“I know.” Her grip didn’t loosen. “I’m fine.”
She didn’t look fine, but he didn’t argue.
The plane shuddered again.
Jayden took off her headphones. “What’s your biggest fear?” she asked suddenly. “On a plane. Not—” She waved a hand. “Not the existential stuff. Just the flying-specific terror.”
“Most people would say crashing.”
“Most people aren’t you.” She turned to face him, seeming genuinely curious despite the turbulence. “What scares the security consultant who notices everything?”
Oh.
“Not knowing,” he said finally. “Not the going-down part. The not knowing it’s coming until it’s too late to do anything about it.” He met her eyes. “I can handle a crisis if I see it coming. What I can’t handle is being blindsided.”
Something shifted in her expression.
“That’s . . .” She paused. “Yeah, that’s actually more terrifying. Because you can’t control that.”
“No.”
“So how do you fly? How do you do anything, if that’s your fear?”
“I prepare.” He shrugged. “I gather information. I run scenarios. I do everything I can to make sure I’m never caught off guard.”
“And when you are anyway?”
The plane dropped. Just a pocket of air, nothing serious, but his stomach lifted and several passengers gasped.
“I live with it,” he said quietly. “And I try to do better next time.”
The turbulence continued—a steady rumble now, punctuated by sharper drops. The seatbelt sign chimed on. A flight attendant moved down the aisle, checking buckles, her smile professional but tight.
“What about you?” Dakota asked. “What’s your flying fear?”
Jayden was quiet for a moment. The plane shuddered around them.
“Going down over the ocean,” she said finally. “Not the crash itself. The after. Being out there in all that water, miles from anything, knowing no one’s coming.” She tried to smile. “Silly, right? Statistically, if a plane goes down over the ocean, you’re not surviving the impact anyway.”
“That’s not silly.” He kept his voice steady. “That’s about control. About being helpless. Waiting for something terrible that you can’t prevent.”
The captain’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re experiencing some mechanical issues that, combined with the weather system ahead, are requiring us to divert. We’ll be landing in Nadi, Fiji, in approximately forty-five minutes. Please remain in your seats with your seatbelts fastened.”
The cabin erupted in murmurs.
Jayden’s face had gone pale. “Mechanical issues.”
“Could be minor.” Dakota kept his voice calm, even as his mind started running scenarios. “Pilots divert for all kinds of reasons. Better to be cautious.”
The turbulence buffeted the plane, and then it dropped—harder this time—and the murmurs became gasps. Someone a few rows back started crying quietly.
The flight attendants moved through the cabin again, checking seatbelts, securing overhead bins, their faces professionally neutral in a way that didn’t quite hide the tension in their shoulders.
“We’re going to be fine,” Dakota said. “Fiji’s not far. The pilots train for exactly this kind of situation.”
Jayden nodded, but her knuckles were white on the armrest.
Dakota glanced over. Watched the way she set her jaw, controlled her breathing. She was scared, but she wasn’t panicking.
