Chapter 5
Lucia
I don’t sleep.I close my eyes and tell myself I will, because that’s what people do on red-eye flights. Because my body is wrecked and my muscles ache and my head feels stuffed with cotton. I even tilt my seat back the smallest, most polite amount.
My mind ignores the instructions. Every time I get close to drifting, Marco’s face slides back into focus like it’s been waiting just beneath the surface. The way his jaw looked right before he shoved me. The sound of porcelain breaking. The weight of his hand on my wrist, the pressure just shy of breaking skin, chosen precisely because it wouldn’t leave the wrong kind of mark.
I swallow and open my eyes again. The cabin lights are dimmed, the kind of soft blue meant to trick your body into rest. Most of business class is quiet now despite the drama from earlier. A handful of passengers are cocooned under blankets, screens dark or glowing faintly. The engines hum in a steady, almost soothing way, like the plane is breathing for all of us.
Beside me, the stranger is awake. I don’t look at him directly at first. I feel him the way I felt him before. Present, contained, a steady weight in the seat next to mine. His book is open again, the same page he’s been on for… I glance at the seatback clock, then force my eyes away before I look too obvious.
Twenty minutes.
He hasn’t turned it once.
My chest loosens, just a little, at that realization. Not because it’s funny—though it is, faintly—but because it tells me something important. He isn’t restless. He isn’t simmering. He isn’t wound tight, waiting for an excuse to snap.
Marco used to pretend to read like that when he was high. Staring at the same paragraph while his leg bounced and his fingers drummed and his jaw worked like he was chewing through his own anger. A coiled thing. Violence compressed so tightly, it had nowhere to go except outward.
This man’s stillness is different. Intentional. Chosen. Like he knows exactly how much space his body takes up and has decided not to take any more than necessary.
I shift slightly, easing the blanket higher over my legs, and the movement catches his attention. His gaze flicks toward me and away again, quick and unobtrusive, like he’s checking that I’m still okay without making a production of it.
I hate how much that matters.
I stare at the dark oval of the window, watching the faint reflection of the cabin lights slide across it as we move. Somewhere out there is nothing but night and air and distance. Somewhere below us is a city I’m not in anymore. An apartment with shattered porcelain in the sink and a cabinet door hanging crooked, a lemon that rolled slowly across marble.
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth until the image dulls. Out of the corner of my eye, I see his hand move. It’s subtle. A small, unconscious gesture. His fingers lift and brush the place just behind his ear, not scratching exactly, more like checking something is still there. The motion is quick, absentminded, and then his hand drops back to the book like nothing happened.
I blink. My brain latches onto it immediately, cataloging it the way it catalogs exits and expressions and changes in tone. A tell. Not a dangerous one. Not the kind Marco had, where I learned to measure how long he rubbed his jaw or how fast he paced to predict how bad it would get.
This is… human. Thoughtful. Like a man who gets caught thinking and doesn’t bother hiding it.
The realization lands quietly and somehow still knocks the breath out of me. I feel safer next to this stranger than I ever felt in Marco’s bed.
The thought is so sudden, so stark, that I almost laugh… and then almost cry. I don’t do either. I just sit there, heart knocking against my ribs, trying to understand how something so simple can feel so enormous.
Marco’s bed was familiar. It was warm. It was supposed to be safe by default, because it was mine, because he said it was, because I told myself that being wanted meant being protected.
This… this is nothing. Two people in adjacent seats, separated by an armrest and a lifetime of things we haven’t said. And yet my shoulders aren’t crawling toward my ears. My breath isn’t shallow in the same frantic way. I’m alert, yes, but not braced.
The difference matters. It scares me how much it matters.
I shift again, trying to get comfortable without drawing attention, and this time the movement earns me more than a glance. He closes the book just enough to mark his place with a finger, then turns toward me fully.
“Running to,” he says quietly, “or running from?”
The words land like a dropped glass. For a split second, my body goes cold. Every instinct I have screams deflect. Joke it off. Lie. Say something vague and harmless and untrue enough that it won’t cost me anything.
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. I stare at him, frozen, my heart slamming so hard, I’m sure he can hear it. The question wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t prying. It was asked the way you ask something you’re genuinely curious about, something you’re prepared not to be answered.
That somehow makes it worse.
I could sayto. I could say a break, or a fresh start, or nowhere in particular. All the phrases people use to dress up escape as adventure. Instead, I hear myself answer honestly.
“From.”
The word is bare. Undecorated. It hangs between us, fragile and real.
