“If she’s sick,” some man boomed, “she should be moved to the back of the plane!”
Like that, Layla’s focus widened again. If she’d managed to lower the temperature of the cabin at all with her care for Willa, it ticked up again in response to this passenger’s belligerence. She could sense bodies shifting in their little luxury pods, the tops of heads rising above curved plastic to peer at the source of the noise. From Layla’s vantage point, she basically only had a clear view of Willa, who’d blanched gray-white again.
“I didn’t pay for a seat up here to get whatever she has!” the man bellowed.
Layla rose to her knees. She put the placid smile back on her face and set a hand on Willa’s forearm.
“You’re okay,” she told the girl, patting softly and nodding at the cup of ginger ale in Willa’s hand. “Have a little more.”
“Don’t go,” said Willa, a note of desperation in her voice.
“I won’t.” Still, she got her feet beneath her, lifted herself enough from her knees to see better.
The voice was so loud because it was only a row behind them—a window seat, opposite side of the plane, and Layla could see Marc leaning down, speaking softly. When he moved slightly, Layla got a look at the owner of the belligerent voice—a florid-faced,mussed-looking older man in a wrinkled, sweat-ringed blue dress shirt. He pointed at Marc accusingly.
“This better not get in the way of deplaning on time,” he shouted.
Someone else—maybe someone at Layla’s back—said the wordAh-merry-kenagain amid a torrent of irritated French, but this time it certainly didn’t sound all that beautiful, and Layla thought that was fair enough.
Beneath her hand, Willa tensed, and Layla patted again.
But it was one ofthosesituations—the kind Layla hated most, a mind-under-matter collapse of a little mob of people at odds. Another passenger turned in her seat to snap at the drunken man, then another flight attendant came over. There was increasing use of the wordsir, a mention of getting the pilot involved. There was pointing and more shouting. Marc and his colleague seemed to lose the battle against this man’s flailing, unfocused rage—now, he was ranting about the growing unavailability of peanuts in public spaces—and Layla felt like she was having that warranty seal from Willa ripped right off. She knew, rationally, that there was no connection to this asshole’s mess and the week she had ahead of her, but it still pressed on everything she wanted to avoid, the exact opposite of all her affirmations.
She felt responsible somehow—the doctor called to settle a situation, and now it had escaped her control. If she could let someone know that Willa was fine, that there was no indication she was contagious, that the whole matter was resolving easily and that there would be no cause for any delays…
“Willa,” she said quietly, leaning down. “I’m going to speak briefly to the flight attendant.”
But before she could, another man stood from his seat.
Also one row back from Willa’s, also along the window, but closer to Layla—directly opposite the shouting. To Layla, he was in profile, facing the disturbance, but…but god, it was a striking profile. Thick black hair pushed back from a face that looked carved from stone—strong brow, sharp nose, full lips set, and a stubbled jaw cutting horizontally across the line of his neck. The hair on his head, on his cheeks, matched the clothes on his lean body—black long-sleeved T-shirt, loose-fitting black pants, a black ball cap fisted in the hand Layla could see.
Her breath caught, her heart thumped. She saw his mouth move, no sound that she could hear, but still, it made her skin prickle with warmth.
Well, it was the circumstances, obviously—this reaction in her, this heat in her. It was the tense scene across the aisle that had started because of poor Willa, and Layla was responsible for Willa, and now this man was part of it, too…
His mouth moved again.
She heard him this time.
“Quiet,” he said. “Be.Quiet.”
It was a white-hot blade, that voice. She couldn’t even say if it was particularly loud, if anyone across the way could actually hear it. But it wascutting. All edge. A voice like his face, like the way he held his body. Angles everywhere.
It worked for a few seconds—slicing right through the man with the red face and the boozy voice, silencing Marc and his stressed-looking colleague, who both stared in shock across the middle seats. If the drunk man’s anger was a thick, cloaking cloud, this man in black’s anger was a lightning bolt.
Bright and electrifying.
“Sir,” Marc finally managed. “You’ll need to return to—”
“If you want off this plane quickly,” the man in black said to the drunkard, as though Marc hadn’t even made an attempt, “you will be quiet. Because if this disturbance carries on, it will be me who needs medical attention, and you’ll be stuck on that runway for however long it takes for me to get it.”
Layla blinked up at him—up, because she now realized she’d somehow sunk back down to her knees—in surprise.
It will be me who needs medical attention.
Sheshouldn’tbe surprised, of course she shouldn’t—she knew sick didn’t always look a certain way. She was just rattled, not thinking straight.
She was shocked through by the big-bang, lightning-bolt effect of him.
