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FML.
Karma wasn’t even close to being finished with me yet.
Chapter Two
This was going to be a much longer flight than scheduled. Not only was I terrified about my first ride in a plane as a grown ass adult, nowI had to sit next to the nerdy guy I’d picked on in high school for the next six hours as we flew across the country.
Fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it was laughing her fucking ass off. What an unfortunate seat assignment.
I glanced aroundthe cabin, trying to see if there were other vacant seats. All I saw were heads, lots of heads, and no spaces between them.
“You look nervous. Have you ever flown before?”
“Once.” When I was three and being flown to my new family.I didn’t dare look him in the eyes.
“You know, my sister gets like this when she travels and let me tell you, the first time she flew, well, she was paler than you. Actually, she was a touch green.” Hearing his inflectionshad a weird effect – they actually started to calm me. “What helped her was the vomit bag and some fresh air.”
“Are you going to crack a window?”
He chuckled. “You’re funny, but no.”
Agreen sweater filled my view, and a second later a blast of cool air was directed at my face. I slammed my eyes shut again as the tentacles of air wrapped their fingers around my neck. Surprisingly enough, it had the opposite intended effect of calmness, and I reached overhead to twist the air off.
“No, thank you.”
“Thought I’d offer.” He shrugged, a hint of either a New York or Bostonian accent in his voice. “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”
“Feel free to keep talking; your voice is easy to listen to.”
I cracked my right eye and stole a peek. The handsome guy in a green sweater with gorgeous dark hair had all the tell-tale signs of a fully blooming blush colouring his cheeks. Too cute.
He cleared his throat and stretched out his neck to look through the window on myleft. “In a minute, we’ll be heading toward the runway.”
“And that’s where the fun begins, right?” Each passing minute took me further away from my living hell, and closer to what I hoped – and needed – to bemy newly promised beginning.
He shrugged effortlessly. “For some. Most will go to sleep, this being a red-eye and all.”
“Don’t let me stop you.” I rested my head against the wall of the plane. The coolness seeped into my burning left cheek.
“I’m a night owl by nature, so I’ll just enjoy the quiet hum of the dim cabin and catch up on some reading.” He tapped the pouch in front of him where a thick brick of a novel was snuggly tucked in. “It’sDeath by Black Hole,by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It’s a real page turner.”
It suited him as it looked like high-level nerdy reading material. Once a nerd, always a nerd it seemed. I shook my head and inhaled sharply while covering my chest. The ache was slowly diminishing, but it hadn’t gone away completely. The quick breath proved that.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Iris?”
Incredulously, I stared open-mouthed, my eyes widening in response, and he did the same.
“Iris Charbonneau! That’s who you are.” He snapped his fingers and mumbled as if he had been just as surprised at knowing my name as I was hearing it roll off his lips. “From St. Jude’s.”
Guess he remembered. Fuck me and my peer-pressure filled high school years.
“Holden? Holden deLauer? Does that name ring a bell?”
A rush of regret blew threw me. It came like a slap across the face. Physics class, tenth gradeyear, some ten years ago. The nerdy dweeb who knew all the answers and was a nasty combo of both a brown noser and the teacher’s pet. Didn’t help that he was two years younger than the rest of us. Holden had been taunted by me and tormented by my group, until I was sent to yet another foster home at the end of the year.
“I thought you looked familiar.” A smidgen of surprise laced the tip of his tongue, not sure if it more or less mirrored what I was experiencing.
“Yeah.” Sure, I wasn’t the nicest kid in class, but I also wasn’t the meanest. Far from it. I only hurt with taunts and jeers, never in the physical sense. Sadly, my gang was responsible for those. “Small world, isn’t it?”
