Her mouth fell open. “What? He lost someone? Who? What was her name?”
I gritted my teeth. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” she stated, guilt written all over her face. “Remi, you have to believe me. I had no idea. He was sitting next to you and Scott Kirk on the flight. I didn’t even realize he knew anyone else on that plane.”
I scoffed. “He wasn’t sitting next to me. I was with Aaron.”
“That’s what the flight log says, but I watched you spill a Bloody Mary myself.”
I shook my head. I didn’t drink Bloody Marys at all, much less on a six a.m. flight. It must have been Sally she’d seen. I wasn’t positive of what she looked like, but it wasn’t impossible Bowen had a type. Whatever. None of that mattered at the moment.
“You gotta stop with this,” I told her. “This wasn’t fair. You should have asked, Katherine. I would have told you this was a bad idea from the start.”
“Remi, I’m…sorry.” Her voice broke and tears welled in her eyes.
For a second, I felt bad for her. She’d meant well enough, but her obsession with this flight had seriously clouded her judgment on this one. I didn’t have time to stand there and coddle her. Bowen was somewhere, ten times more pissed off and hurt than I could imagine.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I said, hurrying from the restaurant.
Bowen
I closed my eyes and white-knuckled the steering wheel. My lungs burned as that day came back to me in a rush.
Though it wasn’t like it had ever truly left me.
Waking up with flames licking my skin.
People crying and begging for help.
The bodies torn apart and strewn across the runway.
Dropping to my knees when I could barely breathe, choking and gagging on smoke.
Yelling her name until it felt like I’d swallowed razor blades.
Searching, panic-stricken and feral from the overdose of adrenaline coursing through my veins.
When I’d finally found her at the bottom of a pile of debris, she was bloodied and broken, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. This coming from a man who’d had to revive her lifeless body three different times before that day.
But this was worse, because unlike her suicide attempts, I had no fucking idea what was wrong with her.
I’d won that day.
I’d saved the woman I loved.
But I was no hero—or else one hundred and fifty-two people wouldn’t have died.
The passenger-side door suddenly opened, and I snapped back into the present.
Remi climbed inside. “Oh my God, Bowen. I am so sorry. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I replied, but I was about as convincing as a boy with a bat claiming he didn’t know how the window had broken.
Her hand landed on my forearm. “I am so sorry. You have to know it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to you. I would never in a million years put you in a position like that.”
I hit the ignition and tried to pack it all down. “It’s fine.”
“Bowen,” she started, but I couldn’t listen to her apologize again.
I wasn’t mad at her. I wasn’t really even mad at Katherine.
I just felt like a fucking fraud.
Therefore, my tone was far harsher than I intended—and she didn’t deserve it—when I snapped, “Really, it’s fine. Let it go.”
I figured she’d cop an attitude. At the very least, insist on talking it out.
But much to my surprise, she was quiet the rest of the drive home.
And even more to my surprise, she was quiet when we got back to my place too. She touched me every chance she got, but she didn’t have much to say when we ordered a pizza for dinner. Nor did she talk my ear off when we sat outside on the swing, watching mindless TV for well over an hour with her head in my lap. She wasn’t mad or distant. She was just…quiet.
Which, with Remi, was unnerving.
When we crawled into bed that night, not bothering to even dress after toweling dry from our silent shower, she cuddled into my side, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I miss you,” I whispered, kissing her on the top of her head.
She tipped her head back, resting her cheek on my pec. “I didn’t go anywhere.”
I brushed the hair off the side of her face. “Yeah, you did. And I asked for it after that whole fiasco at the mixer. But you’ve been quiet all night and my ears don’t know what to do without you talking them off. Feels like they’re squinting to hear from you.”
She smiled. “You needed to work through your thoughts. And I want to be the one who holds space for you. Support you the way you need me to, not the way I necessarily want to.”
Her kindness blew me away, and I teased my fingers up and down her side. “I don’t need space now. I just need you.”
