She stopped. Looked at him. He was still holding her hand.
“One minute,” he said quietly. “Just breathe.”
She wanted to argue. Wanted to pull away and prove she was fine and didn’t need anyone to tell her to breathe.
Instead, she breathed.
One breath. Two. Three.
The shaking slowed.
“Okay,” she said.
He let go of her hand.
She smiled at the frazzled gate agent behind the counter. Made a joke about island weather. Asked about hotels and rebooking and all the practical things that needed handling. She was calm and composed and absolutely fine.
She was also lying.
Because she’d held his hand. During the brace position, during the longest forty-five seconds of her life, she’d held Dakota’s hand and told him she was glad she sat next to him.
And meant it.
That was a problem.
Pandemonium swallowed the airport. Stranded passengers crowded every available surface—slumped in chairs, sprawled on the floor, pacing in front of departure boards that all read the same thing: CANCELED.
The smell of wet clothing and stress sweat saturated the cool air. A baby wailed somewhere to her left. A man in a business suit yelled at an airline employee in rapid French.
“Absolute nightmare.”
Jayden turned to find Vic beside her, color slightly better now that he was on solid ground, though his hands still trembled around a paper cup of water.
“I knew this trip was a bad idea.” He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose. “Any idea how to get out of here?”
“Everything’s grounded until the storm passes.” Dakota appeared at her shoulder, his voice solid, steady. Like he hadn’t just survived a near-death experience. Like his pulse was perfectly normal and his thoughts were perfectly ordered and he hadn’t been holding her hand a little while ago. “Could be days if the storm closed the roads.”
“Days?” Vic’s voice pitched upward. “I can’t—I have to be in Sydney by the end of the week. The Singapore office is already breathing down my neck, and if I don’t?—”
“Vic,” Dakota said in a calm-down voice. “There’s nothing any of us can do about the weather. Let’s focus on what we can control.”
The man’s shoulders dropped an inch. “Right. Yes. You’re right.” He took a shaky breath. “Shelter first. Panic later.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Dakota clearly possessed the right skill set for his security role, because she sort of wanted to grab Vic and tell him to put on his big-boy pants, but Dakota just pointed to a nearby chair and sent the man over to it.
And then, of course, all she could think of was Dakota’s hand in hers as her life flashed before her eyes. So maybe she needed to put on her big-girl pants and stop her own spiral.
“I need to get my bag,” she said. “From the cargo hold.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”
Of course he was. Security consultant. He probably had classified materials in his bag too.
They pushed through the crowd together, following signs to baggage claim. The airport was small, overwhelmed, staff running in every direction. Rain hammered the windows in sheets. Through the glass, palm trees bent sideways in the wind.
Chaos consumed the luggage area. Bags were piled everywhere. Passengers dug through the mess. Airline employees shouted instructions that no one heard over the storm. Water covered everything—dripping from the ceiling where the roof leaked, pooling on the floor, soaking the bags that workers had dumped in haphazard piles.
