manage to say.
Matteo’s gaze lifts to mine.
“I could almost understand falling out of love,” I continue. “People change. They hurt each other. They fail. But he laughed about putting me back there. He turned me into an inconvenience they could giggle about over champagne.”
The hurt is burning now, hot enough to cauterize.
Matteo leans forward. “Ethan has underestimated you.”
“No. He knows I’m useful.”
“That’s different. He knows what you do for him,” Matteo says. “He doesn’t understand who you are without the things you do for him. That’s his error.”
I want to believe that. I want to be the woman Matteo seems to see.
Outside the window, clouds stretch beneath us in clean white fields. The world looks untouched from this height.
Later, when the cabin cools, I rub my arms without thinking. Matteo rises, takes off his jacket, and drapes it over my shoulders.
It smells like him. Warm cedar, clean soap, faint spice.
I should protest, but I don’t. Instead, I thank him.
His fingers brush the fabric near my collarbone, careful not to touch skin. “Better?”
“Yes.”
He looks at me for a beat longer than necessary, and heat moves through me, unexpected and inconvenient. I lower my gaze first, and he returns to his seat.
The jet begins its descent into Italy before Ethan’s commercial flight is anywhere near landing. Below us, the landscape turns green and gold, stitched with roads and lakes flashing silver in the sun.
I press my palm to the window.
For the first time in years, I arrive somewhere before Ethan.