Chapter 18 #2
He’s just standing there. In a commercial check-in line.
For a flight he’s not even on. Six-foot-four of professional athlete in a linen shirt, calmly hauling my luggage through the terminal while families with strollers shuffle past and couples in matching souvenir T-shirts argue about boarding groups.
My suitcase wobbles along next to his like it’s trying to start a fight.
He doesn’t even glance down.
Just adjusts the carry-ons on his shoulder and keeps moving.
I reach for the handle anyway. “West—”
“I’ve got it.”
And apparently he does.
Nobody looks at him twice.
Actually, everyone looks at him twice. A woman in a sarong nearly walks into a stanchion.
I check in. BermudAir Flight 501 to Boston Logan. Departs 5:05 PM. Gate 3. Boarding at 4:45.
The boarding pass prints. Thin paper. Flimsy. The most important document I've ever hated holding.
We walk toward security together. My eyes drift to the departures board—habit, anxiety, the need to track things when emotions won't cooperate.
I see it.
Private Charter—Teterboro, NJ—5:30 PM
My feet stop moving.
"West."
"Mm?"
"Your flight says 5:30."
He keeps walking. Doesn't look at the board. "Yeah."
"I thought your family was leaving at four. Your mom said at breakfast that—"
"I moved it."
People flow around me.
He what?
"You moved it?"
"It's a charter. That's the point." He says this like it's obvious. Like rearranging a private jet is the same as changing a restaurant reservation.
"By ninety minutes?"
"Yes."
He moved his family's entire charter by ninety minutes. The Prescott family charter. The one with his parents, his aunt, and whatever staff travels with people who have staff.
So he could sit in an airport with me.
So he could have more than a rushed goodbye at the curb.
My throat does something complicated.
"You—" I start, and don't finish because security requires shoes off and bags on belts and the mechanical processing of bodies through scanners, and I take off my shoes and put my bag on the belt and walk through the metal detector with tears pricking my eyes like tiny, inconvenient needles.
He moved his family's flight so he wouldn't have to say goodbye at 3:30.
So he could have more than ten minutes with me.
Through security by 3:35. Both of us. Shoes back on, bags collected, standing in the post-checkpoint no-man's-land where departing passengers scatter to their gates.
"We have over an hour," he says. "Let's find somewhere to sit."
Seventy minutes to be exact. Four thousand two hundred seconds of him.
I'll take every one.
The seating area isn't glamorous. Chairs bolted to the floor, a view of the tarmac through salt-hazed windows, a vending machine humming in the corner like it has opinions.
We sit. His arm goes around my shoulders. My head finds the hollow between his shoulder and his neck where I fit perfectly, which is biologically improbable given our height difference but physically undeniable.
"West."
"Jane."
"You moved your family's flight by ninety minutes."
"We've established this."
This man is going to ruin my life in the best possible way.
"Your parents are okay with this?"
"Aunt Milly suggested it, actually."
"She said—and I quote—'The girl needs a proper send-off, West. Stop being efficient.'"
I laugh despite the tears threatening to stage a full-scale mutiny. My chest tightens around the sound.
We have time now. Real time. Not the panicked, adrenaline-soaked minutes of the casita or the scenery-blurred drive. Just us, in plastic chairs, watching baggage carts crawl across the tarmac.
"I wanted more time." Simple. Devastating. "With you. I wanted every minute I could get."
"What if you change your mind?" I ask.
"I won't."
"You don't know that."
"I do, actually."
"What if you get home and realize I'm a working-class chaos tornado who doesn't own a single piece of clothing that costs more than forty dollars?"
"I know that already."
What if this was vacation brain? What if I'm the only one who—
"What if you decide Boston winters are a dealbreaker?" I say instead.
His mouth quirks. "I played hockey in Minnesota for six years, Cooper. I think I can handle Boston."
"What if Grace hates you?"
"Then I'll win her over."
"What if—"
"I counted forty-seven reasons this won't work. At three a.m. While you were drooling on my shoulder."
"I don't drool."
"You absolutely drool. You also snore. Lightly. It's adorable."
He counted reasons this won't work. At three a.m. While I was asleep.
He's in as deep as I am.
I'm in so much trouble.
"Like I said, forty-seven reasons it won't work," he says, "and I still moved my flight. That should tell you something."
It tells me everything.
We talk. We sit quietly. Sometimes at the same time—his arm around me, my head on his shoulder, watching planes taxi through amber light.
“Don’t wealthy families have contingency travel rules?” I ask when the thought pops into my head. “So the entire dynasty doesn’t board the same aircraft?”
West pauses. Looks at me with narrowed eyes.
“Are you jinxing us?”
Immediate regret. Full-body.
“I retract that. Fully retracted. Struck from the record.” I press my palm flat against his chest like I can physically shove the words back into my mouth.
His heartbeat strums steadily and strong under my hand.
Mine is not. “Forget I said anything. I’m sure planes are extremely safe. Statistically.”
He laughs—low and quiet. The kind of laugh that means he’s actually amused, not just tolerating me.
“We’ll land,” he says.
Somehow the certainty in his voice isn't just about aviation. It's about us.
Other passengers move around us, caught in their own departures. A mother wiping a toddler’s face. Two college students comparing boarding passes. An elderly couple holding hands the way people hold hands after fifty years—without thought, without performance, without needing anyone to notice.
“I’m going to miss this,” I say quietly.
"Miss what?"
"This. The quiet parts. The parts where we're not talking or planning or—just this."
He kisses the top of my head. His lips stay there a beat longer than casual.
"Me too."
The clock above the departures board ticks forward. 4:30. Fifteen minutes.
"Your mother gave me her number," I say, because lighter is safer and if I go any deeper I'll flood.
"She likes you."
"She barely knows me."
"She knows enough. She knows you make me laugh. You passed with flying colors.”
I passed. Eleanor Prescott's interview.
"Aunt Milly asked me if my intentions were honorable," he adds.
I snort. "What did you say?"
"Extremely dishonorable. But committed."
I'm laughing and crying simultaneously.
"Stop looking at me like that," I say.
"Like what?"
"Like you're memorizing me."
His expression shifts. Something softer. Something that makes my ribs feel too small for what's inside them.
"I am memorizing you."
That's the exact moment I stop pretending this is casual. Stop pretending eight days isn't enough. Stop pretending the big, terrifying, what-even-is-this feelings aren't exactly what they are.
I'm in love with him.
Not falling. Not tumbling. Not any of the verbs that imply accident or descent.
Just... in it. Landed. A fact I can't unlearn, sitting in my chest like it's always been there, waiting for me to stop pretending I couldn't feel it.
"BermudAir Flight 501 to Boston Logan International Airport now boarding at Gate 3."
"That's me," I say.
"I know."
"I should—"
"I know."
Gate 3. Other passengers filing through. Sunset pouring through the windows in thick, honey-colored streaks. A family ahead of us negotiating who carries the car seat.
We're standing at the edge of the boarding area, and I'm running out of ways to delay this.
"Don't," I say.
"Don't what?"
"Don't be perfect right now. I can't do the big romantic goodbye if you're being perfect. Be annoying. Say something about my luggage."
"Your luggage is a war crime."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
I'm going to cry in an airport. This is happening. I'm that person now.
He cups my face with both hands. Tilts it up. Kisses me.
Not frantic. Not desperate. Certain. A kiss that says this isn't over and I'll see you soon and I'm already counting the days until I can do this again.
His thumbs brush my cheekbones. My hands grip his wrists and I feel his pulse under my fingers. The bracelet presses warm against my skin.
I'm crying. Actual tears. On my actual face. In an actual airport.
"You made me cry," I accuse, when we break apart.
"You made me feel things." His voice is rough around the edges. "We're even."
His hands shake. Almost imperceptibly. But I feel it against my cheekbones—the finest tremor, there and gone, the only evidence that this man who controls everything is holding on by his fingernails.
"I hate feelings."
"Me too."
"Final boarding call for BermudAir Flight 501 to Boston."
"Call me when you land," he says.
"I will."
"Keep your phone on."
"I always do."
"Thank your family for breakfast. And for—everything."
"They meant it. The 'see you again soon' part." His jaw works. "My mother will text you. Fair warning."
"West—"
"Go. Before they close the door."
I walk toward the gate agent. Hand over my boarding pass. My hand is shaking, and the gate agent gives me the smile of a woman who has seen a thousand airport goodbyes and still finds them worth witnessing.
I don't look back immediately.
Then I do.
He's still standing there. Hands in his pockets. Shoulders squared. Watching me with an expression that isn't smiling but holds more warmth than a smile ever could.
I wave.
He waves back.
I turn and walk down the jetway, and the door closes behind me with the soft mechanical thud of things continuing.
Window seat. Small mercy.