Ethan is staring at me.
Not at my face. At my hand.
At my belly under it.
His expression changes right in front of me. Shock first. Then confusion.
I lift my hand too late.
“Madam,” Nadine says to Camille, and I have never heard that word sound so cold, “that was not acceptable.”
Camille blinks at her. “I barely touched her.”
“You pushed her,” Nadine says.
Camille’s chin lifts. “She was provoking me.”
I can hardly believe what I’m hearing.
The silence in the hallway stretches, strange and tight, and for one awful second I know exactly what Ethan is thinking. Not the full truth, not yet, but enough. Enough to start pulling at threads I’ve been keeping knotted for months.
And then a voice crashes through the silence.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
10
VIKTOR
Seven Months Ago
She’s laughingat me by the time the plane starts to taxi.
Not openly. Not cruelly. Just with that warm, unwilling amusement of a woman who didn’t expect to enjoy herself and now clearly resents the fact that she is.
“I still think this is ridiculous,” she says, settling into the seat with far more care than most people would admit to.
“What is?”
“You deciding I’m staying here.”
“Because the universe intervened.”
That gets me a look.
“You actually believe that line works on women?”
“I’ve never needed it to.”
She laughs then, a real laugh this time, and I feel the small, private satisfaction of having earned it.
She’s nervous. That much is obvious. She hides it decently, but I see it in the way she keeps adjusting the seat belt, in the extra attention she gives every sound the plane makes, in how often her fingers return to the water bottle in her lap as if checking it’s still there.
I let the banter carry us through takeoff because it keeps her breathing evenly.
For a while, it works. Then the plane begins to climb in earnest, banking through a patch of rough air, and I see the change come over her face all at once. The color goes out of it. Her hand tightens around the armrest. Her shoulders lock. She looks straight ahead with that awful, fixed concentration people get when they’re trying not to panic and only making it worse.
“Sienna.”
