6. Nash
NASH
Adriana caught me at the elevator.
"Your wife was here," she said.
I looked up from my phone, where I'd been scrolling through the final FAA notes. "When?"
"An hour ago." She folded her arms across the front of her jacket, which was red and probably expensive and completely wrong for a Texas summer. "She didn't stay."
That didn't make sense. Rae had driven all the way from the penthouse to the airline and then turned around without seeing me? I shoved the phone into my pocket and faced Adriana properly, trying to work out what I'd missed. "Why'd she come?"
"I don't know." Adriana's mouth did something careful. "She saw us talking by the window and left."
"She saw us." I repeated it because it sounded ridiculous. We'd been standing in the hallway going over the FAA checklist, the same goddamn thing we did every month. Nothing unusual. Nothing worth driving forty minutes to see and then leaving over. "That's it?"
"That's what I saw, yes."
My chest tightened, just a little. Something about the way Adriana was looking at me felt off, like she was waiting for me to catch up to a conclusion she'd already reached. I didn't like it. "So she came all the way out here, looked at us from across the hall, and drove home."
"I think so." Adriana shifted her weight. "Nash, she looked upset."
"Upset about what?"
"I think she misunderstood what she saw."
The words landed wrong, like she'd stepped into a conversation I wasn't having. I frowned. "There's nothing to misunderstand. We were going over maintenance logs."
"I know that." Adriana touched my arm, her fingers light against the sleeve of my shirt. "But maybe she doesn't."
I pulled back, not sharply but enough that her hand fell away. The touch had been innocent, probably. Just emphasis. But something about it crawled under my skin and I didn't want to think about why. "Rae and I are fine."
"Of course you are." Her voice went softer, which somehow made it worse. "I'm just saying, if she drove all this way and then didn't come talk to you?—"
"Then there's a reason." I cut her off because I needed a simple answer, not speculation wrapped up in concern I hadn't asked for.
Rae didn't play games. She was the most straightforward person I'd ever met.
If she'd come to the airline, she'd had something to tell me or ask me, and if she'd left without doing it then something had stopped her.
Traffic, maybe. A work call. Hell, she could've realized she'd left the stove on and turned back. "She probably got called away."
Adriana tilted her head, and I hated the look on her face. Sympathetic. Like I was a dog with a bone, too stupid to see what was right in front of me. "Nash, I don't think that's what happened."
"Then what do you think happened?" The irritation came out sharper than I meant it to, but Jesus, I didn't need her psychoanalyzing my wife. My marriage.
She hesitated, and the pause made my jaw tighten. "I think she saw us together and made an assumption."
"An assumption." I let the word sit there, flat and heavy. "About what, exactly?"
"About us."
"There is no us." I said it like I was explaining something to a child, because it was the truth and I was done with the conversation.
Adriana worked for me. That was it. She was good at her job, thorough and competent and smart as hell about operations, and I trusted her to run the day-to-day without me micromanaging every decision.
But that's where it ended. The idea that Rae would think otherwise was insulting. To all three of us.
Adriana's mouth tightened, just a fraction. "I know that, Nash. But from where she was standing?—"
"Where was she standing?"
"The stairwell. At the other end of the hall."
"So she was sixty feet away." I shook my head because the whole thing felt ridiculous now, like a bad joke someone was trying to sell me on.
Rae had been sixty feet away, across a hallway, probably backlit by the stairwell windows, and she'd seen me talking to my VP and decided — what?
That I was having an affair? That I'd suddenly thrown away seven years of marriage?
"She saw us talking and left. That doesn't sound like Rae. "
"Maybe she's been feeling neglected."
The word hit me sideways, sharp and unexpected. I stared at Adriana. "Neglected."
"You've been working a lot of late nights."
"I'm always working late nights." My voice came out harder than I'd intended, but I couldn't stop it. "We're scaling the fleet. Denver and Phoenix both need gate space, and we're negotiating with San Antonio for a maintenance hub. She knows that."
"I know she does." Adriana's expression stayed careful, like she was picking her way through a minefield. "But knowing you're busy and feeling like a priority are different things."
My jaw clenched. I didn't like this. Didn't like that Adriana thought she understood my marriage better than I did, didn't like that she was standing here telling me my wife felt neglected when Rae had never said a goddamn word about it.
Rae wasn't the type to suffer in silence.
If something was wrong, she'd tell me. She always had.
"She's not some fragile thing that falls apart because I'm busy. "
"I didn't say she was."
"Then what are you saying?"
Adriana took a breath, and I saw her weighing something. Whatever it was, I already knew I didn't want to hear it. "I'm saying that maybe she saw us and it looked like more than it was. And maybe that's because she's been feeling like you're not really there when you are home."
"I'm there." The words came out defensive, and I hated that too. "I go home every night."
"Do you?" She said it gently, which made it worse. "Or do you go home and keep working?"
The words caught in my throat. I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that she didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but the truth was I couldn't remember the last time I'd sat down with Rae and actually talked to her.
Really talked, not just the logistical back-and-forth about schedules and errands.
The expansion had eaten every spare hour I had for the last six months. Maybe longer.
But that didn't mean the marriage was in trouble.
It just meant I was busy.
"Look," I said, and my voice came out rougher than I wanted. "I appreciate the concern. But Rae and I are fine."
Adriana's expression flickered. Doubt, maybe. Or pity. I couldn't tell and I didn't want to. "Okay."
"I mean it." I needed her to drop this, needed the conversation to be over so I could stop feeling like I was defending myself against an accusation no one had actually made. "There's nothing going on. There's nothing wrong. She probably just changed her mind about stopping by."
"Nash—"
"I don't need you to explain my wife to me."
The silence after that stretched out longer than it should have. Adriana blinked, and I saw the exact moment she realized she'd crossed a line. Her shoulders pulled back, just slightly, and her face went professional in a way that felt like a door closing. Good. Maybe now she'd let it go.
But she didn't.
"I know this isn't easy to hear," she said quietly, "but if she saw me touch your collar?—"
"Stop." I held up a hand, and my voice came out harder than I'd meant it to. Sharper. "Just stop talking."
She stopped.
I took a breath, trying to rein in the frustration crawling up my spine like a live wire.
It wasn't her fault, exactly. She was trying to be helpful.
Trying to give me information I needed. But the whole conversation felt wrong, like she was building a narrative out of nothing and expecting me to climb inside it with her.
Rae and I were solid. We'd been solid since the day I met her at Cibolo Heights, grease on her hands and fire in her eyes, telling me my Cessna's engine mounts were shit.
That was seven years ago. Seven years of late nights and early mornings and her never once complaining that I worked too much or didn't pay her enough attention.
So why the hell was Adriana standing here telling me my wife felt neglected?
I looked at her, and she was watching me with an expression I couldn't quite name. Concern, maybe. Or something else. Something I didn't want to look at too closely.
"I need you to let this go," I said.
She nodded slowly. "Okay."
"I mean it, Adriana."
"I understand." Her voice was quiet, measured. Professional. Like we were back to being CEO and VP instead of whatever the hell the last five minutes had been.
I stepped past her and hit the elevator button. The damn thing was taking forever. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out, half expecting a text from Rae, but it was just Elias asking if the FAA had cleared the maintenance logs. I typed back a quick yeah and shoved the phone away again.
Behind me, Adriana cleared her throat. "Nash, if you want to talk?—"
"I don't." I didn't turn around. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, and I stepped inside without looking back at her. "Go home, Adriana. It's been a long day."
The doors closed on her face, and I was alone.
I leaned against the back wall and scrubbed a hand over my jaw. The metal was cool under my shoulders, and the air conditioning hummed too loud in the enclosed space. My reflection stared back at me from the polished steel doors, distorted and tired.
The whole thing was stupid. Rae had come to the airline and left.
That was it. That was the entire story. Maybe she'd wanted to surprise me and then remembered I hated surprises during inspections.
Maybe she'd been in the neighborhood for something else and decided against stopping by when she saw how busy we were.
There were a dozen explanations that made more sense than the one Adriana had been pushing, the one where Rae thought I was cheating on her with my goddamn vice president.
The elevator hit the ground floor and I walked out into the parking lot.
The heat slammed into me immediately, that wet Texas evening heat that made my shirt stick to my back and turned the asphalt soft under my boots.
My truck was parked under one of the far lights, and I headed for it, keys already in my hand.
I should've called Rae. I knew that. But I didn't know what to say.
Hey, Adriana told me you stopped by, what was that about?
sounded accusatory, like I was mad at her for leaving.
Did something happen? sounded paranoid, like I thought there was a problem when there wasn't. And there wasn't a problem. I wasn't paranoid.
I was just annoyed that Adriana had made a thing out of nothing and now I couldn't stop thinking about it.
The truck's engine turned over with a low growl and I pulled out onto the access road, pointing myself toward the highway.
The sun was dropping toward the horizon, painting everything orange and gold, and the traffic was light enough that I could open it up once I hit the on-ramp.
Forty-three floors up, Rae was probably making dinner or reading on the couch or doing any one of the hundred things she did on a normal Thursday evening.
I'd get home, she'd smile at me, and this whole weird afternoon would shrink down to the non-event it actually was.
I merged onto the highway and pushed the speed up to seventy. The penthouse was twenty minutes out if I caught the lights right, maybe fifteen if I didn't.
My phone buzzed again in the cupholder. I glanced down.
Still Elias, now asking about next week's schedules for the Denver route.
I ignored it. Whatever he needed could wait until I got home and poured myself a drink and sat down at the kitchen counter where Rae would probably be chopping vegetables or measuring out rice or doing something domestic and normal that would prove Adriana wrong.
The city slid past outside the windows, all glass and concrete and the burnt-orange sky of early evening.
I should've felt better. The FAA was gone, the inspection had come back clean, and we were cleared to add two more aircraft to the fleet by October.
That was a win. A big one. And I had a wife waiting for me at home who understood what I was building, who'd been there from the beginning when it was just me and a half-dead Cessna and a dream too big for the money I had.
But my chest felt tight.
I couldn't shake the image Adriana had put in my head: Rae standing at the end of the hall, sixty feet away, watching me. Watching us. And then turning around and leaving without a word.
That wasn't like her.
Rae didn't run. She faced things head-on, always had. If she thought something was wrong, she'd say it. She'd walk right up to me and tell me I was being an idiot, the same way she had when I'd tried to cheap out on the avionics for the Cessna. She didn't leave without explanation.
Unless she had an explanation and I just didn't know it yet.
I tightened my grip on the wheel. My knuckles went white.
She'd probably just forgotten something, I told myself again. That was the simplest explanation. The most logical one. Occam's razor and all that shit. She'd driven out to tell me something, got distracted, and went home. It happened. People forgot things all the time.
I turned off the highway and headed east toward the penthouse, where the high-rises clustered against the skyline like teeth.
Rae would be there. She'd smile when I walked in. And everything would be exactly the way it was supposed to be.