His eyes finally opened, and he nodded. “Yeah. I’m just not a fan of takeoffs and landings.”
“Yeah, I can understand that. Has it always been that way?”
He shook his head, focused on the space directly ahead of us. “I was flying with my mom once when an engine caught fire.”
“Oh. That must have been terrifying. How old were you?”
“Nine. And yeah, it was scary, but I knew she’d keep me safe.” A slight smile touched his lips.
“Did she hold your hand?” I tried to imagine a little Paxton, without tattoos, slightly needy.
“Hell no. She had both hands on the controls.”
“She was the pilot,” I guessed.
He nodded. “She’s always had one foot on the ground and the other climbing for the sky.”
She sounded just like her son. “So have you been nervous ever since then?”
He shrugged. “It’s gotten a lot better. For the first years after it was hard to get in a plane, but I managed. What about you?”
“Oddly enough, flying doesn’t bother me.” I reached for the Visit Istanbul pamphlet in the pocket in front of us and started to flip through.
“No, I meant with cars?”
My fingers locked on the page showing the Cistern, my stomach dropping thousands of feet to the earth below. He didn’t mean it. He’s talking about something else.
I gave him a sideways glance and saw his eyes blown wide, then squeezing shut with a long breath.
He fucking knew.
I might as well have been sitting there naked with how exposed I felt. Even his inappropriate little comment earlier hadn’t done this to me. My hands shook, but I turned the page, looking over the intricate details of the Blue Mosque. “How long have you known?” I asked, my voice a hell of a lot calmer than I was right now.
“Known what?” he tried.
“Cut the bullshit.”
“Last night.” He looked at me, but I stayed locked in my safe little booklet.
“Well then, you certainly can’t keep a secret for long, can you?” I flipped another page. Why the hell were we on a plane? My knee started to bounce with restless energy, with the need to get away from him. Every single seat on this plane was taken, so it was either sit here or parachute.
“I didn’t mean to say anything. It just slipped.” He reached for my hand, and I jerked farther toward the window. Parachuting looks like a great option.
“Like your fingers slipped on the keyboard while you googled me?” I threw back.
His eyes closed briefly. “No, I deliberately did that.”
No apology. What a first-class asshole. “Is this because I googled you?”
“No. God, no, Leah. I wanted to know how to help you, and I couldn’t do that without knowing what you’d gone through. It was obvious that you’d had some kind of trauma.”
My head snapped like he’d struck me. I wasn’t proud of much, but I’d done a damn good job of recovering. Or at least faking it. “I told you that I wasn’t ready to talk about it, that I wasn’t your project to fix. When the hell did you find time last night to invade my privacy?”
“It’s on the internet. Not exactly private,” he pleaded for understanding.
Fuck. That. “When?”
“While you were in the shower. Please look at me.”
I snapped the booklet closed and looked at him, only to immediately look away. Those eyes of his were an unfair advantage in an argument. Wait. In the shower…before. Oh God. I flicked the booklet back open and let anger take the place of mortification. “So was that a pity orgasm last night? Or were you just hoping to see if I’d show you where the damage is?”
Paxton’s mouth dropped open before he snapped it shut, mirroring the guy across the aisle. “Eyes forward,” his wife ordered him in English. Good woman.
“Hey,” Paxton said, his voice deceptively soft. “What happened last night was because I wanted you, plain and simple.”
“Right, and that’s why you didn’t fuck me when I asked you to, right? Because you wanted me soooo badly,” I sang. God, I was going to throw up, or throw something at him. Either choice was reasonable.
The guy across the aisle started to whistle.
“Fuck,” Paxton muttered under his breath before raking his hands over his hair. “You have no idea how hard it was for me not to—”
“Oh, I remember how hard it was. I was there.”
Now the guy behind us started coughing.
“Leah.”
“Oh, don’t worry. We’ll never see these people again, right?” I tore the page I was turning. “Fuck. Well, that’s broken now, so no use trying to read it. Or maybe I should try the next page…you know, to make it feel not so broken.”
“Look, if you want, I’ll take you to the bathroom and show you how badly I want you. You’re right, we won’t see these people again, so I don’t give a fuck if they hear you screaming my name.”
That brought me up short. Everyone could hear us. I lowered my voice to a hiss. “Whatever. So did you get your curiosity appeased? Read the details? The speculation? Of course you did. You all do. Then the questions start.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Go ahead and ask. Let’s get it all done now. After all, your fingers have been inside me, may as well rip apart my head, too.”
I kept rolling, embracing the anger that burned my veins like acid, eating away the glimpse of happiness I’d had in his arms. “You all want to know the same thing. Why was he in such a hurry to get home after our date? Didn’t I ask him to slow down? How long was it before I decided I had to climb out over Brian’s body? Was he still alive when we hit the first time? Why did I unbuckle? Why did I wait so long? How many times did the car fall? Was it hard to use my dead boyfriend as a step stool to get out? How long did I hang there on the cliff face? Did my fingers go numb? Did they bleed? Did I think about letting go? Did I want to die?”