Something told him that while having definitive results might bring a sense of relief, they might not actually be good news.
Ben hoped that regardless of what they told Amelia, she’d let him be there for her. There was a possibility that she’d withdraw, wanting to handle everything on her own.
She’d already kind of done that when it came to letting her parents know that she was going for testing. It was almost as if she considered what she was dealing with as a failure, something of her making, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Amelia had always been her own harshest critic. She demanded a high level of perfection, especially in her skating. Anything but perfect was a failure in her eyes. It was what had pushed her to train harder. To put in more hours on the ice.
He wished that he could have been there when things had started to fall apart physically for her. If he had been there, maybe it wouldn’t have taken her this long to get the answers she needed in order to move forward.
There was nothing he could do about that now, though.
He stared out the window beyond Amelia, the sky darkening as the sun sank below the horizon.
Amelia slept soundly beside him until the attendant came to let them know they’d be landing shortly.
“Amelia,” Ben said as he shook her shoulder gently. “We’re getting ready to land.”
She blinked at him, then pushed the hair back from her eyes. “Did I fall asleep out here?”
“Yep. Just conked right out,” Ben said as he pressed the button to bring the back of the seat into position. “You missed dinner, I’m afraid. I decided to just let you sleep.”
“That’s fine,” she said as she adjusted herself in the seat. “I think I needed the sleep more than the food.”
“We can grab you something when we get back to Serenity.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I have food at home.”
The plane jerked a bit before settling back into smooth flight. Turbulence had been happening off and on throughout the flight.
Amelia sighed, pressing a hand against her stomach as the plane dropped with another gust of turbulence.
“Has it been like this the whole flight?” she asked.
“A bit,” Ben said. “But this is really nothing. We’ve flown through much worse and survived.”
“I guess I have no choice but to take your word for it.”
“Didn’t you ever run into turbulence when you flew for competitions?”
“Yeah, we did, but never anything really bad.”
“Well, our pilot is great. He’ll get us through this, no problem.”
“Is there a co-pilot too?” Amelia asked, drawing the blanket around her shoulders.
“Yes, there is. He’s good as well, so if something happens to the pilot, he can take over.”
“And if something happens to him?”
“That’s highly—highly—unlikely,” Ben said. “But if something happens to him, I suppose I could take over and get the plane on the ground.”
“Playing around with a flight simulator?”
Ben laughed. “No. Playing around with the real thing.”
Her brows rose. “You took flying lessons?”
“I sure did.”
