This? This is a flying flex.
White leather seats. Three different seating areas. Real china and crystal. A literal espresso machine built into the wall. And, oh yeah, the rear seating section converts into a bed. Because of course it does.
The table between us is sleek and black, and even though we’re surrounded by his team, this moment somehow feels private. Personal.
It’s a reminder that he’s both the man who makes me feel like I am his world, and the one who has the world at his fingertips. The one who was threatened with a breach of contract penaltyamount that almost made me pass out when his manager called yesterday to deliver the threat, and the one who casually told his manager to wire the label the funds from his account. I’d been the voice of reason and suggested maybe we could relocate our reunion/official dating sex marathon temporarily to Nashville.
Jaxon ducks slightly as he walks down the aisle to sit beside me, all six-foot-something of him a little too tall for even this luxury aircraft. He hands me an espresso mug—actual porcelain, not a paper cup—with a smile that somehow still makes my stomach do that annoying flip thing.
“You shouldn’t feel nervous about either,” he says, settling into the seat beside me. “All you have to do during recording is have fun, and you’re going to crush your client meeting. I know how much you’ve prepared for it.”
“Thanks,” I murmur, wrapping my hands around the little mug. “Still feels a little surreal.”
“What part?”
“All of it.” I gesture around us. “This jet. This trip. You.”
He leans in and kisses my temple. “Surreal is kind of my brand.”
It’s a joke. But it’s also not.
Because for all the ways Jaxon is still the boy I used to know, he’s also the man who commands stages and fills arenas and can casually drop a number likesixty million, when I asked him, point-blank, how expensive this jet was.
“I’m so glad you’re here though, Iz,” Jaxon says. “That you came with me this time.”
I playfully nudge him with my shoulder. “Turns out, all you had to do was ask.”
“I think Jen and Ken would’ve had something to say if I’d convinced their not-even-eighteen-year-old daughter to run off to Nashville with me.”
“Probably would’ve turned you in for kidnapping,” I joke.
His eyes widen at the thought. “Is that a thing? If they’re seventeen? Is it still kidnapping?”
I snort. “I have no idea. But calling the cops would not have been Jen Harper’s move. That woman would’ve sniffed out my location, driven down there herself, and spent the next six months lecturing me on my behavior. After giving me a hug and telling me how much she missed me.”
“And to think, all my dad did was confirm I was alive through my cell phone and debit card usage.”
I lay my head on his shoulder, trying to provide the comfort I know he needs now that he’s been forced to rethink his history with his dad. I think it was easier for him when all he felt was anger and resentment. Sadness and regret are much heavier to carry.
“I think,” I start tentatively, “it might’ve been the only way he knew how to support you and your dreams. Letting you go.”
“It’s…hard, having to reconcile his version of the past with the one I’ve let fuel my anger for so long.”
He pauses, staring at our intertwined hands. “And not being able to apologize for my part of it.”
“I think he forgave you a long time ago, Jax. He’d just be happy you finally forgave him.”
“And that I found my way back to you,” Jaxon says, giving me a light kiss on the forehead.
“I am pretty exceptional,” I tease.
Jaxon laughs. “The most exceptional.”
“I can agree to that,” I say, snuggling into his side once more.
We land in Nashville late in the morning, and within the hour, I’m standing in a studio that smells like coffee and pressure and something electric in the air. It’s not the cozy vibe of Jaxon’s at-home recording studio—it’s all glass and angles and a quiet buzz of importance, with sound engineers, producers, and assistants moving like they’ve been doing this their whole lives.
Which, maybe they have.
