The Strip dropped beneath them, glittering like spilled jewels, then the desert opened up — vast, golden, endless.
“Holy shit!” Pete shouted, pressing her face to the glass. “We’re flying to the Grand Canyon!”
The pilot laughed, angling them toward the horizon. “Ten minutes and you’ll see it.”
Danica groaned, fumbling for the little paper bag tucked into her fanny pack.
Izzy rubbed her back, already laughing. “Don’t puke yet, we’re not even at the good part.”
Maggie forced herself to keep her eyes on Gwen, not thetilt of the world outside. Gwen gave her hand a squeeze — firm, certain — and the panic in her chest loosened, just slightly.
And when she risked a glance outside, just for a second, the desert stretched out forever, the Colorado River carving a glittering line through the canyon, impossibly vast, impossibly beautiful.
Her breath caught for a different reason this time.
The others were pressed to the windows, oohing and aahing, Pete practically climbing over Lillian to point something out, Izzy laughing as Kiera squeaked when the helicopter tilted. Even Danica, pale and clutching her paper bag, cracked a smile when Pete kissed the top of her head through the headset mic.
Maggie couldn’t look. She tried once — caught the flash of the river glinting like a shard of glass far, far below — and her stomach flipped so hard she thought she might join Danica in the barf bag club.
So she anchored herself on Gwen instead.
Her eyes stayed fixed on Gwen’s profile: the clean line of her jaw, the calm set of her mouth, the way the headset sat snug against her hair. Gwen didn’t fidget, didn’t crane to the window, didn’t flinch when the cabin dipped. She just sat steady, her hand still over Maggie’s like she’d decided this was her only job.
Maggie gripped back shamelessly, nails biting into her palm through Gwen’s skin. The rotors thundered overhead, the canyon unfurling around them, but Gwen’s touch steadied her through it.
It was infuriating, how composed she was. Infuriating and unbearably comforting.
Maggie felt her chest squeeze, not from fear this time but from the sheer force of memory — every time Gwen had steadied her before. In hospital rooms. In principals’ offices.At funerals. Always with that same maddening calm, as if she could carry Maggie’s fear and her own at the same time.
Her throat tightened. She should look out the window, take in the view everyone was gasping over, but she couldn’t. She let her eyes drift down Gwen’s jaw, her neck, the bare skin of her arm. All things Maggie had memorized over the years, could draw from memory alone. Technically, she’d been the one to draw the first draft of the tattoo on her arm. It suited her. Of course it did.
The window, the symmetry, the way the vines crept up like they were daring the stone to stay still—it was so Gwen. Precision wrapped in wildness. Maggie traced the air above it with her eyes, half expecting her fingertip to catch on a carved edge.
It looked like something sacred and unfinished at the same time. A cathedral mid-restoration. A space that used to reflect the beauty of the world and was learning how to hold light again.
And maybe that was why it undid her a little. Because Gwen didn’t need a tattoo to say who she was, but somehow this one did anyway.
“Still okay?” Gwen asked, her voice tinny through the headset but low enough that it felt private.
Maggie swallowed hard and nodded, her voice gone.
Gwen smiled — not big, not showy, just the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth, like she’d heard the answer anyway.
So Maggie kept her gaze there, clinging to it, riding out the roar of the rotors and the sweep of the canyon with only Gwen’s steadiness holding her together.
The helicopter tilted slightly, dipping toward the canyon rim, and Maggie squeezed her eyes shut.
Through the headset, Gwen’s voice came, a steadiness Maggie could lean on. “I’ve got you. Take a look, or you’ll regret it.”
Maggie forced her eyes toward the window, just for a second. The world dropped away into a vast, impossible chasm — layers of red and gold carved by centuries, the river weaving like a snake at the bottom. The sheer scale of it made her stomach lurch.
She sucked in a breath, then immediately buried her face in Gwen’s shoulder, shutting it all out. “I’m fine right here,” she muttered, her words muffled against the fabric of Gwen’s shirt.
Gwen chuckled, low and warm, the sound vibrating through Maggie’s cheek. Her hand squeezed Maggie’s once, sure and certain.
Maggie let herself stay there, pressed against Gwen, heart hammering too fast to be fear alone.
The rotors droned steadily, the canyon unfurling endlessly below. Maggie kept her face tucked into Gwen’s shoulder, breathing shallow, when a rustle caught her ear.
