I tried to speak, tried to cry for help to get me off of this plane, but all that fell in between us were tears. Fuck, I was crying.
Honey eyes curved in, following the tears down my face. I went to swipe them away when stiff restraint dug into my wrist. Metal shackles clung around my hands, and I tugged and I tugged as desperation spurred.
I could feel my eyes rounding and watery on Agent Reyes as I jerked my head back up. Breaths were toppling on one another and never releasing. Just building and growing knotted in my chest as panic rolled rivers down my cheeks.
Agent Reyes just stood there, arms hanging at his sides as he regarded me. My terror. My tears. My hyperventilating that was chasing away at an impossible speed.
Broken whispers of words were all I could manage. “What di-did you do?”
Each soft noise cracked the marble of Agent Reyes face into spidered horror as he realized. As he realized exactly what he’d done to me.
The magnitude of where he’d taken me swallowed me up in a hole, pitch black and the walls smooth. So smooth, there was nothing to grab onto, nothing to anchor myself to to haul my way out. Another rumble beneath my seat jostled me off of solid ground, and a yelp pinched in my throat.
“Hey.” Hands and a voice that was meant to comfort draped over me, wanting to reel me back in before I caused a scene. Agent Reyes sat in the seat next to me, trying to catch my wild eyes in his. “We’re only about an hour away from Dallas. We make it there, we get on a connecting flight to Virginia, and then it’s over, okay?”
Connecting flight?
“No, no,” I pushed, my tone wobbling. “I need to get off. Get me off now.”
“Scarlett, we can’t—”
“Get me off of this fucking plane right now!” I screamed, bolts on my volume snapping free. “Off! Get me off!”
Gentle shushing scratched my ears as anything but. Agent Reyes shifted from his seat to crouch in front of me, weaving my fingers with his unexpectedly.
“I know you’re scared of flying, but we’re fine. We’re just fine. Nothing is going to happen to us up here, I swear.”
“I can’t be here.” I gasped, air lodging a painful bubble in my throat. “I can’t-I can’t. Please. Please!”
I didn’t beg anyone for anything, but I was begging him for this. I’d crawl on my hands and knees in front of him and grovel until my throat was hoarse if it got me off this plane.
“Just one more hour. You can do it.” Reyes rubbed his thumb across my knuckles in soft encouragement as I cried.
“I can’t,” I wept, far-gone and lost from myself. “Please. I know you hate me, but please! Get me out of here.”
Through water petals blooming in my eyes, a blurry shift occurred in Agent Reyes’ expression. His worry lines slacked on his forehead, and his mouth parted into a perfect upside down crescent.
“I don’t hate you,” he spoke softly.
“The only reason you’d do this to me is if you h-ha-hated me.” Fuck, my breathing. I couldn’t control it. My head hit the headrest of the seat as I struggled to fight down sweet oxygen. The pressure outside the walls of the plane was on my chest, stabbing my lungs. Stars of black began to fade in around my vision.
“No, I just know that we’ll be fine—”
“You don’t know that!” I cut him off, watching his emotions exchange between concern as I wheezed and surprised as I fucking lost it. “You’re lying. You’re a liar!”
“Scarlett, breathe.”
“J-Jonathan wasn’t fine! He was—” I gaped, the searing fire snuffing out my last gobs of oxygen. “Jonathan.”
My voice crushed his name against my teeth, chewing on the rancid taste of his demise at my hands. My selfish, stupid hands.
“Who’s Jonathan?” Agent Reyes pushed his voice, and pushed me right off the fucking edge, the panic attack swooping me up in its arms and smothering into its chest of black smoke and punishment.
I choked on the lack of air, the burn peeling down my throat as the word “brother” strangled out of me.
The word digested through Agent Reyes' brain, his stare locked to mine as slow realization lifted his browline. The pieces fell together, the puzzle of my fear of planes solved on a surface level. Marigold eyes jumped back and forth between mine as immediate guilt splashed clear across his face.
Beads of cold sweat sprouted in my hairline as my lungs screamed for relief, and with no voice to beg, I pleaded my eyes with Reyes’ to help.