Chapter 645 p.m. EST
A freckly college student put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, and that set off most of the economy cabin, who began
to applaud—a little raucously, many of them already finished with that first complimentary drink. Allie felt a tingling flush
of excitement that made absolutely no sense at all, given the situation. Say one thing about Van, he had never suffered from
shyness—he and his sister both knew how to seize a moment.
Someone farther back shouted, kiss her! and Van obliged, and Allie kissed him back. Someone else shouted, “Introducing tonight’s nominees for the mile-high club!”
to general laughter. Allie blushed on cue.
The flight attendant was standing in the aisle right behind them, with fresh glasses of champagne for the happy couple. He
was a balding man with the slim hips of a fencer, but with a blue five o’clock shadow that gave him just a touch of a thug
in an alley. When he passed the drinks over, he cried, “I’m so happy for you!” with a clear undertone of get the fuck in your seats. Robin twisted to get her legs out of the way and Van squeezed into the window seat, pausing to put his hands on Allie’s
hips and press his chest to hers.
Allie leaned into him, as if to neck, and whispered, “Donna Donna fricking Donna she told you why did she tell?”
“Because she loves you.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because I love you,” Van whispered back. “And there was never any chance I would let you do this alone.”
She felt like she wanted to cry. He had caught her cheating with another woman, but here he was. She had almost got him killed, but he had come running. She didn’t deserve him, she thought. She never had.
A voice came over the public address system, asking all passengers on BA 238 to give the safety video their full attention,
and Allie was suddenly frightened for them both, her grip on his arm going white-knuckled. Fifty percent of marriages in the US end in divorce. One hundred percent of deals with King Sorrow end in disaster. “Frick. Frick. What are we going to do? Horation Matthews is on this flight.”
“Well,” he said, slyly, flashing that shit-eating grin again, “first, who cares? Because you’re right. King Sorrow can’t do
anything to this flight with us on it. The big lizard swore to protect us, and he has to honor the deal. But there’s another
thing. Matthews isn’t on the flight. You’ve been sadly misinformed. I know, because when I got on board, the flight attendant let me look at the
manifest to see where you were sitting. Guess who pussied out and never got on this flight at all?”
“You’re sure?” Allie asked, hardly daring to believe it.
He nodded. “You think I’d miss a name like ‘Horation’?”