“That’s not the point. I didn’t know who you were.”
“I only found out who you were two days ago, I swear.” He took a step, a stride, closer to me. He looked stern and serious and, damn, so damn sexy. “I honestly had no idea who you were until you sent me yourID. I’m not lying.”
He wasn’t lying, I knew what he looked like when he was lying and I kind of hated that. I hated that I knew this stranger standing in front of me so well that I could tell whether or not he was lying.
“God!” I exclaimed, and squeezed my waist again. Why did I still feel his hands there? I walked round in a small, tight circle, shaking my head, because I didn’t know what else to do.
“Sorry, is there some kind of problem here?” the pilot asked. I swung round and glared at him too.
“You could say that,” I said to the pilot, stopping my second circle.
“What’s the problem?”
I looked around—why, I don’t know. Maybe looking to pull some kind of sense of all this from the world around me. But the tarmac and the sky and the bird pecking on the grass were not going to give me any answers that would help my mind sort through this bizarre moment.
“We really need to get going,” the pilot said.
I bit my lip and nodded once. Then nodded twice, three times. Each nod an attempt to spur me on.
“Ash, come on. We can talk about this all on the plane,” said Logan. The way he said my name, Ash, was exactly like he used to say it and I did not know how to feel about it. No, actually I did. Angry. That’s how I felt.
“Now you want to talk?” My voice came out loudly enough for the pilot to hear. I didn’t care. “Last time I wanted to talk, you just vanished. And now, more than a decade later, you want to talk!”
“I’m not the same kid who didn’t want to talk to you then.”
“Clearly.” I ran my eyes over him. He was no longer a kid. The man in front of me didn’t have one vaguely kiddish thing about him. He was all man, and I was all anger.
The pilot cleared his throat in that uncomfortable way a person does when they know they shouldn’t be listening to what’s going on. “I hate to break up this . . . reunion, but we really do need to get going.”
“Ash,” he implored me in a soft, soothing voice and I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want his soothing tones right now. They were having the opposite effect on me. I found everything about this situation, and about him, as soothing as an annual cervical smear test. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I must have looked a little deranged right now as I inhaled slowly, held for three counts, and then exhaled for six.
I was a professional. I had a job to do. A very important job. So clearly I was getting on a plane with whoever the hell this guy was. I opened my eyes and looked at the pilot, giving him a big smile.
“Lead the way,” I said to the man and walked after him as confidently as I could, despite the very less than ideal situation.
CHAPTER 14
Max
“Is it normal for the plane to bounce like this?” Ash called over to the pilot.
“Perfectly normal,” the pilot yelled back. The plane was so small inside that Ash and I were pressed up against each other. I didn’t mind the close proximity. On the contrary, being this close to her felt right.
Ash, on the other hand, was a different story. It was clear she was trying to lean as far away from me as possible and every now and then she would swivel her head round, look me up and down, shoot me a very displeased grimace while shaking her head, and looking away again.
“I get the sense you want to say something to me,” I said when she turned and glared at me for the fourth time.
“I just don’t get it. Any of it. I don’t understand.”
“What do you want to know? Ask me. I’m an open book.”
“Open boo—Oh please. There is nothing open about you or your book. You lied to me for two days, pretending to be someone you’re not. What the hell was even real?”
“I wasn’t pretending. Everything I said to you was real.”
“And where the hell have you been?” An accumulation of years and years of frustration was plastered across her face. And I could also see hurt. I hated that I’d hurt her. “One minute you were there, and the next you were gone. Your mom said you just went to Scotland to visit your uncle. And then you went to backpack around Europe. Europe is a big fucking place.”
“I did go and spend some time with my uncle. You’ll remember he had invited me on holiday, but I wasn’t going to go because you and I were meant to go on holiday together.”
