by Roxie Noir
I pull myself together. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate airports and flying and everything about this?
A lot. I hate it a lot.
“Is there any possible way I could be in Yellowknife by tomorrow morning?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “The research plane leaves then, and there aren’t other planes, and I really need to be on that one, otherwise I’m afraid I’ll be stuck there…”
I trail off as a door to the outside, behind the desk, opens and all the flight attendants currently re-booking flights for irritated customers turn their heads and look, like they’re expecting someone. The girl I’m talking to, in particular, clearly isn’t paying attention to me anymore, a little smile playing around her lips as she watches.
And watches.
Now I’m watching too, wondering what’s so great that’s coming through that door. Hopefully it’s a flight from here to Yellowknife, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion it’s not.
Nope.
It’s a guy in a bomber jacket, hands shoved in the pockets as he pushes the door open with his back, shouting something to someone on the other side, letting the cold air into the airport like he doesn’t give a crap about anyone.
I roll my eyes. People can be such dicks sometimes.
But just as I open my mouth to say hi, can you get back to doing your job, something about the guy catches my eye. I don’t know if it’s his messy brown hair or the way his shoulders hold the door open or his laugh or the way he seems so casual right now about being the center of attention.
Maybe it’s just the way he stands there, one foot on the ground, perching the bottom of the other against the door.
For the millionth time that day, my stomach starts to tighten and swirl, a familiar sensation if ever there was one.
Because this all reminds me of someone I used to know. Someone I haven’t seen in at least ten years.
Someone I’d rather not see again if I can help it.
The guy laughs. He shoves the door a little wider, tosses his head. Shouts something and then lets the door fall shut behind him, absorbing everyone’s gaze like he was born to do it and it’s no big deal at all.
I push my glasses up my face, wide-eyed, so nervous I’m nauseous.
I know who it is, and I wish I didn’t. I wish I were hallucinating. I wish I were having a nightmare.
Just keep walking, I pray. Don’t notice me, don’t look over here, just leave and go get a beer and burger and be a dick to your waitress or whatever it is douchebags do at an airport at eight-thirty in the morning…
I hold my breath, head down, peeking up through my hair.
He starts to walk away, and I let myself feel a tiny glimmer of hope that this near run-in will stay near.
Then, my flight attendant waves both hands in the air.
“Hey!” she shouts. “Wilder!”
He turns toward us, and I want to die.
Chapter Two
Wilder
“Wilder!” Amy calls.
Shit. I was hoping she hadn’t seen me, even though I knew she probably did. If I’d known she was gonna be at that desk I’d have gone into the airport through another door so I could avoid her.
The whole point of hooking up with a flight attendant is that they’re hot and never in town. I could have sworn that she told me she was gonna be in Vancouver or something this week, so I thought I was safe.
Guess I should have listened better. Or at all.
I turn, and I’m greeted by four over-white smiles, every flight attendant currently behind the WestJet desk staring at me. Amy waves, looking like a little kid.
“C’mere!” she calls.
I don’t really want to, but I head over. I’ve got shit to do, flight logs to turn in, maintenance to oversee, not to mention I’m supposed to be scouting a location for another hotel with my dad this afternoon, and if I’m not prepared for that I won’t hear the end of it.
I wave back, and she laughs, a bubbly laugh that’s perfectly suited to her.
“The flight to Vancouver got canceled and I’m trying to find this poor thing a way to get to Yellowknife as soon as I can,” she says. “I’ve never even heard of Yellowknife before, but it’s way up there!”
She gestures at the poor thing across the desk from her, and I give the girl a half-second glance. Brown hair up in a messy bun, boots, leggings, ten layers of giant coats and sweaters and a whole mess of luggage next to her.
But just as I look away, she moves, and it catches my eye. Shoves her glasses up with one finger, held perfectly straight as she touches the thick black frame and not the lenses.
“Yellowknife, huh,” I say, walking closer to Amy but not letting my eyes leave the girl in front of the desk.
You know how sometimes you see something, or you hear something and for exactly one second it’s like you’re back somewhere else, in the past, and you don’t even know how or why but there you are?
Amy says something but I’m not next to her. I’m not at the airport any more.
I’m at Solaris High School, watching a girl in a long skirt and combat boots sprint as fast as she can away from me, for the woods.
“There are really no flights to this place,” Amy’s saying. “You sure it’s real, hon?”
Finally, the poor thing in front of the desk looks up, and she’s exactly who I didn’t want her to be.
Someone I haven’t seen in ten years. Not since she bolted away from me that night.
Not since I watched her go, still furious and guilty and vindictive. Still aching for her, wishing all at once that she was staying, that I’d never met her in the first place, that I’d hurt her even worse than I did, that I could take everything back.
“Imogen Gustavo, no shit,” I say, forcing my voice casual.
Imogen doesn’t say anything. Big fucking surprise, but her face turns bright red and she looks away, toward a wall, like I’m not even there or something.
Like she can’t even be bothered to look at me. Like I’m not good enough.
It all comes roaring back. My hands in my pockets tighten into fists, even as I remind myself that this is going to be a thirty second conversation and then I’m free of this girl for the rest of my life.
“Wilder,” she says, her face like stone. “Hi.”
“Do you guys know each other?” Amy asks brightly, still clicking away on the computer, completely oblivious.
“Sure,” I say, suddenly feeling cruel, like I’m seventeen all over again and Imogen’s standing there in her eyeliner and combat boots, looking away from me. “We went to high school together.”
Imogen’s face flares. She pushes her glasses up again, the same gesture that I know so fucking well because I watched it every day for ages.
“Yep,” she says, and looks away again.
“Haven’t seen you in years,” I say, coming up next to Amy behind the counter, standing too close to her. “How’s it going? Still know the difference between elves and fairies?”
She shoves her glasses up yet again, and finally, she looks at me. Imogen laughs hollowly, like she’s just being polite, which she probably is.
“Doesn’t everyone know the difference?” she says, her voice pitched a little too high. “Lord of the Rings is one of the highest grossing franchises of all time.”
“Oh, I loved those movies!” Amy says, still tapping away brightly at the computer, oblivious to what’s going on in front of her. “Don’t tell Wilder here but if Legolas asked me out I totally wouldn’t say no.”
She glances up at Imogen and raises one eyebrow, like it’s some kind of girls-only secret that a movie star is attractive.
I sling one arm around her, my other fist still clenched in my pocket because this is purely for Imogen’s benefit. It took all of ten seconds for her to make me feel sixteen again, like I need to prove myself. Even though I was hoping not to see Amy again for a while, here I am practically claiming her in public.
Just so Imogen knows I can bang c
ute flight attendants if I want.
“Hey there,” Amy giggles. “I’m at work, you know.”
I give her my most charming smile, hoping it’s not a scowl.
“I don’t see your boss.”
“Come on,” she says, battling her eyelashes, murmuring at me like there’s no one else around. “Don’t get me in trouble. At least not here.”
Imogen’s just watching us, her face still beet red, totally impassive. Even though I haven’t seen her in ten years I still know that means she’s pissed underneath, that I’m finally getting some reaction out of her.
“How bout I get you in trouble later?” I ask Amy, letting my voice drop to the rough growl she liked so much a few nights ago.
“Wilder!” she whispers, but she’s clearly thrilled. Up until now I’ve barely even acknowledged her in public, and now I’m acting ready to hump her over this desk.
I might do it, too. If Imogen were here to watch.
If I could see the look on her face when I did.
Amy taps a few more keys, then sighs, prettily frustrated.
“Hon, I just don’t think there’s any possible way I can get you up there by tomorrow morning,” she says. “There’s only a handful of flights per day, and you sure can’t go direct from here. I can get you to Calgary or Edmonton, maybe, and then you can try your luck again?”
Why is Imogen Gustavo going to Yellowknife?
Yellowknife is way the hell up there, somewhere I’ve only flown private clients a handful of times, mostly our millionaire investors who had to leave their resort chain board meetings and get straight to their mining company board meetings.
Imogen sighs, tapping her nails on the counter in front of her, like she’s thinking. I take my arm from around Amy, watching Imogen tapping incessantly.
“Sure, that’s fine,” she says at last. “I mean, better than nothing, right?”
She adjusts a laptop bag over her shoulder and gives Amy a fake smile, not looking at me even once. Like I’m just a guy-shaped prop or something.
“I’m really sorry, hon,” Amy says. “If you really need to get there, you could charter a flight if you had the money, but it would probably be expensive, and not a whole lot of pilots are willing to make that flight, especially this time of year. Weather comes up pretty fast over the Canadian Rockies and anything much smaller than a jet can get messed up pretty bad.”
Imogen’s fingers twist together, still nervously tapping on the desk in front of her, eyes dropping to look at a speck of dust or something that no one else can see or cares about. The polish is chipped from her blue nails, the skin ragged around the edges of them, like she’s been chewing at herself again.
Guess that hasn’t changed, either. God knows I still remember sitting in study hall, age seventeen, watching her across the room as she flipped through a thick textbook, shoving up her glasses and biting her nails.
Wishing that I were thinking about literally any other girl in school.
“How much is a charter from here to Yellowknife?” she asks.
“Probably at least a couple thousand dollars, hon,” Amy starts. “But like I said, it’s gonna be hard—”
“Ten thousand at least,” I correct her without thinking.
The few times I’ve made that flight I’ve done it free, for bigwigs who sunk millions into my family’s resort business, but that’s the bottom end of the going rate.
Amy looks at me, head tilted prettily.
“You do that flight?”
I snort, shoving my hands back into my pockets.
“I don’t make a habit of it,” I say. “But I’ve done it a couple of times, yeah. Gets pretty hairy over the mountains sometimes.”
“You should give her an old friends discount,” Amy suggests brightly.
I almost correct her right there, almost laugh in her face that old friends isn’t really what Imogen and I are.
“I can’t do it,” I tell her, point-blank.
Amy laughs, shrugging her shoulders at Imogen.
“He takes rich people heli-skiing,” she says. “You know, when you fly some guy in your helicopter to the top of a mountain and then they—”
“I know what heli-skiing is,” Imogen says, her voice flat, cutting Amy off.
Amy frowns slightly.
“Sorry,” Imogen says, forcing a smile at the other girl. “I mean, I’m from a ski town, you know? I didn’t know you were lugging rich guys around now, Wilder. Makes sense, though. Perfect job for you.”
She smiles a too-bright smile. It’s fake, and I’m sure she’s got some cutting reason why flying a helicopter loaded up with rich skiers is the perfect job for me because that’s Imogen and she hasn’t changed in ten years: quiet until the claws come out.
“It’s actually really dangerous!” Amy cuts in, petting my forearm with one hand. “The last guy who did heli-skiing here crashed into the side of a mountain. It was awful, but there was a really big demand for it and Wilder here was just out of the Navy, so he stepped up.”
She beams at me, but I feel fucking useless. Imogen’s standing here and Amy’s trying to make me sound like a war hero for ferrying rich assholes to the top of a mountain.
“You sure you can’t do it?” Amy asks, blinking up at me. “She’s got a flight out of there tomorrow morning, to… where was it again?”
She has no idea. Amy thinks that she’s being nice, getting me to take some non-threatening nerd on a plane ride. Imogen, with her glasses and her brown hair and her fidgeting, doesn’t threaten her at all because Amy is pretty and confident and bubbly in that popular-girl way.
It’s not Amy’s fault that she doesn’t know. How could she?
“Inuvik, and then a research station,” Imogen says.
She presses her lips together. She adjusts her glasses. She drums her fingers.
“I’ll give you fifteen thousand when we get there if you take me,” she says softly.
Chapter Three
Imogen
Oh, my God, what am I doing?
I don’t have fifteen thousand dollars. I don’t have two thousand dollars, or at least, I don’t have two thousand dollars I could spend on a plane flight. Every last bit of this research trip was paid for with a grant from the Bright Foundation, with every penny accounted and re-accounted for.
“Your parents finally win the lottery? I used to see them always buying tickets,” Wilder says, his bright blue eyes flashing, his voice mocking.
Anger crawls through my chest, tightens my hands as my mind goes blank, just like it always does during confrontations.
“No,” I say, forcing my voice not to shake. “I got a research grant from a foundation with a lot of money.”
“I had a feeling they still hadn’t quite made it,” Wilder says. “How’s your old man, by the way? Every time I see him out there teaching a new batch of kids how to ski I’m afraid he’s gonna break a leg.”
“He’s fine,” I say, my voice brittle. “Listen, the Foundation will pay you once we get to Yellowknife, I just have to get there and explain the situation.”
It’s not true. There’s absolutely no way that the Foundation is going to approve fifteen thousand dollars for a private flight and I know it.
But Wilder doesn’t. For all his pompous mockery, for all his flirting with flight attendants twice as pretty and half as smart as me, for all his making fun of my parents and acting like God’s gift to earth, I’m betting he hasn’t got a clue how the scientific granting process works or where the money comes from.
“Why do you need to be there so bad?” he asks, leaning his elbows on the table.
“Because the arctic research season is short, and I don’t want to miss my plane.”
“You can’t charter a flight the last leg?”
“It wouldn’t be cheaper.”
Also, I don’t actually have fifteen thousand dollars.
“You sure?”
I swallow hard, my spine ramrod-straight. My heart is beating so hard
I’m probably developing a medical condition, I’m sweating, and I know my face is bright red.
But this is my chance to kill two birds with one stone: get to where I need to be on time and screw Wilder Flint out of fifteen thousand dollars.
It’s the least he deserves.
Wilder just looks at me, his blue eyes hard and indecipherable as they’ve ever been. The flight attendant behind the counter, the one he practically started humping in front of me, is still smiling emptily at the two of us, like she’s done a grand job of solving some problem.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say quietly. “How about it?”
I can practically see the gears in his head working, trying to think through the reasons that I, of all the people on this entire planet, might want to be in a small plane with him for hours on end.
“Help her out!” the flight attendant bubbles, but neither of us pays her any attention at all. “Come on Wilder, you’re such a good pilot, it’s your chance to do something nice for someone in need!”
She rubs his shoulder, looking up at him, and finally he glances back at her, both his hands staying in his bomber jacket pockets.
“All right,” he finally says. “Hope you like small planes, because that’s what fifteen grand gets you. Private hangar, thirty minutes. Have all your shit with you already.”
He turns on his heels and walks back through the door he came through in the first place, flinging it open and striding through, a couple of heads turning, and my stomach plummets instantly.
What on earth am I doing?
I can’t do this. I can’t, this is stupid and dumb.
He’s probably going to piss me off until I grab the rudder or whatever and plow the plane into a mountain, just to make it stop.
“Great!” the flight attendant says, clapping her hands together.
Really. She really does that, claps with happiness, because I guess not everyone knows that Wilder Flint is actually a misspelling of Satan Himself.
