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His hips stilled. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye, sliding down her temple, dropping off her earlobe. “I don’t want you to stop, but we can’t. Not like this. I’m so sorry. But I’m not—”
“Shh,” he soothed, his thumb brushing over her temple, drying the path her tear had taken. “It’s okay. I should have told you first, how I felt. How Ifeelabout you.”
Another tear streaked into her hair. She wanted him to say it. She wanted to say it back, because she felt it. She felt it in every single cell in her body. But she couldn’t. Not without a plan. Not without knowing what would happen next. This trip had worked out, but what about the next one? What would happen if there wasn’t a next one? If her mom got worse and she really couldn’t leave her? She didn’t need all the answers, but she needed some. Otherwise, she was floating, and this was all only a dream. They could have sex in a dream, but the first time they made love, she didn’t want it to be a dream. She wanted it to be real.
“Please don’t cry, sugar,” he said with a wry smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “There’s no crying in airplane sex.”
She exhaled, a small laugh, then sniffed.
“We don’t have to talk about it now.” Sliding out, he thrust into her again, harder this time, and relief washed over her with the force of it. “But we do need to talk about it. Eventually.”
Wrapping her legs around his waist, pulling him tight, she said, “Okay.” When he bent to kiss her, she knew he deserved more than her okays, more than her tears and her hesitance and her fear. But right now, okay was the best she could give him. And because he was more than she would ever deserve, he gave her no reason to believe okay wasn’t enough.
Sometime later, they helped each other get dressed, smiling, laughing as they rushed into their seats, buckling up when the pilot turned the seatbelt light on during their initial descent. Although everything seemed fine, Mira knew it wasn’t. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d damaged them tonight. He was right. They needed to talk. She needed to tell him how she felt, what she wanted. All she had to do was open her mouth. But she couldn’t.
Tomorrow. She’d tell him tomorrow.
The second their wheels hit the runway, they both took their phones off airplane mode and waited. He smiled at her, and she tried her hardest to give him a genuine smile back, but then—
Buzz.
It was a text from Ian, and then—buzz—another, and another—buzz, buzz.
While she stared at her phone, three more texts buzzed through, and her vision went white around the edges. Why were there so many messages? Ian never texted her this many times. Had something happened?
Buzz, buzz, two more, each one an extra heartbeat, another stone lodged in her stomach. While she’d been out pretending she could have a different life, living in a dream, had the people in her real life been hurt?
With trembling fingers and a cold dread sinking into her bones, she opened the first message.
Ian: Mom?
Ian: You there?
Ian: We need help.
Ice flooded her veins, nausea roiling in her belly. They needed help. They needed her, and she wasn’t there.
Ian: Are you still in the air?
Even though the plane hadn’t stopped moving yet, she unclasped her seat belt, about to stand, about to run to the door when she read the next message.
Ian: Where’s the cheese grater?
The cheese grater?
Ian: Do we have any pizza sauce?
Ian: What about pepperoni?
Ian: What temperature should we set the oven to? We don’t remember.
Ian: Never mind. We figured it out.
Ian: We just used pasta sauce.
Ian: Sorry for bugging you.
