I flip open my laptop, reminding myself there’s one thing I haven’t looked up yet. If I have be on this flight for the next ten hours, I might as well get some research done. Thank God for inflight wifi.
I type in:Luka Popovich VELVT centerfold.
The second it loads, I make a small, involuntary squeak.
Holy shit. He has an eight-pack.
Not a six. Not even a respectable seven. An actual eight-pack, as if he were carved in a lab. Then I feel it. Movement over my shoulder and the feeling of being watched.
I glance sideways and catch the man to my right staring at my screen… then slowly at me… like I’m streaming porn at thirty thousand feet.
I snap the laptop shut so fast I nearly sprain a finger—my cheeks blaze.
"It’s for research," I sputter out, not making eye contact.
"Right…" he says, and then shifts his body away from me.
I exhale and drop my head back against the headrest, repeating the lie that keeps me moving.
Cab to resort. Resort to bar. Bar to bed. Then flights home, bringing back Luka like a warden and her prisoner. Only, I doubthe’d let me put him in handcuffs to keep him from running again.
We land hours later in a world that looks like it's been personally victimized by the apocalypse.
The snow isn't falling or drifting prettily like it would in a Hallmark movie. It's blowing hard like it's angry, committing assault on every building, vehicle, or inch of earth it can find. Thick white sheets slammed sideways into glass and metal like Mother Nature woke up and chose violence.
This is not Scottsdale-cold.
Or even Seattle-cold.
This is ‘end times’ cold. This is "question every life choice that led me here" cold. This is "no amount of wool or prayer or thermal underwear blessed by old man permafrost" could keep me warm enough to survive.
The departure board is lit up like a Christmas tree with blinking red lights. CANCELLED. CANCELLED. CANCELLED. Every outbound flight from now until forever.
The doors opened and the cold immediately punched me straight in the face. My nose starts running instantly—not delicately, but like a faucet someone forgot to turn off. I can't feel my fingers. Withinseconds, I can't feel my face. I'm convinced I'm going to die in an airport in Switzerland, and they won't even spell my name right on the plaque.
People around me groan, fumbling for jackets they hadn't packed. Unlike the snowboarders dressed like they're about to summit Everest in a Red Bull commercial, practically vibrating with death-wish energy as they treat this blizzard like a personal invitation to their own funeral.
They're reacting like it's Christmas morning, grinning, whooping, slapping each other's backs. While I genuinely cannot feel my face. Not a single functioning brain cell among the entire group. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure I'm developing hypothermia in my cashmere coat that costs more than their collective IQ points.
This blizzard was not on the forecast. It was supposed to hit way higher in the mountains, but the storm changed course as if it had a personal vendetta against me specifically.
It looks less like weather and more like a declaration of war.
I call Molly as I try to move through the crowd. It’s 4pm here, so she should be just getting to work by now. She answers on the second ring. "If this is about the in-flight eight-pack incident, I don’t want to know."
I texted her as soon as I landed about the passenger next to me who wouldn’t make eye contact with me for the rest of the flight.
"It was research," I snap, dodging around a passenger who decided to stop dead in the middle of the walkway to check his phone… Honestly, what is wrong with people? "Listen. It was nice knowing you."
I heard her let out a sigh, the sound of her car door echoing as if she had just got to our office parking garage. "Oh good. We’re dying now?"
"This assignment is going to kill me. I’m standing in what can only be described as a frozen death spiral of atmospheric betrayal."
"You’re in Switzerland."
"I’m in an ice maker the size of a country."
She sighs. "Natalia."
