CHAPTER1
Kayla
“Ooh,look who’s a lucky passenger today!”
The first-class cabin’s British flight attendant squeezed the top of the empty seat next to mine with a congratulatory wink. “I’d actually pay pounds to trade places with you right now, Ms. Edwards!”
No, you wouldn’t. You so, so wouldn’t.She had no idea why the seat beside mine was paid for but sitting empty. If she did, she’d probably pay poundsnot to beme right now.
I glanced at the pretty gold band on her left hand. Heck, I would probably offerhermoney to trade places right now.
But it wasn’t her fault I was flying alone to Paris on an all-expenses-paid luxury trip meant for two. No need to drag down her mood with the empty seat’s sad backstory.
I opened my mouth to answer her congratulatory wink with a simple (and situation-appropriate) “thanks.”
But before I could get the word out, she waved a hand above her head and called down the aisle, “Right this way, Mr. Atwater! You’re in seat 1B!”
Seat 1B.
Wait. That was the empty seat beside mine!
My heart lurched. I’d thought I was safe!
The seat next to me had remained empty on the first leg of my flight from Los Angeles to London’s Heathrow Airport, thanks to Dwayne’s unclaimed ticket, and the pilot had already made the takeoff announcement—in both French and English.
I figured Tourmaline Airlines must have a policy when it came to passengers who didn’t show up for their first-class flights. I’d even fastened my seatbelt with the assumption that I’d be continuing the trip the way I’d started it. Alone.
But no….
Somebody was headed this way. To sit in the seat I’d so carefully chosen for Dwayne. Back when I thought I’d be flying to Paris as his girlfriend and coming back as his fiancée.
But now, the seat I chose for him groaned under the weight of some stranger.
Don’t cry! Don’t cry!I turned my face to the small window and squeezed my eyes shut. What was that British saying?Stiff upper lip.
Well, I clampedbothof my lips, curling them under my teeth to keep the waterworks at bay. But it didn’t work. Hot droplets of emotion broke free from my closed eyelids and spilled down my cheeks.
Those bitter tears cared not a fig that I was sitting in a luxurious first-class cabin next to a stranger who did not deserve to be stuck with a crying woman on their way to the City of Lights…. Or that Dwayne Thornhill wasn’t worth a single one of my tears.
Hadn’t I been humiliated enough by my NFL player ex?
He wasn’t even that great of a football player—a second-string kicker known more for the showy dance he did on the rare occasion he made a field goal than his actual skills at playing the game.
He hadn’t been that great of a boyfriend, either. Always broke because most of the money he made went to clothes, flashy cars, and going out to places where he’d be seen by the “right people.”
I never did quite figure out who the right people were. Only who they weren’t.
I wasn’t the right people, which is why we could never just stay in and chill with Netflix. The right people also weren’t my family, judging from the way he’d sigh and roll his eyes through my father’s monthly cookouts. And the right people definitely weren’t my boss and best friend, Suzie.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that you spend so much time outside work with your boss, doing single-mom shit when you don’t even got a kid?”
That had been his response when I told him I couldn’t accept his last-minute invite to an award show after-party because I already had plans to attend the City of Lights PTA fundraiser Suzie had spent months planning for her ten-year-old son.
I had told Dwayne about these plans. I even asked him to donate something to the raffle and come with me to the gala. He hadn’t accepted my invite… or donated a single thing to the raffle… or taken it well when I’d chosen the event I’d already committed to over his thing. He'd just sent me another annoyed text:
“K. See ur choosing Suzie over me again.”
He also hadn’t answered any of my texts after that until I told him I’d won the fundraiser’s grand prize—an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris for two! He’d come around then and even hinted that he was working with the team’s PR department to create asuper-special reelfor the L.A. Suns’ social media account.
