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“Yes,” he said with a single curt nod. “Your luggage has been collected and the car is already waiting outside to take you to the hotel.”
“Thank you,” I said, and he nodded again, falling back a few steps. “Reid, how are you feeling?”
Reid bobbed her head in response, her eyes locked ahead. “Getting there,” she said. “I think once I see some grass, I’ll feel a lot better.”
I smiled.
Even when she was scared out of her mind, she still refused to appear as anyone other than the strong, maddeningly powerful woman she was. I didn’t want to think about her hand in mine, or how quickly she fell asleep when I sang her my mom’s old lullaby. I didn’t want to think about how that made me feel.
Instead, I focused on getting Reid out of the airport and into the city.
We made our way out of the arrivals lounge and the sound of my native tongue surrounded me. With the rush of planning our trip and the stress of the flight over, I hadn’t had much time to be excited about coming home. But excitement flooded through me now, as the sounds and sights and scents crashed into me one by one, each of them clanging a single word through to my very soul.
Home.
Out in the parking lot, we piled into the sleek black car waiting for us and zoomed out into the city.
“When we get to the hotel,” I said, scrolling through our schedules, “we should get you something to eat, and then we can probably just go to bed. It’s already 9 pm, and tomorrow we have an early start.”
Reid nodded next to me, her eyes fixed on the lights that raced past us in a blur.
I was a little disappointed that it was dark, but the city was just as beautiful at night as it was during the day.
“You know,” I said quietly, setting my iPad on the seat between us, “I was so scared of being deported that I forgot how much I missed being here.”
Reid turned back to me, and exhaustion clung to her eyelids like a weight. “Are you happy to be back home?” she asked, smothering a yawn with her hand.
“I can’t remember the last time I was this excited,” I confessed.
Reid grinned back tiredly. “We should do some sightseeing,” she murmured, resting her head back against the headrest. “I want to see the place you mentioned earlier, what was it again?”
“Pão de Açúcar?” I asked.
“Yeah, what is that?”
“It’s a mountain peak,” I explained. “It means sugar bread, or I think most people call it Sugar Loaf Mountain? I’m not sure. But it’s this mountain that is shaped like sugarloaf. There’s a gondola ride up there and we have to go just before sunset because the view is amazing.”
Reid smiled a little, and I wondered how close she was to falling asleep.
We pulled up to the hotel and for the first time, I was instantly grateful for Reid’s ridiculous wealth.
Because beneath the excitement of being home and the stress of the flight, lay a consistent, nagging fear that someone from my old life would recognize me. Reid’s wealth meant we’d be staying far from anywhere someone might recognize me.
Security pulled up behind us and escorted us inside, and I kept a close eye on Reid as we checked in.
“Do you want to go up to the rooms before we grab dinner?” I asked. “Or do you just want to order room service?”
She shook her head. “If I see my bed right now…” She sighed. “There’s no force on Earth that would stop me from crawling into it for the next twenty hours.”
With a muted coo, I turned back to the hotel staff who smiled widely.
“Can you show us the restaurant, please?”
“Right this way,” the staff said, leading us through the lobby and into an extravagant restaurant where only a few hotel guests still ate.
“Thank you,” I said, making sure to remind myself to speak English. I didn’t want Reid to feel left out or awkward.
We both ordered something to eat, too tired to really appreciate the luxurious menu.
