His pupils are blown wide. His breath is shallow. He doesn’t blink. He’s looking at her as if he’d rather go out seeing her face, given the choice.
If she knew she was dying today, she would have snorted a line of whatever she could get her hands on and fucked him in the bathroom without thinking twice. Now, it’s just one more regret to add to a long list. She grabs his hand with a hard squeeze and keeps it there. The flutter of his thumb over her knuckles would almost be sweet if they weren’t both so afraid.
“You hold on,” he grunts.
Gleaming snow-covered mountains get closer and closer out the window, rushing up to meet them in an over-eager greeting. It’s the last thing she sees before slamming her eyes shut. Torn between being grateful that she might see her child again, and immense anger that the rest of her life is being snatched away without her consent.
She’d become apathetic about her own survival for so long now that it’s the default behavior, hard to shake even when the worst looms close, but at the moment, all she can focus on is that she’snot ready to die yet.
Theo’s hand squeezes hers hard, and she ducks her head against his shoulder as if that could protect her face from anything coming toward her.
The impact jerks her body like a ragdoll, snow rushes into the cabin, and everything goes black.
Chapter 2
His head is throbbing and he can’t feel his legs.
No, that’s not right. He can feel them, but it’s a buzzing sort of numbness that throws a veil over his limbs. His face flames hot, and it’s hard to breathe, but all that means he must be alive.
Nothing hurts when you’re dead, and right now everything fucking hurts.
Theo blinks cautiously, startled to find the world turned upside down. He struggles out of reflex at being restrained in his seat, hanging with the floor mere inches from his face, and his body folded up like a piece of paper. There’s nowhere to go until he finds the belt buckle. He fumbles for it blindly and hits the button only to slam headfirst into the hard ground, half covered in pristine white snow.
He groans, rolling over onto his side and flexing ice-cold fingers and toes to make sure nothing’s broken.
It is eerily silent.
No people screaming.
No whistling of the plane engine.
No Nora gasping into his shoulder while squeezing his hand.
Nora.
He has to find her. Drunkenly, he crawls to his knees, thankful that everything still seems to work through the burning numbness, and scans the wreckage for her.
It’s enough to take his breath away when he finally gets his wits about him and takes in the full damage. Half the plane is gone, ripped away and deposited who knows where. There’s a giant hole where the pilot’s cabin and first class used to be, leaving the middle, where he was seated, open to the elements.
He whips his head around, searching the space beside him for Nora and finding nothing and no one. The whole seat is missing. Right along with the back half of the plane that seems to have joined the front. All that’s left is this middle section, sliced on both sides like a piece of sushi, but mostly untouched. All the seats he can see clearly are empty, andfuck, that woman he just met was in one of the empty spots.
He sinks down on his ass, having trouble processing the fact that she’s dead now. He just spoke to her. She was just here.
He was deciding that he liked her smile, scolding himself for having any thoughts about her at all, because her friend is marrying his brother, and that’s a complicated can of worms, plus…no one like her would ever be interested in him.
None of that matters now. She’s gone. He should have given her the compliment lodged in his throat from the moment he saw her. It would have sounded something like‘you’re the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen’in a vaguely mumbled mess because if there’s one thing he’s lacking, it’s game.
If he knew they’d be in a plane crash hours later, he would have said it anyway.
Her death shouldn’t affect him as much as it is. He doesn’t even know her, but damn if his throat doesn’t close up while his eyes prickle. She was kind to him. Decent, even through a hint of annoyance. Not many decent people in the world, none that he’s met anyway. She also had no idea who he was, or who his father was, and that was a definite point in her favor, considering he’d love to divorce himself from his entire family.
She’s gone. Everyone else is, too. He is in a plane crash alone and maybe his brain is turning in too many circles, stunted by the shock of the situation, and that’s what allows him to fixate on things like how beautiful her eyes were and how much he enjoyed the sound of her voice, instead of the fact that he is completely and utterly fucked.
Then, someone groans and rustles under a pile of metal. A flash of dark hair jolts him from his all-encompassing shock and sadness. He rushes to lift the door off her, cursing in relief when Nora is in one piece, still buckled into her seat that tore off the bolts and slammed her across the plane.
She’s on her side, with so much blood covering her face that he can hardly tell if it’s hers or from some other source.
“Hey, hey, it’s me. It’s Theo. Open your eyes. Talk to me.” He unbuckles her belt, unprepared for how quickly she slumps over, but he catches her before she can hit the cold ground.
