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The world around me tilted.
For one heart-stopping second, we were sideways, and the only thing holding us into the seats were our seatbelts.
I heard a few solid thumps, letting me know that others hadn’t heeded the seatbelt warning, that they’d hit the ground—or wall—hard.
Then we were back level again, and my heart was beating so damn fast that I could barely see.
Flight attendants, who’d been belted into their seats, called out loudly, “Get in your seats and buckle!”
I was in my seat and buckled.
But my heart was literally beating way too fast, and I was on the verge of hyperventilating.
“This is your captain speaking,” a man on the intercom said. “We’ve hit an unexpected storm. We thought we were going to miss it, but it shifted directions very fast, and we caught the very outskirts of it. For the next ten minutes or so, it’s going to be very, very rocky.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t think.
Could do nothing but replay the disaster of my childhood that forced me to be this way over and over again through my head.
“You’re okay. You’re okay,” Keene said from beside me.
I could feel his hand wrapped around mine. He was also pressing his mouth to my ear, whispering quietly into it, urging me to control myself.
It wouldn’t work.
“Why won’t it work?” Keene asked.
I swallowed hard, the words pouring out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“It was my freshman year of high school, and we were going to Walt Disney World.” I shivered, my words almost monotone as I recounted the worst day of my life. “We were in the air about twenty minutes or so when the ground underneath us disappeared, so to speak. One second, we were high up in the air, and the next we’d lost so much altitude that my ears popped.”
I could feel his hands burying themselves in my hair.
But still it wasn’t enough.
“One of the pilots had had a heart attack, and in the transfer of getting one pilot into the seat, and the other out, the pilot that’d been about to take over had been knocked unconscious in the interlude,” I continued, almost on autopilot now. “My mom had to almost crawl her way up the aisle as she made her way to the front of the plane. I could hear her pleading to be let inside, insisting that she was a pilot for the airlines. They knew, though. She was in those seats because she’d gotten them for a decent price. They all knew her. Some had worked for her before, and things were just… crazy. Eventually, my mom got in there and saved the day. But the pilot died en-route. The co-pilot had a blood clot from a freak accident and hadn’t regained consciousness by the time we landed. And that is why I am the way I am.”
“Holy shit,” his deep voice rumbled into my ear. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”
He kept talking to me as we rode out the turbulence, and for a second there, I knew we were only a blink away from death.
But eventually, it all evened out, and there was no longer any turbulence at all.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t still frightened as hell, and that my heart wasn’t in my throat as I tried to breathe through the panic coursing through my veins.
But something about what he was saying slowly brought me down.
At first, it was only the deep rumble of his voice.
The panicked cries behind me weren’t affecting me like his tone was, and I could now concentrate on his words instead of just the cadence of his voice.
“…work at a circus. I’ve worked as the pseudo-ringmaster for over five years now. Seven, really. But five at our new place, Circus House. I don’t do it as often as I once did, though. Sometimes when I can’t be there, because I’m helping a friend out, our circus manager, Autry, covers. He’s actually very, very good. The crowd loves him more than me. But I’m more knowledgeable in the entire thing, so I still do it if I’m there. Which, to be truthful, is becoming less and less lately because I’ve found a new passion in life.”
I waited. “What kind of passion?”
He was quiet for a few long moments then said, “If you hang around long enough… I’ll tell you.”
