Chapter One #2
By now it felt different than simple doctoring: Were this a hospital room, Layla would have already made her exit, leaving someone else to take over the logistics of treatment.
But here, Layla’s responsibilities were more complicated—now that she’d treated Willa, she wouldn’t leave her until she could place her in the care of the aunt and uncle.
Even without those obligations, though, she wouldn’t have minded staying, wouldn’t have minded the opportunity to distract Willa with conversation, to watch color come back into the girl’s cheeks as her blood sugar stabilized and her nervousness eased.
It was the most calm and unbothered Layla had felt in days.
By the time Willa asked her what she was traveling to Paris for, she didn’t even need to take a meditative breath before answering.
“A wedding,” she said—breezily—and thought: I genuinely feel fine.
She thought of Emily, her beloved and now former sister-in-law, thought of the handwritten note Emily had written to accompany the elegant save-the-date that came in the mail to Layla’s barely lived-in apartment in Boston, the earnest phone call they had not long after, both of them trying not to cry.
Emily had only been a few years younger than Willa when Layla first met her all those years ago, back when things were brand-new with Jamie, and now Em was getting married, married in Paris, and that would be wonderful for her, and Layla could be for her what she was being right now for Willa.
Not a doctor, okay, but still. A pleasant, supportive guest. Unflappable and selfless.
She owed Emily that. She owed the entire family that, especially after staying away so long.
Willa practically beamed at her, and Layla felt it like reassurance, a warranty seal on the fact that this trip would be okay. She would walk into this entire destination wedding week like she’d walked into this part of the cabin only a few minutes ago. The best possible version of herself.
“I love wedd—” Willa began, and then everything pretty much went to hell.
* * *
It started with a voice—too loud, too angry, and, if Layla had to guess, alcohol soaked.
“If she’s sick,” some man boomed, “she should be moved to the back of the plane!”
Like that, Layla’s focus widened again. If she’d managed to lower the temperature of the cabin at all with her care for Willa, it ticked up again in response to this passenger’s belligerence.
She could sense bodies shifting in their little luxury pods, the tops of heads rising above curved plastic to peer at the source of the noise.
From Layla’s vantage point, she basically only had a clear view of Willa, who’d blanched gray-white again.
“I didn’t pay for a seat up here to get whatever she has!” the man bellowed.
Layla rose to her knees. She put the placid smile back on her face and set a hand on Willa’s forearm.
“You’re okay,” she told the girl, patting softly and nodding at the cup of ginger ale in Willa’s hand. “Have a little more.”
“Don’t go,” said Willa, a note of desperation in her voice.
“I won’t.” Still, she got her feet beneath her, lifted herself enough from her knees to see better.
The voice was so loud because it was only a row behind them—a window seat, opposite side of the plane, and Layla could see Marc leaning down, speaking softly.
When he moved slightly, Layla got a look at the owner of the belligerent voice—a florid-faced, mussed-looking older man in a wrinkled, sweat-ringed blue dress shirt. He pointed at Marc accusingly.
“This better not get in the way of deplaning on time,” he shouted.
Someone else—maybe someone at Layla’s back—said the word Ah-merry-ken again amid a torrent of irritated French, but this time it certainly didn’t sound all that beautiful, and Layla thought that was fair enough.
Beneath her hand, Willa tensed, and Layla patted again.
But it was one of those situations—the kind Layla hated most, a mind-under-matter collapse of a little mob of people at odds.
Another passenger turned in her seat to snap at the drunken man, then another flight attendant came over.
There was increasing use of the word sir, a mention of getting the pilot involved.
There was pointing and more shouting. Marc and his colleague seemed to lose the battle against this man’s flailing, unfocused rage—now, he was ranting about the growing unavailability of peanuts in public spaces—and Layla felt like she was having that warranty seal from Willa ripped right off.
She knew, rationally, that there was no connection to this asshole’s mess and the week she had ahead of her, but it still pressed on everything she wanted to avoid, the exact opposite of all her affirmations.
She felt responsible somehow—the doctor called to settle a situation, and now it had escaped her control. If she could let someone know that Willa was fine, that there was no indication she was contagious, that the whole matter was resolving easily and that there would be no cause for any delays…
“Willa,” she said quietly, leaning down. “I’m going to speak briefly to the flight attendant.”
But before she could, another man stood from his seat.
Also one row back from Willa’s, also along the window, but closer to Layla—directly opposite the shouting.
To Layla, he was in profile, facing the disturbance, but…
but god, it was a striking profile. Thick black hair pushed back from a face that looked carved from stone—strong brow, sharp nose, full lips set, and a stubbled jaw cutting horizontally across the line of his neck.
The hair on his head, on his cheeks, matched the clothes on his lean body—black long-sleeved T-shirt, loose-fitting black pants, a black ball cap fisted in the hand Layla could see.
Her breath caught, her heart thumped. She saw his mouth move, no sound that she could hear, but still, it made her skin prickle with warmth.
Well, it was the circumstances, obviously—this reaction in her, this heat in her. It was the tense scene across the aisle that had started because of poor Willa, and Layla was responsible for Willa, and now this man was part of it, too…
His mouth moved again.
She heard him this time.
“Quiet,” he said. “Be. Quiet.”
It was a white-hot blade, that voice. She couldn’t even say if it was particularly loud, if anyone across the way could actually hear it. But it was cutting. All edge. A voice like his face, like the way he held his body. Angles everywhere.
It worked for a few seconds—slicing right through the man with the red face and the boozy voice, silencing Marc and his stressed-looking colleague, who both stared in shock across the middle seats. If the drunk man’s anger was a thick, cloaking cloud, this man in black’s anger was a lightning bolt.
Bright and electrifying.
“Sir,” Marc finally managed. “You’ll need to return to—”
“If you want off this plane quickly,” the man in black said to the drunkard, as though Marc hadn’t even made an attempt, “you will be quiet. Because if this disturbance carries on, it will be me who needs medical attention, and you’ll be stuck on that runway for however long it takes for me to get it. ”
Layla blinked up at him—up, because she now realized she’d somehow sunk back down to her knees—in surprise.
It will be me who needs medical attention.
She shouldn’t be surprised, of course she shouldn’t—she knew sick didn’t always look a certain way. She was just rattled, not thinking straight.
She was shocked through by the big-bang, lightning-bolt effect of him.
She looked quickly at Willa, whose nerves had apparently eased off long enough to get interested in the show—she was practically leaning out of her pod to get a look at the man.
Layla waited, kneeling there, thinking, This can’t possibly be the end of it, because he was just some handsome man with sharp words of censure and an unnaturally still posture after he said them.
That couldn’t be enough to silence or sober up the man across the way.
But after several seconds, it was still so quiet, only the regular hum of the cabin again, and the man in black kept his eyes straight ahead until he saw something that satisfied him enough to turn away, his whole face toward Layla now—the full effect of it striking in a different way.
He was scarred, she could see, and severely, if not recently, so: a whorl of pink raised texture at his temple, along his cheekbone, pulling the left side of his brow lower and disrupting his hairline. Along his jaw, a patch of similarly terrained skin, completely bare of stubble.
He met her eyes and she thought again of what he’d said—me who needs medical attention—and she reached for the placid smile, the cool control, the secure knowledge she’d had only a few moments ago that she was calm enough to do her job.
She would ask if he needed help, be the best version of herself again, get that warranty seal reaffixed before this flight ended and she had to face the week ahead.
But in his gaze she was a stunned and smoking tree trunk, rooted to the ground, her mouth open as if poised to speak, except with nothing available to come out. She thought of her phone, her translation app, thought of a language she would call Lightning-Struck, and how to make it English again.
She watched as he raised the hand not holding his cap, saw that it was scarred, too. In a swift motion he smoothed back his hair and lifted the hat onto his head, pulling it low over his eyes so she could no longer tell if he was looking at her.
It helped, a little. She could finally get a word out.
“Sir,” she said, like Marc had, and she hoped it didn’t sound scolding. “Do you need—”
“I said if,” he snapped, and she blinked in confusion before she could translate herself back into his earlier words.
If this disturbance carries on, he’d said.
Since it hadn’t, he didn’t have need of her.
She pressed her lips together and swallowed, strangely unrelieved.
When he began to lower himself back into his seat, Layla thought he’d released her from whatever spell he seemed to cast.
Fae prince and mortal girl, she thought briefly.
Wildly.
But before she could turn her attention back to Willa, the man stopped himself, halfway to sitting, and lifted his head again to look at her.
“Get up from there,” he said, scalpel-sharp. “The floor is probably disgusting.”
Then the brim of his hat lowered again, his lanky form folded back into his seat, his face turning toward the window.
Like nothing had ever happened at all.
For Layla, though…for Layla, something had happened, something she couldn’t mind-over-matter herself out of, something that she wasn’t sure she could ever explain.
She thought—she hoped—she spent the rest of the flight hiding it from Willa, from Marc, from any other passenger who might’ve noticed her.
But she couldn’t be sure, because she couldn’t seem to affirm herself into any more lies.
They had been shocked right out of her body.
She was not at all calm about attending Emily’s wedding.
Certainly not unbothered about seeing her ex-husband again.
And somehow, for some reason she couldn’t begin to explain, everything about that interaction with the man in black made her feel as though Paris was the last place in the world where she would thrive.