“I need you to find out where she’s flying to and what airline she’s on.”
“Jeremy—”
“Please, Sloane.”
“Give me five minutes.”
I merge onto the highway, my knuckles white against the steering wheel. DIA is thirty minutes if traffic cooperates, which it never does on this stretch of I-25. I’m prepared to test both the limits of Colorado’s speeding laws and my lawyer’s patience.
Avah believes she has to shrink herself to protect the people around her. That her love comes with a price tag, and eventually, the bill will be too high for anyone to pay. She’s been taught that by a father who used her, a mother who fled rather than protect her, and a man who raised his hands to her and called it love.
I’m done letting her believe it.
I’m not fool enough to think I can erase what they did. And I finally understand that neither money nor power gives me the right to try to bulldoze my way through her life. But I know what it’s like to build a kingdom out of loneliness and call it success. I believed that was enough.
Then Avah walked in with her sassy mouth and guarded heart,refusing to be impressed by the lonely fortress I call a life. She turned me inside out.
I don’t care about her past. Not when she’s so clearly the only future I can imagine.
My phone starts blaring my sister’s custom ringtone: “The Imperial March” fromStar Wars.
“Did you get it?” I ask, answering the call hands-free.
“Yes, but I don’t think she’d want me to tell you.”
“Sloane.”
“You better not fuck this up, bro.”
“I’m not going to fuck it up, sis.” I drag in a breath. “I’m bringing our girl home.”
30
AVAH
I wedge myself into 34A,the last row before the lavatory. This plane feels more like a sauna with wings. The tarmac shimmers with heat, so I lower the plastic window shade and press my head against it.
At least I have the window seat. Can’t cry about that.
I’ve already cried once today, sitting in Mariel Johnson’s living room like a schoolgirl in the confessional, spilling secrets I’ve guarded for most of my adult life. She handed me a tissue, willing to listen without interrupting, and when I finished, she looked at me with an expression so gentle, I almost lost it again.
I’ve spent years constructing an identity around being tough enough to never need anyone’s pity, and it took about three minutes of truth-telling for the facade to crumble.
I don’t need a mile-high repeat performance.
The aisle seat fills first. A large man in a Rockies T-shirt drops into 34C, and immediately the manspreading begins. His knees splay wide, claiming the empty middle seat, and sweat glistens along his temple. I hope he’s not a talker.
“You want some beef jerky?” He waggles the bag toward me.The smell mingles with the recycled cabin air and the close press of too many bodies in too small a space, and my stomach lurches.
I shake my head. “Thanks, but I’m good.”
He shrugs and rips off a piece with his teeth.
The cabin door hasn’t shut yet because of a delay at the front of the plane. I could get off. I press my nails into the fleshy part of my palms, like the bite of pain will keep me rooted in place.
Please don’t let this delay last much longer. Not when every minute I spend on the ground in Colorado is another minute I might change my mind, go running back to a man I don’t deserve, and beg him to fix everything.
I don’t even know if my mom will appreciate the impromptu visit. The last time I saw Tamara Harris—she changed both our names back to her maiden name after my dad’s conviction, as if you can shed a life like a coat you got tired of wearing—was close to five years ago. I flew down to help her move out of her loser boyfriend’s house and into a cramped studio in a 55-and-over condo complex in the center of Bradenton.
