So I moved his arm from the rest between us, and then pushed up the metal arm and leaned into him, letting my head fall onto his shoulder. “Hey. You know everything is fine, right? I know it’s a little weird being able to hear every tick of the engines, but they’re good. You can even hear that they’re working fine.”
His lips tightened for a moment, pursed as they were in his attempt to shut out the world. Then, he swallowed hard and asked, “How can you tell?”
“I mean, no sputtering,” I offered. Truth was, I had no idea how to tell by sound alone if the engines were working well, but I did suspect that I’d notice if they stopped doing so.
He cracked one eyelid just enough to shoot me a scathing side-eye. “Really.”
“Really. But it’s... look, can you control whether the plane gets us home or not?”
That actually got him engaged in the conversation. “No. That’s the problem. It’s my job. I’m supposed to be in charge, and?—”
“Not of this. You’re not the CEO of the plane, Jax. Not the alpha of the jumbo jet liners or whatever the hell kind of plane this is. I’m sure it’s hard, but you’re not the boss here. You have to just... sit back and trust that the people who are in charge of repairs and flying are doing their jobs right. And if something does go wrong, it’s not your fault.” I leaned in and looked around before whispering, “Plus you’d probably be fine if something did go wrong.”
He blinked his eyes open at that, and turned to look at me, considering. “But I can’t... I can’t swim the whole Pacific Ocean.”
“No, but I could get us across it. So you’d be fine. No matter what.”
He sat back and considered that for a moment, fully distracted as the plane gained the speed necessary to lift off.
Score.
He jerked in surprise a bit when we actually took off, and looked out the window, then back at me. “Sorry. I know, it’s ridiculous, it’s just... we weren’t exactly regular flyers back when we lived in Idaho. I’d never even seen a plane up close in person until we left for college. Even then, I didn’t get on one for years. I don’t like not being in control.”
“Charles drives you around back home,” I pointed out, because frankly, it was still weird to me, having someone else drive us. Charles was great, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to having a driver.
He shrugged. “That’s different. It’s Charles. He’s pack.”
Ahh, because it was someone he knew, it was different. Also, to be fair, a plane was a very different beast from a car. I might not know how either worked, but a car, at least, seemed reasonable and natural to me. A plane? How the helldidthat work?
I’d simply grown up in a family who got on planes and knew they did work, so I’d never questioned it, even though I didn’t know enough about... was it physics? Hell, I didn’t even know which science explained how planes worked.
Good thing I was a mage and not a scientist.
“We just don’t fly much, still,” Jax admitted. “And I don’t like it.”
Which was fair. I didn’t especially love it either, though less for reasons of control than the facts that even the first-class seatswere cramped to spend hours and hours in, the food was sparse and bad, and there wasn’t a whole lot to do unless one brought work. I couldn’t even practice my magic on the plane, since we flew commercial, because rich or not, owning a plane and taking single-person flights across the ocean was nonsense. But that meant we were surrounded by people who didn’t even know magic was real.
Fortunately, talking to Jax was at least as good as practicing my magic, and the rather long flight ended up taking almost no time at all.
Getting out of the airport was always quicker and easier than getting in, so before I knew it, Charles was taking our bags to tuck them into the trunk, and we were sliding into the back of the car.
It was such a relief to be home. For some reason I wanted to fall into our bed and sleep for weeks. Something about not being home was exhausting, even with a rich family and the nicest accommodations Japan had to offer.
Jax pulled out his phone as we got into the car, and that reminded me to take mine off airplane mode, but when I looked back up, he was frowning.
“Something wrong?”
“Message from an old friend. Do you mind if we make a quick stop on the way home?”
It was the absolute last thing I wanted to do, but that look on Jax’s face spelled trouble, and I wasn’t going to insist that my wish to sleep came before pack business, which I assumed this was. I wasn’t sure what else could put that serious expression on his face.
“Of course not,” I promised. “Anything we need to do.”
And that got us at least nearly back to good. He smiled up at me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder, pulling me againsthim. I couldn’t help but worry, though, at the tension that stayed in his shoulders.
What was wrong?
7
