With each call he makes, he gets angrier and angrier. His tie is loosened, and the collar of his shirt falls away from his neck, revealing a tiny triangle of skin. His hands clench and unclench again and again, forming fists and unfurling, his knuckles white.
“Someone needs to get meoffthis fucking plane,” he says, at one point, before pausing and listening. “The morning isn’t soon enough. See if you can find someone else—I don’t fucking care if we have to use a chainsaw to get through the shell.”
With that, his phone must die, because he drops it into the seat like a rock and turns, going back to the door.
It’s at this moment that I realize, with a start, what this entire situation reminds me of.
“Uh, Dane?” I ask, shifting against the leather seat. He turns, blinking at me like he’s only just now remembered I’m in the plane with him. “Would you mind if we sat in the back together?”
He’s still staring at me, a slightly vacant look in his eyes, so I just gather our things and move to the very rear of the plane.
Slowly, Dane moves in my direction.
Then he’s sitting next to me, and I reach over, taking his hand in mine. It’s large and warm, weathered but not wrinkled. There are fine, dark hairs up along his knuckles, and it feels intimate to look at them.
It’s intimate to hold his hand, and it’s making my heart sputter, but I try to tell myself that this is just what a good assistant would do. That he comforted me earlier, when the plane was getting tossed around in the air, so it only makes sense for me to offer that back to him.
He said it himself—it’s my job to make his life easier.
And holding his hand will help to ground him, to distract him from what he’s feeling. The pacing, the anger, the agitation… I recognize all this from my brother Thomas. He first discovered he was claustrophobic when we took a trip to the Mark Twain caves, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.
“I lied to you, earlier,” I admit, and when his gaze snaps to me, I know I’m going down the right path, trying to talk about something that will take his mind off the little tin can we’re currently stuck inside. “About why I took this job.”
He shifts, turning toward me, not pulling his hand away, clearly interested. “Why?”
“Because the real reason is just that…” I suck in a breath, let it out, and meet his eyes. There was a time, not so recently, that I couldn’t even think about this without getting all tangled up in tears and grief. Now, I choke out the words, but manage, “My best friend, Frankie, was a super adventurous person. She’s the reason I didanythingin college, and she died right after our graduation. I went home and wallowed in my grief, going through the motions. Then I had a dream that she was furious at me for it,” I stop, letting out a little laugh at the memory of Frankie, chewing me out from beyond the grave.
“She was angry that I was wasting my life. So, I told my parents I had an internship in NYC and that I was going to live with my aunt. When I got here, I needed something credible to justify not being home. Plus, I needed money. So Aunt Ruby started putting out feelers for a job, and Ember came up through Julian.”
His brows knit together, eyes skipping over my face. “You’re twenty-five, though, right?”
“It’s not…” I let out a sigh and shake my head. “It’s not like that, where I’m from. Family comes first, and it’s always just been assumed that we’d all be living in Lancaster. My family takes up half the street. Leaving is like—well, it’s like saying you don’t want them. It’s not acceptable. Aunt Ruby is the only one I know who’s ever left, and they talk about her like she joined some kind of Satanic cult.”
Dane hums, turns my hand over in his, and starts tracing his finger along the back of it. A shiver starts at the base of my neck and turns to a full-body shudder about halfway down my spine. It feels too good. I hold completely, totally still, like I might spook him away if I make him realize what he’s doing.
“What’s your passion, then?” His gaze settles on me like a lie detector test.
“Painting,” I say, a weight lifting from my chest, relief from telling the truth. “My art.”
“Painting,” he says, slowly. “Your art. So, you applied for this job because you… needed a job. Not because you’re passionate about the product?”
My face flushes instantly at the memory of that first night using an Ember toy. Since then, I’ve madeverygood use of them. And, horrifyingly, I’ve thought of Dane every time.
And sometimes, notjustDane.
He hums again at the look on my face, and I feel the vibration through his hand. “So, youarepassionate about the product…”
“I’m going to do a good job for you, Dane.” How it comes out is not how I mean it, but now that it’s hanging in the air, I’m not going to try to take it back.
His eyes flick to mine and hold, and I swear I can feel my pulse in every corner of my body. “Oh, are you?”
I let out a squeak, convinced my body has been reduced to a handful of nerves that are all twitching, pleading for the tension to break, for something to happen.
But Dane holds perfectly still, like always. His dark eyes are on me, watching. He is, apparently, waiting for me to make a move. More than anything, I want him to be the first to shift, to lunge forward and kiss me, to slide his hand up my arm, or down my thigh—anything.
He doesn’t. Just watches me, carefully, like he’s making it perfectly clear that if I want something to happen,I’mgoing to have to make the first move.
Here goes nothing.
