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I’m already packing up when I wink at her. “I have a solution for that.”
“What?” She looks dubious.
I’m already heading for the door, waving for her to follow.
“You don’t get airsick, do you?”
20
ISABELLA
The roof of the King Corp building is a different world. Up here, the wind feels like a living thing, whipping my hair into a dark static mess and tugging at the hem of my skirt. The sun sinks lower toward the horizon, the water around Manhattan turning to molten gold.
I stand by the door, staring at the sleek black helicopter waiting on the helipad in front of me.
My laugh has a frantic edge. Of course, that’s how we’ll be missing the traffic. We’re taking a freaking helicopter.
As I watch, the rotors begin to turn, a low thrum-thrum-thrum that vibrates through me. Sebastian’s shirt whips tightly against his torso, as he looks back and shouts over the noise. “Are you coming?”
Despite my reservations, my feet propel me forward, and I duck as I follow Sebastian into the cabin.
“A helicopter, Sebastian? Seriously?” I say as I fall into my seat in the plush, bespoke cabin that screams wealth and power. “You’re going full billionaire today, huh?”
“It beats the Long Island Expressway.” His grin is boyish, as though he’s having fun showing off one of his toys to me.
As he reaches to close the door, a spark of anxiety and the feeling of being trapped spikes through my blood. What am I doing? I’m in a helicopter with my client, a man whose wealth becomes more obvious by the hour, a client who has sparked something in me that I don’t want to examine further.
But being in a beach house with him, just the two of us, is going to give me plenty of time to examine everything.
The fear is sharp and overwhelming. I feel panic rising in me.
The heavy door slides shut, locking us in securely. As the helicopter lifts off with a stomach-flipping lurch, the noise of the rotors muffled by high-tech noise-canceling headsets, Sebastian reaches out to me. My hand slides into his, his warmth anchoring me in just the way I need.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his eyes searching my face. “You look a little pale. I thought you said you don’t have motion sickness?”
“I’m fine,” I reply, holding his hand more tightly as my anxiety begins to fade.
I look out the window as the city shrinks, watching the grid of Manhattan turn into a jewelry box of colors and lights. It’s beautiful, and entirely different than looking out the window of an airplane. I’ve spent my whole life looking up from the sidewalk, and now I’m looking down from the sky above it.
We leave the city behind, following the jagged coastline of Long Island. I’ve never seen our slice of the world like this. Below us, the Atlantic crashes against the shore in white ribbons of foam. The green of the coast is vivid, the beaches appearing and disappearing, sometimes full of beachgoers, occasionally empty and remote.
I tuck one leg under the other, my knee inches from Sebastian’s, and press my hands against the window, like a kid in a candy store. “It’s so beautiful.”
The back of my neck prickles. I look over my shoulder to find Sebastian watching me.
“Sebastian?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re staring.”
“I know. I like the way you’re taking everything in. I guess I’ve gotten used to it, but I like the way it looks through your eyes.”
The pilot is just in front of us, but somehow, it feels intimate. No assistants, no siblings, no reporters. It’s just the two of us, suspended in a bubble of glass and steel above the world. I can’t look away, neither does Sebastian. It feels like our usual filters have been stripped away, no matter how professional we both promised to be back in his office.
And then he says something I never expected in a million years: “Right now, Isabella, you’re the only thing that feels real.”
He leans in just a fraction of an inch, his gaze dropping to my mouth before snapping back to my eyes. The tension is a physical cord between us, vibrating with every pulse of the rotors.
