Holden, a cup of coffee in hand, smiles down at me.
“Miss Walton,” he says, adding a boyish wink.
He hasn’t called me that since our first meeting that day in the lecture hall, and I’m wondering what kind of massive mistake I’ve made on one observation form or another when I realize, with no small degree of horrified embarrassment, that his eyes are resting on the book in my lap. I shove
Unforgettable Love
into my bag. There’s got to be some chance that he hasn’t seen the cover.
His quick, easy grin tells me that I wasn’t fast enough.
I really need to get myself a Kindle.
“I see that you’re planning on doing a lot of studying this trip.”
I scowl. “We all have our guilty little pleasures.”
His eyes gleam with laughter, and I melt. Staying pissed would be a lot easier if he wasn’t so goddamn attractive.
“Journey,” he whispers conspiratorially. “I can’t get enough of Journey.”
That is not even close to a guilty pleasure. Everyone loves Journey. I shake my head in disgust.
“Weak. That doesn’t count.”
“Fine. That was a half-truth, as you call it. It’s
Star Trek,
actually. All of it. The TV shows, the movies, the terrible serialized novels. I even have the action figures.”
I would never have guessed. “Slightly better,” I concede.
He’s forgiven—as if that were ever really in question. I shift my belongings and pat the seat next to me.
“San Francisco, huh?” he says, glancing down at my ticket.
I nod. “You?”
“Yeah. One of my old friends just started a post-doc in China, so I figured I would take advantage of his empty house, maybe see some old friends who are still finishing up their doctorates. I expect lots of talk about dissertations and advisors. Should be fun.”
I grin when I see his eyes roll. “I think my sarcasm just might be rubbing off on you.”
“Let’s hope not.”
I realize then that he didn’t mention Thanksgiving. Family. Turkey dinners and canned cranberry sauce. “Does your family live in San Francisco, too?”
His face darkens precipitously.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked,” I murmur hastily.
“No. No family. You?”
“My parents live there.”
I want to ask about his response to my mention of the f-word, but I don’t. My laundry list of faults, so clearly and concisely laid out by Luke on multiple occasions, don’t normally include prying into other people’s business.
“If I had realized that you were headed to the airport, and to San Francisco, we could have shared a cab here.” He purses his lips and gives me a curious stare. “I thought you were from Madison.”
I panic. Stella Walton is from Madison, Wisconsin. How could I have forgotten?
Before I first got to Greenview, I scoured the internet for pictures of Wisconsin and studied them for hours and days and weeks, under the guise of being able to tell a convincing cover story. It became more than that—I created a whole existence. I lived on a farm outside the city. We owned cows.
I told that story to myself so many times that I could almost believe that it was true.
Stella Walton doesn’t really exist, and Stella Granger is from San Francisco. She’s also the daughter of Holden’s psychology hero, something that became increasingly hard to cover up as the semester went on. He thinks my mother is a genius. He’s read her work so many times that he’s even picked up on the expressions she uses, the only parts of her writing that sound like her.
His little unconscious reminders of her make my heart ache. It’s a big part of the reason why I’ve made it as far as the airport this time, and it’s another debt to Holden that needs to be added to the ledger.
Holden asks again.
“Stella? Your family is in San Francisco?”
“My parents moved,” I mutter.
“Must be a big change from the farm to the Bay area,” he remarks.
The idea of my egghead mother milking cows on a farm makes me laugh out loud.
“Huge change.”
“Still. It’s a great town. I’m sure you really enjoy going back for breaks. Have you seen many of the sights yet, or is this a recent move?”
It’s a scarcely concealed ploy for more information, and it’s obvious that he was listening to my earlier conversation with Izzy. He’s clearly picked up on my uneasiness, and he can’t leave well enough alone. His relentless curiosity is one of traits that I like most about him, but right now, I’m wishing he would take his stupid questions elsewhere.
“Yeah,” I say flatly. “A recent move.”
I wait for the predictable questions. To my surprise, he looks uncomfortable and rushes to fill the silence with uncharacteristic chatter.
“Listen, there are a couple of things I wanted to ask you about the project. I’ll probably shoot you an e-mail once we’re both back on campus, but maybe you could stop by for a quick meeting before finals.”
“Or we could sit together on the plane.”
I don’t even know why I said that. I want to dodge questions, not fall into them. Plus, I’m curious about whether or not Armando and Felicia will ever find true love. I mean, my money’s on yes, but you never know.
However, I’ve been overtaken by the plague of his unfettered inquisitiveness. I want to know why he’s really going to San Francisco, and I’m willing to fend off his attempts to get me to answer that same question.
Unforgettable Love
can wait.
“We could, but then we would have to deal with the aftermath of airplane questions,” he says, with an overdramatic sigh.
I’m confused. “Airplane questions?”
He levies the full power of that amber stare on me. “When you’re on an airplane, you ask yourself questions that you wouldn’t normally even think of. Clinically, it has something to do with the fact that you’re neither here nor there, but somewhere in between reality and the sky. But instead of asking ourselves those things, we’d be asking each other, and I’m not sure if I want you to know the answers to my airplane questions.”
His voice is matter-of-fact, but he punctuates the works with another wink. Underestimation wins again. He’s definitely read my mind. I’m starting to believe that he’s a mutant. Or a superhero. Maybe both.
“I don’t want you to know the answers to my airplane questions, either,” I say finally.
He tilts his head to the side, studying me. “Also, it looks like you might be in first class. That’s too rich for my blood.”
I glance at the ticket. Crap. How had I missed that?
“That’s um...My mother...She’s ridiculous, really, I didn’t even know that...Thousands of dollars for some hot towels. Seriously.”
“You don’t need to apologize, Stella. If you can steal me one of the little bottles of whiskey, I’ll even be grateful. You can deliver it to the back of the plane, because that’s where I’ll be sitting.”
I’m exceedingly curious about these so-called airplane questions, but his face relaxes into a bland mask and I know I’ve missed my chance. An intercom voice drones: “Group 4 boarding to San Francisco.”
Holden slings his bag over his shoulder and grins at me. “You’ll have to regale me with stories of life in the front of the plane sometime. We coach-dwellers live for hot towels.”
He disappears before I can think of an appropriate response. I’m not that eager to join the mad rush, so I sit in the chair, lost in thought, until the line thins out. As it turns out, I’m the last person to get on the plane, which is less than half-full, and kind of a miracle, given that it is Thanksgiving weekend. I glance back and spot Holden sitting in the last row, all by himself, and instead of shoving my bag under the seat, I fling it over my shoulder.
“Hot towel, miss?” the flight attendant asks, holding out silver tongs.
“Um, no. Actually, is it okay if I switch seats?” I ask. “I see a friend back there.”
She gives me a strange look and takes a moment to confer with another flight attendant. I can tell that they’re about to ask questions, but luckily, I spot a muscular guy in army fatigues crammed into one of the seats in the third row of coach.
“If you can, offer him my seat, please,” I tell them, motioning to the guy. Then, I remember something. “I know the answer is probably no, but is there any way I can get a couple bottles of booze for the flight?”
The second flight attendant beams and leans down to whisper something to the man I pointed to, and they both shoot me a grateful look. The first one, whose name is Sarah, at least according to her little gold-plated nametag, gives my cheek an impromptu kiss before disappearing into the galley.
Great. This is not at all what I wanted. It’s not like I’m teaching African orphans here. Nope. Just being a selfish brat. Unwilling to deal with any more cheek kisses or smiles, I start moving towards the back of the plane, but Sarah manages to catch me when I’m about halfway there. She hands me a little basket filled with assorted bottles of liquor.
“You are just the sweetest thing,” she says, grinning. “Sit wherever you like, dear. How patriotic of you.”
She’s gotten the wrong impression. I try to say something to convince her that I’m not exactly the patriot she thinks I am, but it’s already gone too far. The guy in fatigues sends me another appreciative smile and then Sarah is hugging me and I’m stuck in the middle of a commotion I neither want nor deserve. After a few more seconds of humiliation, I manage to make my way to the back of the plane, painfully aware that Holden has been watching the entire scene play out.
“That was generous of you,” he says, moving over to the window seat.
“No. It wasn’t, actually.” I can tell that he isn’t satisfied, so I continue. “I’ve found that people never do things just to be generous. They need to get something out of the deal. When rich people decide to give away a bunch of money, for example, they get their name on a fancy building, or that little warm, fuzzy feeling deep inside, or extra bonus points when they add up their good and evil deeds at the end of the year. Altruism doesn’t exist.”
He sighs. “Spoken like a true cynic.”
I can tell that he’s disappointed in me. This was a really bad idea. There are tons of empty seats. It’s not too late to switch again.
“Yep. That’s me.” I start to reach for my bag, but he places his hand over mine to stop me.
“I don’t think you’re a natural cynic, Stella. You just play one on TV. Whether or not you had ulterior motives, it was a nice thing to do.”
“It’s just a freaking airplane seat,” I mutter.
He glance at the basket of alcohol.
“How about a toast to cynicism?”
“What a good idea.” My voice drips with sarcasm. “Hands off the whiskey. That’s all mine.”
He gives me a bottle and I down it in a single gulp, not bothering to wait for the actual toast. Holden gives me a sidelong glance, but thankfully, he doesn’t offer any fatherly words of wisdom about alcohol consumption.
As the cabin lights dim, the heady rush of booze fills my head. I grip the armrest and eye the basket in his hand again. He takes the empty bottle from my lap and moves the basket to the floor, where it’s out of my reach.
“Don’t tell me that you’re a nervous flyer.”
I’ve never been a nervous flyer. I love flying. I even convinced my dad to let me take flying lessons for my sixteenth birthday. I never managed to get the mythical pilot’s license, mostly because I was too absorbed in the task of getting Luke Dixon to fall hopelessly in love with me, but that’s neither here nor there. Flying is freedom from gravity, from rules, from all of the entanglements that exist in the real world but not in the sky.
I do my best thinking up here. All of my thinking when I can’t get my brain to work properly.
As the plane dips, ice runs up and down my spine. I’m paralyzed, pounding my head against the seat until it all goes away. Too many people. No room to breathe. More screaming and it might be me, but I’m not sure. A pinch to the arm. Sweet blackness.
When I come back to myself, Holden’s voice is faint, as if it’s stretching across a long distance. I force myself to hear. He’s telling me to breathe.
Touch returns first. I can feel my body sitting rigidly in the chair. So, I’m not actually screaming or pounding my head against the seat. That’s something.
“Stella. Breathe. Just breathe,” he says, his fingers attempting to rub the life back into my skin.
I’m shaking too violently to welcome his touch, so I pull my arms closer to myself and take in a shuddering breath as the plane begins to back away from the gate. With that movement, any hope of escape is lost. It’s just me, Holden, a steel cage, and four hours of trying not to lose my mind again. Perfect.
I lunge for another bottle of whiskey, but Holden snatches the basket away before I can reach it.
“I want a drink.”
I’m practically vibrating with need. Surely, he can see that.
“No, you don’t.” His voice is firm. He closes his fingers around mine, lacing our hands together.
“Yes, I do. I’m not an alcoholic, I don’t even drink except on special occasions, and I need a drink right now. So, please hand it over.”
“I am not letting you get drunk before the plane even takes off. You can have another one after we get into the air, Stella, and only if you tell me what just happened right now.”
He places one soft, sure hand on either side of my face. I see only expectation as I stare into the endless pools of amber and honey, and I know immediately that he’s not the least bit surprised by my miniature breakdown.
So, the day of reckoning has finally come. He’s been waiting patiently, like a good little shrink, for me to open up. I’ve underestimated again.
Only a full truth will suffice. He’s earned that much.
“Flashback,” I gulp.
“From a plane?”
“I was on a plane.”
“Was the flashback of a plane ride, or was the flashback from something else?”
I’m expecting a clinical assessment of my particular kind of craziness, shock at the fact that I’ve seemingly lost my mind at the beginning of a four-hour flight, horror that he’s going to have to deal with it, but I see nothing but endless patience and understanding in his beautiful face.
“Both. I was on a plane, having a flashback.”