“Thanks, Alex,” he said as he got out. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“No shit,” his brother responded. “Now go fix your fuckup.”
Ian sprinted through the airport doors and through the crowd at the airport. He deked left and then right, making his way toward the security gates where a crowd of people waited in lines that barely seemed to move. It was as far as he could go without a ticket. There were two hours before her flight. She had to be here.
He jumped up on a trio of seats off to the side and scanned the crowd looking for Shelby. Trying to find one person in the room of wall-to-wall people was like trying to find a guy without a mullet in an eighties hockey video montage.
“Shelby Blanton!” he hollered, his heart hammering in his ears.
People turned and looked around, glad for some entertainment while they waited. Several training their phones on him, no doubt to send the video of the Harbor City weirdo at the airport to their friends back in Omaha. A few TSA agents turned in his direction and started toward him. He didn’t give a shit.
“Shelby, I know you’re mad and you have every right to be.” This was where that whole grunts-more-than-talks thing became a problem. When he needed the words, he didn’t know what to say. So he went with the first thing that came to mind. “I was an asshole.” Wow. He really should have made a plan, but it was too late to now. “I don’t have the right to ask, but I’m asking for another chance in every zip code. Please.”
“Sir,” one of the TSA agents said. “I’m gonna need you to get down from there.”
Fuck. “Just one minute more?”
The agent pulled out a pair of zip ties. “Depends on how curious you are about the inside of the airport jail. Stay up there and you’ll get the full tour.”
If it would mean seeing Shelby, he would have happily taken the arrest option, but nowhere in the crowd was a tall, dark-haired woman ready to tell him he was a dumbass and then hopefully forgive him.
“Flight six twenty to New Orleans, do you know if it got delayed?” he asked, still eyeballing the passengers in line, looking for Shelby.
The agent shook his head. “Some kind of storm system is moving through later, so they moved up that flight’s departure time. Turned this place into chaos with all those passengers trying to get through early. It has already boarded and is about to take off. You’re too late.”
The news was a punch in the gut that knocked all the air out of him. He flopped down into the chair, his legs not strong enough to hold him up under the staggering weight of the news.
“I heard a rumor, though, that they added another flight out tonight to make up for it,” the agent said.
It was the best news he’d ever heard. Whatever it took, he was getting on that flight.
…
Sitting in seat 14C on a plane destined for New Orleans, Shelby tightened the seat belt.
Then she loosened it.
Then she tightened it again.
No matter what she did, though, it felt wrong, but then again so did everything. Packing up her belongings and sticking the boxes in the building’s basement storage until she found a place in New Orleans made her eye twitch. Putting her carry-on stuffed with a week’s worth of clothes in the overhead bin made her queasy. The Ice Knights home screen on her phone made her weepy.
And the idea that Ian was out there somewhere and that she wouldn’t see him again? That was fucking terrifying.
Every nerve in her body was screaming and her fight-or-flight response had gone to full-on get-the-hell-out-of-here mode. All she could think of was Ian. The night he taught her how to skate. How he’d stuck up for his brother even when he was so mad, he couldn’t talk to Alex. The breathtaking way he looked at her after making her come so hard she was surprised her toes weren’t still curled.
She had to get out of here.
She had to get to Ian.
On the verge of hyperventilating, she unfastened her seat belt and stood up. On the inhale, she popped open the overhead bin and on the exhale, she had her bag and was heading down the aisle as the other passengers stared at her and wondered aloud what was going on.
She’d made it almost to the front when a flight attendant blocked her way.
“The cabin doors are about to close,” he said with a testy smile. “You have to sit down.”
“I need to get out of here.” She had to get to Ian.
“Ma’am.” The flight attendant straightened his glasses and gave her an imperious glare. “We’ll be taking off soon.”
Yeah, that was exactly why her heart was going a bazillion miles an hour, her brain was in full panic mode, and she had been rushing toward the jetway. “I understand, just let me off before you do.” She paused, gathering up all the fear and hope for what was going to happen next and putting it into the most important word. “Please.”
The flight attendant’s demeanor changed in an instant and he ushered Shelby to the front of the plane. “Is everything okay? Do you require assistance?”
She shook her head. The only person who could get her out of this mess was herself, but help with Harbor City traffic would be appreciated. “Not unless you can get me a cab and through rush-hour traffic to the Ice Knights arena in less than an hour.”
He raised both eyebrows so high, they got lost behind his perfectly coiffed
