Istanbul
“First class?” I asked as we took our seats in the front row of the airplane.
“It’s not hard to do when the plane is this small,” Paxton answered, buckling his seat belt as I did the same.
The plane was tiny, with only about sixteen of us on board. “It’s cozy.”
“It’s a sardine can with propellers,” he muttered, looking past me at the window.
“You don’t like flying,” I said, a smile tugging at my lips.
“Not too fond of it,” he answered, cracking his neck. The lines of his tattoos flexed with the movement.
The middle-aged man across the aisle noticed, too, frowning his disapproval.
“How can you, of all people, not like flying?”
“It’s a control thing. I like having it.”
“I noticed,” I said as the flight attendant raised the door and sealed it for takeoff.
He rolled his eyes but didn’t take the bait. Instead, he let out a huge, jaw-cracking yawn. We’d slept in this morning and barely made the flight, but hey, it wasn’t like we could lose luggage we didn’t have. I fingered the beautiful white skinny jeans that must have set him back a fortune to have delivered, especially with the blue silk top I’d found when we woke up this morning. He’d shrugged and said it was only money, but to me it was so much more.
It was the thought he’d put into it, the fact that he’d cared enough to get the right sizes, that he’d bought me pants instead of shorts or a skirt.
What I wouldn’t give for a short, flirty skirt. Something that swirled a little when I turned, that left my legs bare to the sun.
But bare to his eyes, too.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked as we rolled toward the runway, another yawn distorting his last word.
“That you look awfully tired this morning.”
“That’s because you kept me up all night with your demands,” he answered, closing his eyes and leaning back in his seat.
The gentleman across the aisle sputtered in his coffee.
“I most certainly did not,” I fired back in a stage whisper.
He cracked one eyelid as we barreled down the runway. “I’m sorry, was that not you under me last night? Asking me to put my hands on you, begging me to let you come?”
Now the guy was actually coughing, his wife slapping him on the back.
I glared at Paxton. “Seriously?” Not only was it hugely embarrassing to hear him say that, but I wasn’t comfortable with the way it immediately flipped my sex switch to “go for launch.”
He gave me a hot-as-hell grin as his hand worked its way up my thigh. I promptly returned it to his own lap. “Relax,” he whispered in my ear. “We’ll never see these people again.”
“I’m never going to see you again,” I muttered, flipping open the emergency procedures booklet. What I wouldn’t have given for my Kindle.
Paxton’s grip tightened on the armrest between us. I’d never imagined that he wouldn’t like something as simple as flying, but it was oddly endearing to see one tiny flaw in his impenetrable armor. I covered his hand with mine and gave him a reassuring squeeze as we launched into the air.
His breaths were even and steady, but his eyes stayed closed until we finished our climb to altitude. “You okay?” I asked.
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?”
“Leah!” Paxton snapped, forcibly turning my head to meet his eyes. “Stop.”
“Why?” I asked, my voice breaking as tears pooled, stinging me with my own weakness. “Don’t you want to know? You all do. You all want to dig inside, to know every detail like you were there, like it’s your story. Like by knowing my tragedy you can somehow touch it. Well you can’t, it’s mine. I was alone then, and I’m alone now.”
He flinched before his eyes narrowed in focus. “Stop assuming I’m everyone. I’ve lived my life making sure that no one is like me, so don’t lump me in with those assholes.”
“But you looked,” I whispered, a tear slipping down my face.
He wiped it away with his thumb. “I can’t say that I’m sorry I looked. Because I looked, because I fucked up and slipped, we’re having this conversation now. Yes, it was a violation of your privacy. Yes, you did it to me, but this was not payback. I knew you guarded your legs. I’m not stupid. I can’t imagine what you would have done had I tried to take off your pants, and believe me, getting in your pants has been at the top of my list since I saw you on that balcony.”
Some of the fight drained from me. I hated that he was right, that I would have spazzed out on him and ran the minute he tried to slip my jeans down my hips, but that didn’t excuse what he’d done. How he made me feel.
“I’m not sorry that I know,” he continued, his expression softening. “But I wish you’d been the one to tell me. That you would have trusted me.”
“It’s not about trust. It’s about ripping open scabs I’ve barely let heal. That accident, losing Brian that way…it was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It is something that changed who I am, what I’m capable of, and how I view my future. You had no right to cut open my scars. Just because you live your life in some transparent, camera-ridden world doesn’t mean that the rest of us believe in cellophane for our bedroom walls. Some of us need to block out the light. Some of us need to lick our wounds in private.”
“You’re right,” he said, wiping another tear that I hadn’t realized had fallen. “My life is a public spectacle. But please don’t think that you can find everything about me on Google.”
“Okay. Then what is the worst thing that has ever happened to you? And I’m not talking about broken bones or failed stunts.” I wanted him as raw as he’d scraped me, as vulnerable.
He swallowed, looking up to the cabin ceiling before he took a deep breath. “What’s the one quality you have to see in someone you care about?”
My forehead puckered. “Honesty. You don’t lie to someone you care about.”
He nodded, like he was accepting my answer. “Mine is loyalty. With what we do, I have to know that I can trust my friends with my life. Hell, with more than my life.”
“Okay?” Where was he going with this?
“My best friend betrayed me.”
“What? How?”
He exhaled. “He slept with the only girl I’d ever called my girlfriend.”
I couldn’t decide if I was more offended that he thought that was even in the same league, or more surprised Paxton was anyone’s second choice.
“I know it’s an anthill next to your mountain. I’m not trying to compare the two. But yeah, I liked a girl. Liked her enough that I didn’t even try to sleep with her. I dated her by the book, and the book got me fucked. Or rather, got him fucked. And the funny thing was that it wasn’t even the girl who broke me, it was him. It was my notion of who and what I trusted about my life. For months he looked me in the eye and called me his best friend while he stuck a knife in my back. The same guy who helped me tune my bike and pack the chutes that kept me alive…” He sighed. “It ripped the ground from under me, took my gravity, spun the world backward, you name it. She didn’t break my heart—he did.”
“What happened with him?” I asked, trying to imagine what I’d do had it been Rachel. He was right. The loss of the friendship would destroy me.
“I couldn’t stand to be around them, and once they were over, he and I hated being around each other, looking at what we’d cost the other. We seriously couldn’t manage being in the same room, so we went our separate ways until we could.”
Nick. That must have been where the fourth Original Renegade was. Banished for taking his girlfriend. That’s why they kept him out of the media. Paxton was embarrassed. “How long ago was it?”
“A while,” he answered, giving me the same answer I’d initially given him about my own heartbreak.
We sat in a tense silence for a few minutes while the normal noise of the plane came back to life. At least we weren’t the in-flight entertainment anymore.
I looked out of the window, over the bluest water I’d ever seen. Mediterranean blue. It was its own unique color, deep and bright all in the same breath. Just like Paxton’s eyes.
What was going to change between us now? Would I be off his radar since he knew how damaged I was? I rested my head against the seat and sighed. Maybe it was better this way, that I hadn’t stressed about how to tell him, that he hadn’t taken one look at my legs and blanched. Yeah. Maybe this was better. And maybe if I said that enough, I’d believe it.
He was quiet so long that I figured he’d fallen asleep.
“Leah,” he said, startling me.
I steadied my nerves and turned back to him. “What?”
“You need to know that it doesn’t matter to me,” he said, his eyes open and honest. “Well, it matters because it hurt you, shaped you. But the rest of it? None of it matters. I hope one day you’ll tell me so that I understand you better, but that’s the only reason. I read one article that gave vague details, and then I shut it down. I wasn’t digging for gory details, or voyeurism. I just wanted to know about you.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding my head because I was too drained to argue anymore. I wanted to hide away in private and lick my wounds, both the ones he’d inflicted, and the ones I’d caused with my own very public reaction.
He tipped my chin toward his. “And I don’t care about whatever physical damage you’re hiding.”
I almost laughed. “You have the body of a Greek god.”
A wry smile lifted the corners of his perfect lips. “I have more scars than you can count. More broken bones than could ever mend. You are far more perfect than I will ever be. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did. And now I know, and you know that I know, and the whole plane knows, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “And what are you going to do with this knowledge?”
“Understand you better. Learn what makes you tick, what makes you pull away when I get too close, what it’s going to take to break down those walls of yours.”
“They’re pretty thick,” I admitted, knowing they were damn near unscalable.
“Good news for me is that I’m exceptionally good at defying…well, everything.”
Our eyes locked—anger, fear, regret, and a new understanding passing between us with a simple glance. He kept me tethered with nothing more than a thought, unable to move or pull away. Then he lowered his head slowly, giving me ample time to pull away if I wanted to.
I didn’t.
He brushed his lips over mine in a kiss so tender that my eyes watered all over again. “Nothing matters to me except how you feel about it now. How it affects you now. What you choose to do about it now.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” I answered truthfully.
He nodded. “I get that. But I need you to understand something. To know it in your bones.”
“What?”
That devilishly sexy look flickered across his features. “My number one goal is still to get into your pants—and stay there as long as possible.”
I almost snorted, but his comment gave me back the one thing his knowledge had stripped away—my confidence.
