3. Harper
HARPER
When Sophia said we were going to France I pictured a red-eye out of Tampa International. Maybe business class if she was feeling generous. A glass of decent wine, a neck pillow, six hours of trying to sleep in a seat that reclines exactly four degrees.
I did not picture this.
The private aviation terminal sits at the edge of the airfield like it belongs to a different category of travel entirely, which it does, because it’s not an airport so much as a very expensive living room that happens to be adjacent to a runway.
Marble floors. Climate-controlled air that smells like nothing, which is its own kind of luxury.
Floor-to-ceiling glass looking out at a tarmac where actual private jets are sitting like it’s completely normal.
I’ve worn secondhand Prada. I’ve rented Valentino through a luxury borrowing app for galas I was coordinating so I’d look like I belonged in the room.
I know what it looks like to be adjacent to serious money.
I’ve spent most of my professional life being very competent inside spaces I couldn’t personally afford.
But a private jet is a different thing. A private jet is the kind of thing that makes you recalibrate the entire conversation you thought you were having about what wealthy means.
I stand on the curb outside and stare at it through the glass and think about how I almost didn’t come.
Behind me, Lorenzo and Raphael are pulling luggage from the back of the car with the practiced efficiency of men who’ve done this before.
Lorenzo handles everything with the focused calm of someone who is always three steps ahead of whatever’s happening around him, which tracks for a man who’s apparently been running customer operations at a billionaire’s vineyard for five years.
Sophia gravitates toward competence in people the same way she gravitates toward good shoes, instinctively and without apology.
Raphael hands me my carry-on with an easy smile and I take it and smile back because he’s genuinely hard not to like.
He’s handsome in a warm, approachable way, dark eyes and a comfortable confidence that doesn’t have anything to prove.
Sophia has been orchestrating what she clearly believes are organic opportunities for the two of us since Lorenzo first introduced them at dinner three months ago, and to his credit, Raphael has not played into it in any way that makes things awkward.
He’s been friendly. Normal. Easy to be around without making me feel like I’m being recruited.
There’s just no spark. You can’t manufacture a spark. I’ve tried and it never ends well and I don’t have the emotional bandwidth for a situationship that requires maintenance right now.
If something happens organically over the summer, fine. But I’m not chasing it.
Sophia appears at my elbow and hooks her arm through mine with the satisfied energy of a woman whose plan is proceeding exactly on schedule. “Ready?”
“Definitely not.”
She beams and walks us through the entrance.
The woman at the front desk directs us to the lounge to wait while the plane finishes being prepared, and Sophia pulls me along with her, still talking, the same unbroken stream of enthusiasm she’s been running since we left the apartment.
She’s telling me something about the vineyard pool and how I have to try the rosé they make specifically for summer events and how she’s already mentally decorated my suite, and I’m laughing because she’s ridiculous and also because the nervous energy has to go somewhere.
“I’m so glad I didn’t have to tie you up and throw you in the car,” she says, squeezing my arm.
“The summer isn’t over yet.”
She laughs and pushes through the lounge doors.
My heart does something it has absolutely no business doing.
There are two men in the lounge.
The first one is leaning against the bar across the room, broad-shouldered, the kind of build that belongs in a room with higher ceilings.
He’d been talking to a woman in a flight uniform when we walked in but now he’s looking past her, looking at us, looking at me with blue eyes that register somewhere in my chest before I’ve had time to process anything else about him.
The uniformed woman has not looked away from him but his attention has very clearly moved on and I feel it like a physical thing, warm and unsettling.
The second one is by the windows. Tall, leaner, something easy and dangerous in the way he’s standing, like he’s been comfortable his entire life and sees no reason to change that now.
He had his phone in his hand when we walked in and now he doesn’t, which means he put it away, which means something made him put it away.
I don’t know either of these men.
My stomach flips anyway. For both of them. At the same time. Which is a new and unwelcome development.
Holy fuck.
Not fair, cloud being. So completely not fair.
This is what happens when you drink wine without the cracker, I guess.
One bad life decision and suddenly the universe is stress-testing you with two separate stomach flips in the same room on the same Tuesday morning.
I’d like to file a formal complaint but I’m not sure who handles those.
Sophia releases my arm.
She crosses the lounge like she owns it, which is a genetic trait apparently, and walks straight into the arms of the man at the bar. “Uncle Ash!”
He wraps her up immediately, big arms, the effortless warmth of someone who’s been hugging this particular person since she was small enough to be lifted off the ground. He says something into the top of her hat that makes her laugh.
Uncle.
I stay where I am, approximately four feet inside the lounge doors, because no one has told me to move yet and I’m doing that thing I do where I wait to understand the social geometry of a room before I insert myself into it. Also my feet have stopped working.
The man by the window is walking toward Sophia now. She turns from the first man and hugs the second one with the same easy familiarity, both arms, genuine. “Uncle Maddox, you came!”
“Of course I came.” His voice carries across the lounge and I feel it at the base of my spine, which is deeply unhelpful information.
Two uncles.
Ah…he’s Uncle Mad Max. I get it. Mad Max equal Maddox.
Clever…I think? Sophia has two uncles at this private aviation terminal and she is just now mentioning them.
This is fine. This is completely fine. I’m standing here in a lounge having my stomach turned inside out by two separate men and they’re her uncles and that is absolutely fine.
Sophia turns and finds me still standing by the door like a potted plant someone forgot to water and waves me over with the enthusiasm of someone introducing her favorite people to each other. “Harper, come here!”
I cross the lounge.
Up close, the man she called Uncle Ash is even more unreasonably attractive, which is genuinely rude.
Broad through the shoulders with blue eyes that are warm and direct and slightly amused, dark blond hair going silver at the temples, forearms dusted with ink below rolled sleeves.
He looks at me the way people look at someone they’re actually curious about, not sizing up, just present.
Behind him, the woman in the flight uniform has rearranged her expression into something professionally pleasant that does not reach her eyes. She is trying. I respect the effort. I barely register it.
“Harper, this is my Uncle Ash. Asher Beckett.” Sophia gestures between us. “Asher, this is my best friend Harper Brooks. She’s going to help me with the boutique pitch.”
Asher extends his hand. “Harper. Good to meet you.”
His voice does what it did from across the room except now there’s no distance to buffer it and my ovaries, which have apparently been waiting for an opportunity to stage a coup, register a formal and emphatic complaint about the entire situation.
I shake his hand and produce what I believe constitutes a normal human response.
The flight attendant clears her throat softly. “Shall we continue our discussion, Mr. Beckett?”
Asher blinks. Turns. Looks at her like he’s remembering she exists. “Huh? What? Oh—uh, no. I’m good. Thank you.”
He turns back to me.
The attendant’s professional smile holds. Barely.
Bless her heart.
“And this,” Sophia says, turning me gently by the elbow, “is Uncle Maddox. Maddox St. James.”
Maddox St. James extends his hand and when his fingers close around mine I get goosebumps.
Not the anxious kind. The other kind. The really inconvenient electric kind that start at my palm and travel all the way up my arm and settle somewhere in my sternum like they’ve decided to permanently relocate.
“Harper.” The way he says my name is easy and warm, like it fits comfortably in his mouth. “Sophia talks about you constantly.”
I smile. What I do not say is that Sophia has apparently never once mentioned that her ‘uncles’ aren’t the sweater vest wearing smoking a pipe reading classical novels types of uncles What I do not say is that Sophia has apparently never once mentioned either of these men in my direction, which is something she and I are going to discuss at length later, ideally with wine, ideally a lot of it.
What I do not say is when were you born and how is it possible that you look like that in regular clothes.
What I do not say is: you win, cloud being.
I surrender. I’m drinking all the wine this summer and eating all the crackers.
“Sophia’s been known to leave out some key details,” I say instead, and I feel more than see Sophia make a face at me from my periphery.
“Godfathers,” Sophia says, circling back to manage the obvious question on my face.
“Not technically uncles. But they’ve known my dad since before I was born and I’ve called them uncle since I could talk, so it stuck.
” She says it the same way you’d explain that the sky is blue, simple and settled.
“They’re basically always around. It’s just how it is. ”
Godfathers.
I keep smiling. I am very committed to this smile. I am going to wear this smile until it becomes structural.
Internally, the universe and I are having a very direct conversation and the universe is winning by a significant margin.
The lounge doors open again and Lorenzo comes through first, Raphael a step behind him, and the temperature in the room shifts the way it does when a group of people who already know each other settle into the same space.
Handshakes and shoulder grips and the easy shorthand of familiarity.
Asher and Maddox clearly know both of them well, which tracks given that Lorenzo has worked for Sophia’s dad for years and Raphael apparently does too, hired as the in-house DJ for events at the vineyard.
The more I learn about Killian Thorne’s operation the more I feel like I’ve walked sideways into a very stylish small country and no one thought to brief me on the customs.
A staff member appears at the edge of the lounge and nods toward Sophia. The plane is ready.
Sophia claps once, delighted. Then she turns and locates the flight attendant, who has migrated to the edge of the group with the posture of a woman recalibrating her afternoon.
“Could you take a group photo?” Sophia holds her phone out with a smile bright enough to power the entire terminal. “I promised my dad proof of life before takeoff.”
The attendant takes the phone. Her smile is excellent. Immaculate, even. A masterclass in professionalism over circumstance.
We arrange ourselves in the loose, slightly chaotic way of a group that hasn’t quite figured out its spatial dynamic yet.
Lorenzo pulls Sophia in by the waist. Raphael steps in on my left.
Asher moves to my right and the sleeve of his shirt brushes my arm and I make a very deliberate decision not to have a reaction to that.
Maddox settles in directly behind me close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off him and I make another very deliberate decision, this one requiring somewhat more effort.
The attendant counts to three. Takes the photo. Hands the phone back to Sophia with a smile that does not waver once.
She is a professional and she deserves a raise.
Sophia checks the photo, declares it acceptable, and starts moving toward the doors with Lorenzo.
Raphael falls into step beside me, easy and natural, and puts his arm around my shoulders as we follow the group toward the jet.
It’s friendly. Comfortable. The arm of a man who is being casually supportive about an idea without actually pushing it.
I glance back.
Asher and Maddox are a few steps behind us, bringing up the rear, and I catch both of their expressions in the same moment.
They’re looking at Raphael’s arm.
Not at me. At his arm. With the specific, controlled stillness of men who have something to say about what they’re looking at and are currently choosing not to say it.
It lasts maybe two seconds before Maddox’s gaze flicks to mine. He smiles like nothing happened, easy and unhurried, like I didn’t just catch him looking.
I face forward.
The tarmac stretches ahead of us and the jet waits at the end of it, gleaming and impossible, and I am flying to Bordeaux for the entire summer with Sophia’s godfathers and apparently zero functional self-preservation instincts.
I’m going to need so much wine.
So many crackers.