Chapter 10 #2
“What do you think, boys? I’m trying to convince your mom to copilot.
” He focused on her boys, doing an abbreviated round of roughhousing with them that did nothing to allay her worry over the flight.
She closed her eyes and mentally checked the list of items she’d needed to pack, ticking each off one by one in her head.
If this didn’t work, she’d grab her phone and earbuds for the meditation app April recommended.
Rachel used it sometimes when she got really nervous.
Fine. She used it once. There wasn’t a lot of time for meditation apps lately, what with the full-time parenting, impromptu family vacation for the summer, and a full client load.
“Mom, you have to do it.” Kellan pulled her eyelids open with his thumbs and absolutely no regard for her personal space or mental stability.
“As I explained to your uncle, I want to make it to Twin Lakes in one piece,” she said. “I went to business school, not flight school.”
Come to think of it, she was pretty sure Travis had gone to business school, too.
That thought made bile rise up a little in her throat because he was going to be piloting the aircraft, it seemed.
Although, no one else questioned his credentials.
“It’ll be so cool,” Brady announced. “Then we can tell
Dad you aren’t scared of flying anymore.” The cabin went silent. Too silent.
“You’re scared of flying?” Evelyn asked. “Gavin never told me that.”
“I don’t think Gavin tells you a lot of things.” Rachel forced herself to smile but it felt weak. “Let’s leave the piloting to those with training. My experience with playing X-Plane with the boys never ends well for my virtual passengers.”
“You play X-Plane?” Travis asked.
“She’s super bad at it,” Brady announced, substantially louder than necessary.
Could the seat just open up and swallow her until they got to the lake house?
“Sometimes being a copilot is rewarding,” Travis said, but it felt like he was talking about a lot more than the flight to Twin Lakes.
He could just go on talking about rewards and she’d just go on pretending that she didn’t know him.
Kellan somehow managed to wear his seat belt and still get up on his knees in the seat beside her. Rachel immediately adjusted the strap to prevent so much freedom. “I know myself,” she said.
“Therefore, I do not trust myself to fly anything larger than a kite.”
The edges of Travis’s mouth twitched. “Fair enough.”
“That’s it?” Rachel asked.
Because with Travis that was never it.
Travis shrugged. “I’m not going to force you to do somethin’ you don’t want to do. I’ll just give you a little crap about it and move on.”
“I wanna sit in the cockpit.” Brady bounced in his seat, raising his hand like he was volunteering for the first round of chocolate cake instead of sitting in one of the first seats to go down in a crash.
Absolutely not. She opened her mouth to figure out a way to say that without breaking the kid’s heart. “I don’t—”
“He loves airplanes,” Kellan declared. “He never stalls on X-Plane like you do.”
“This plane is a Gulfstream G550,” Brady said, still bouncing even though the seat belt remained clipped across his lap. “It has dual Rolls-Royce engines, but not the Tays. Those were phased out after the g-four.”
Airplanes? For real? That was going to be his thing? No. This was a phase. That’s it.
He could just like soccer or join the math club. A hobby that wouldn’t kill him. Fractions never killed anyone.
Rachel’s mouth parted as her son continued—
“This plane can go up to fifty-one thousand feet, but we won’t go that high, since we’re not going too far. Twin Lakes is close.” He leaned back in the chair, kicking his feet against the edge. “I hope Uncle Travis will take me someplace farther someday, so we can go higher.”
Rachel glanced at Bob and Evelyn, whose expressions of shock must’ve mirrored her own because, apparently, her son was an aviation savant and she never—literally never—suspected it.
Yes, he loved flight simulators, but they were video games, and he seemed to be an equal opportunity video game enthusiast.
She flipped through the memories she had of his games, searching for whatever she’d missed.
“What else do you know about airplanes?” Travis asked, resting his arm against the back of Brady’s chair. Nonchalant, like this was not a big deal.
“I know lots.” Brady shrugged, still kicking his feet against the edge of the chair. “What do you want to know?”
“What else do you have in your noggin’ about the trip today?” Travis asked.
“The airport we’re landing at is the highest commercial airport in North America,” Brady replied immediately. “The approach is one of the hardest to manage, but you did it last year without any problem, so I think we’ll be fine.”
Hold the phone, Travis flew them last year and Gavin knew about it? He’d have had to because he was on the plane.
Travis grinned at Brady. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Seriously, about that…
Brady scrunched his face. “I probably shouldn’t have said that in front of Mom. She gets weird about aviation.”
“I don’t get weird about it,” Rachel said before thinking. Brady raised his eyebrows at her in a move that reminded her remarkably of his uncle. She shook away the thought. “I just don’t care for flying. Like you don’t like cauliflower.”
“You don’t need cauliflower to get from one place to the next,” Kellan chimed in. “You don’t need cauliflower for anything.”
“Preach it, kid.” Dane headed toward the cockpit, and was he about to do what she thought he was about to do?
Rachel’s stomach plummeted and hit her toes like a super hard landing. “Is Dane the copilot?”
“He is,” Travis replied.
Rachel grabbed Travis’s arm. “Is he qualified?” she asked, ready to grab her kids and dogs and get off the plane altogether.
Travis extracted her fingers from his forearm. “He is.” Rachel bit at her bottom lip. Hard. “Are you sure?”
“I signed off on his license, so I’m pretty confident in his abilities.”
“You can do that?” She gripped her purse to her chest instead of grabbing Travis again. “Sign off on other pilots? Is that a thing? One pilot just says another is good enough and on they go?”
That seemed like a remarkably bad idea. This, right here, was why she didn’t like flying.
“I’m a flight instructor.” Travis kneeled so they were eye to eye. He spoke calmly, like she would if she was explaining to her children that cauliflower wouldn’t murder them in their sleep.
“I thought you worked at Puffle Yum,” she said. “I do that, too.”
Oh.
“The flying is more of a hobby, but it comes in handy.” He patted her knee. Patted it. Like he touched it in front of his mother.
She was pretty sure she heard Evelyn growl.
“And you’re good?” she asked. “A good pilot and instructor and all of that?”
“So I’m told,” he replied, confident and cocky.
She swallowed the uncertainty that had wiggled its way into her throat.
“Rach?” Travis asked, tilting his head toward the front of the plane. “Can I talk to you alone for a second? About Brady?”
She nodded, standing on wobbly knees. She set her purse in her seat.
Her eyes caught Evelyn’s and Bob’s as she passed. Bob winked. The man had charm—gobs of it that each of his children had inherited.
Evelyn pursed her lips and mimed tearing a thread from her sleeve.
Rachel followed Travis to the cockpit where Dane sat in the seat to the right.
Travis set the metal clipboard on the console next to the seat on the left before turning to Rachel. They were so close. Really close. Practically touching close. Too close.
She tried to step backward, but the closed door stopped her.
Who closed the door?
Travis’s eyes dimmed at her movement. She did her best to ignore it.
“Do you mind if Brady hangs out up here with us during the flight?” Travis jerked his chin toward the jump seat.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I mean, I mind.”
She did. He was eight. What if he touched something?
He should stay in the cabin with her and the rest of the family and leave the piloting to the actual…pilots. Or whatever these guys were.
Travis’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t say anything more. “I’ll watch out for him,” Dane said, not looking up from whatever he was doing with his own metal clipboard. “Once we’re in the air, Travis can handle the bird on his own.”
“I can handle the bird on my own before we’re in the air,” Travis said.
“If you’d feel more comfortable, he can come in after takeoff and go back to the cabin before we land,” Dane suggested, not acknowledging Travis’s comment. “Gotta be honest, though, those are the best parts of the flight.”
He looked up at her, then, and something in her expression made his lips turn down. “I guess that’s only if you like to fly.”
One could say that. She bit at her bottom lip, glancing between the two of them.
“Rach,” Travis said, his tone entirely too serious. “The kid clearly loves airplanes. Let him have the chance to see what it’s all about up here.”
No. Just no.
“Please,” he added, before she could say anything. “I’m sorry, I’m not comfortable with this,” she said, her tone the one she used when she was through negotiating with her kids and it was time to move on to the next subject.
Dane and Travis shared a look that she was not going to read further into because if she did, she’d probably take her kids and their dogs and stay on the ground in Denver forever.
Instead, she turned to leave, pulling on the door. It didn’t open.
She pulled harder. Still didn’t open. Harder.
Still nope.
Her heart rate was spiking, and where the fucking hell was April with her meditation app when Rachel needed it?
Before she could kick the damn thing, Travis was behind her, his chest to her back and his scent surrounding her and making her stomach do the unacceptable flippy thing it did sometimes when he was there.
He reached around her shoulder and pushed the door open.
Push. Not pull. Good to know.
Not that she’d need to know because she had no intention of coming back into the cockpit again.
“Rach,” Travis said, low enough so only she could hear.
She turned and, hoo boy, he was really right there, just ready to rip at the seams of his family structure.
She started to step back, but he beat her to it.
“I know you’re not comfortable with the plane, but I’ll keep your family safe.”
Her throat didn’t seem to be capable of swallowing all of a sudden. She had to force it.
“You can’t promise that,” she said.
She was pretty sure she was the only one capable of it.
Sometimes Gavin, but he was sure iffy lately.
“I can promise that I’ll do everything I can to keep your kids safe when they’re in my plane,” Travis said, expression solemn like he was at church confessing to sins that would make the most experienced priest blush down to his toes. “And you too.”
Oh.
That was…
Dane had never said anything like that.
He loved them. But…
“I promise you that,” he said.
Without saying anything else, and leaving her standing there like a statue, Travis turned to climb into the pilot seat, buckling in before slipping on his headset.
Okay, so that declaration totally did make her tummy do the flippy-do, howdy-ho.
She rolled her lips again and crossed her arms around her middle, holding herself up like she’d done so many times before since the boys were born.