I wait until she has her sweatshirt back on and plops her butt down on the closed toilet lid, then unlatch the lock and slip out, blocking the door with my body as I close it behind me. The lock snaps back into place and I’m facing down a cranky-looking older woman with over-styled, bottle-blonde hair.
“You really don’t want to go in there for at least twenty minutes,” I say, wrinkling my nose and waving my hand. “It’s pretty toxic.”
The woman’s irate expression screws up in disgust, but at that moment the door to the opposite lavatory opens and she disappears inside once the previous occupant slips past us to their seat.
I head back to my own seat, buzzed from the endorphins still racing through my blood.
A little later, a flight attendant taps me on the shoulder and says, “Sir, we’re about to land. You need to fasten your seatbelt.”
I look up with a start, realizing I must have dozed off. But Callie hasn’t returned. Frowning, I twist around and look back down the aisle, but I can’t see her. I hope she isn’t still locked in the lavatory, but I remember seeing a couple empty seats back there so maybe she thought it safer to claim one. Her purse is still stowed under the seat, so she has to come back for it. Except she can’t, now that we’re landing.
I’m glancing back down the aisle again when I hear a melodic whistle come from the portly guy in the window seat. It takes a second for me to recognize the notes of “Strangers in the Night” and I stare at him. He gives me a sly smile and a half-shrug. “Either she fell in, or she needs space after doing something out of step with her principles. Maybe let it be what it is?”
I grunt in response because he’s right, but I don’t like it. I don’t want it to end this way. “You got a pen and paper?”
He shakes his head. I see a pen sticking out of her purse and grab it, only to discover it’s the damn pen light she blinded me with earlier. After a bit more rummaging, I find a cheap ballpoint.
Pulling it out, a spark of light flashes off a silver ring that’s hooked around it. I slip it off the pen and stare at the bit of jewelry for a second. It’s an ugly little thing with a circle of tiny reflective specks that might pass for diamonds surrounding a small garnet, which doesn’t fit my image of her at all. It’s neither elegant nor particularly valuable. If this was the so-called engagement ring, she’s better off without the asshole who gave it to her.
“Loser,” I mutter, stashing the ring back in an inner pocket of her bag. Then I fish her book out of the rear seat pocket and scribble a note on the back of the last page, rip the page out, fold it once, then slide it into her wallet right in front of her driver’s license where I’m sure she’ll see it eventually.
The passengers are all up and moving, my seatmate giving me an impatient look. I leave Callie’s purse on her seat and stand, removing her suitcase from the overhead compartment first and setting it on my seat before retrieving the duffel bag full of my own shit. I glance back once more before heading down the aisle, but all I see are bodies, none of them hers, and I have no choice but to keep moving.
Once off the plane I consider waiting, but my conscience kicks my ass and forces me to obey the string of texts from Booth that greet me when I turn on my phone. Evidently he’s been waiting at the airport for me since he arrived this morning, and he is not in a welcoming mood.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, then head off to find my handler.
10 Callie
It isn’t until the plane is nearly empty that I bring myself to move from the back row and reclaim my belongings. I stayed in the lavatory for a good fifteen minutes after Mason left, overwhelmed by humiliation at my impulsive actions and fresh surges of arousal at each memory of his expert touches and kisses. I couldn’t deal with facing him again.
Eventually a light tap sounded outside and the authoritative, yet gentle tone of the flight attendant brought me back to the present. I spent the rest of the flight huddled under a blanket in the last row, mind replaying every second of the encounter, every expression that played across Mason’s face while we fucked.
Behind his beard, he has a handsome, almost sweet face made dangerous by the bruises that grace it. I remember the look in his eyes when he first thrust into me, something deep and desperate, like he was starved and was finally given leave to take sustenance from me.
My heart races again at the memory, all too present in my mind when I finally find the courage to move toward the front of the plane. I steel myself as I reach our row, but of course he’s gone, my belongings carefully placed on top of the seats within easy reach. Even that small show of courtesy is more than I expected.
I take my purse and sling it over a shoulder, then grab my rolling suitcase and take a shaky breath as I head up the aisle, smiling pleasantly at the flight crew even as my insides are falling apart.
On the way up the gangway, I clench my eyes shut, trying not to cry as the weight of Barnaby’s betrayal crashes over me, the intensity of the encounter I just had only serving to highlight what a farce our relationship was all along. Why it all came crashing in on me after sex with a virtual stranger, I don’t know—perhaps because for the first time I understood what I was missing all along
