ADRIK
“Are you gonna carry me everywhere?” Isabella asks.
“Not everywhere. Just to the barn.” I gesture towards the large building ahead of us.
“This place is huge,” Emery says. She’s huffing and puffing out of breath next to me, doing her best to keep up with my pace. “Do you have, like, a rocket launching pad out here somewhere, too?”
I shrug. “I’ll let that be a mystery.”
“Add it to the freaking list,” she mutters under her breath.
I ignore her and shift Isabella to one arm so I can open the barn door. I’m only halfway done, the right door thrown open, when Emery slips inside. Immediately, she gasps. “What is this?”
I throw the other door open and follow her inside. “What does it look like? It’s a plane.”
The sleek single engine Cessna is perched in the center of the private hangar. Sasha keeps it well-tended, even though I rarely use it.
“I’m not stupid; I know it’s a plane,” Emery snaps.
“Then why did you ask?”
Isabella is staring up at the red wing hanging over us, jaw open to the floor. “Is this yours?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” I open the door and show her the interior. “Do you want to sit in it?”
“Yes!” she shrieks.
I climb up the metal steps and shift Isabella into the back seat of the plane. When she’s situated, she turns to me, her eyes as wide as I’ve ever seen them.
“Are we taking a ride?”
“Do you want to?” I slide her arms through the straps and tighten the buckle around her chest.
“Yes!” she squeals. “Yes, please. I’ve never been in a plane. I’ve never been anywhere. I want to go. Where are we going?”
She rapid-fires more questions far too fast for me to reply, but she’s so busy looking around at everything that she doesn’t seem especially concerned about my answers.
The interior of the plane darkens. Emery’s scent follows. I wince when it hits my senses. That shit does something to me. Even now, I can’t fully explain it.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“We’re taking a ride!” Isabella shouts. Then she frowns. “Who is going to drive the plane?”
I tug on her strap to make sure it’s tight and then move to the cockpit. “You don’t drive a plane; you fly it.”
She huffs, frustrated with my answer. Like mother, like daughter. “Who is going to fly the plane?”
I reach over and sweep Emery up around the waist. It’s so seamless that she doesn’t even have time to react before I’m buckling her into her seat, as well.
Then, when both of the Montague women are strapped where they can’t move—thank God for small favors—I take my own seat up front.
“I am.”
“What?” Emery gasps, swatting at my hands. “You can’t—Can you even fly a plane? Is this safe? I’m not sure you can handle—”
I twist around, lunge backwards, and plant my hands on the seat on either side of her head. Her shirt is cut low, teasing the soft swell of her breasts.
Emery catches her breath, the words dying on her lips.
I lean in and whisper, “I can handle anything.”
Her eyes darken. Her pupils dilate. I smooth my hands over the straps, dragging my fingers across her skin again. Goosebumps bloom up and down her arms. I smirk at how easy it is to make the little kiska blush for me.
“The real question is whether you can handle it.”
She swallows. “I can handle it. I’m not scared… of flying.”
“And what about me, Emery? Are you scared of me?” I whisper.
Slowly, she raises her hand. Her fingers whisper across mine, dragging down the back of my hand and across my wrist. With her eyes locked on mine, she nods.
I nod back. “Good girl.”
“I’m not scared of flying, either!” Isabella chimes in from the backseat.
Just like that, the moment of impossibly taut tension shatters.
Emery lets loose the breath she’s been holding, I reluctantly peel my hands away from her, and we both separate. Probably for the best.
“Prepare for takeoff,” I mutter.
Emery squeezes her eyes closed. As I navigate out of the private hangar and onto the half-mile long runway we cleared through the trees, I think I hear her mumbling a prayer under her breath.
* * *
Getting off the ground and clearing the trees might have taken a few years off of Emery’s life, but now that we’re in the sky, she’s exuberant.
It’s the happiest I’ve seen her in… ever. Her smile is huge, infectious. The only thing that can rival it is the mirror image on Isabella’s face.
Behind me, she’s straining to get a better view out of the window.
“Doing okay back there?” I call to her.
“This is so cool!” she yells. It’s all she’s said for the last twenty minutes.
Emery laughs. “I think she’s doing more than okay.”
“And you?”
She chews on her lower lip and then nods. “Yeah. I’m… I’m good.”
I arch a brow. “Just good?”
She turns to look through her window, studying the skyline off to the right. The landscape bleeds and blends together, an endless sea of green churning beneath us.
Finally, she turns back to me. Chin high and proud. “I’m great.”
“Not worried we’ll all die in a fiery crash?”
She narrows her eyes at me for a moment and then shakes her head. “As crazy as it sounds, I… trust you.”
I’m silent for a moment, looking at her. She means it. She truly means it. She still has fear swimming in her irises—maybe that’ll never go away—but beneath that is trust.
I never thought I’d see the fucking day.
“Why did you do this?” she asks, blinking to break the intense eye contact.
I turn back to the controls. “Because I wanted to.”
“You know what I mean,” she sighs. “You said this was a mission?”
I nod. “I wanted to make an aerial survey of the property. Make sure Yasha and whoever he’s working with aren’t camping out nearby or closing in on us.”
Emery leans towards the window with a renewed urgency. “Are they?”
“Not that I can see,” I tell her. “We aren’t even over the property anymore. The ‘mission’ was over ten minutes after we took off.”
She leans back in the seat, clearly relieved. “So are we heading back soon?”
I catch a hint of disappointment in her voice. “We don’t have to.”
Her head snaps to me. “What does that mean?”
“It means we have fuel,” I say, pointing to the dash. “We don’t have to head back yet if you don’t want to.”
“It’s up to me?” she asks, sounding surprised.
I nod. “For once, yes. It’s up to you.”
Slowly, her hand moves to the center console and comes to rest over mine. She draws a circle on the back of my hand with her finger. “Then I don’t want to land yet.”
“We’ll fly until you do.”
“There’s a metaphor in there somewhere,” she mutters to herself. Then she shakes her head, like she doesn’t want to spoil the moment with sarcasm. “Up here… everything feels so far away. Doesn’t it?”
I shrug. “I don’t have anything to be worried about, so I guess I don’t know.”
She looks alarmed. “How can you say that after everything that’s happened today?” she asks. “How can you be so calm?”
I turn and fix her with a solemn look. “Because I already know I’m going to win.”
Emery leans back in the seat and turns away from me toward the window. But she doesn’t pull her hand from mine.
* * *