The flight attendant comes by with snacks, and when she leans over to hand Mitch his, her fingers linger just a beat too long on his. He doesn’t seem to notice, but I do. I notice everything when it comes to him, apparently.
Including the way other women look at him. The way they always have a reason to touch his arm, lean a little closer, smile just a little wider.
I’m not the only one who finds him irresistible.
“Want some?” He’s holding out a bag of oversalted airplane nuts, completely oblivious to the flight attendant’s lingering glances.
“I’m good.”
But I’m not good. I’m the opposite of good. I’m sitting next to a man I let myself start falling for while he acts like nothing’s changed.
Maybe for him, nothing has.
His knee bumps mine when he shifts in his seat, and the contact sends that familiar spark up my thigh. I don’t move away, andneither does he. It’s probably just the cramped space, but I’m pathetic enough to catalog the touch anyway.
“Thanks,” I say when he passes me his magazine without being asked.
“You looked bored.”
“Just thinking.”
“Dangerous territory.”
The comment is light, teasing, but it makes my stomach clench. Because dangerous territory is exactly where we were last night, right up until he decided to retreat to safer ground.
His hand reaches across me to adjust the air vent, and I catch that clean scent that’s become dangerously familiar. For a moment, we’re close enough that I could turn my head, and our mouths would be inches apart.
Close enough to whisper all the things I should have said last night before I lost my nerve and he lost interest.
But I don’t. Because I’ve got some pride left, even if it’s hanging by a thread.
“Better?” he asks, his voice lower than necessary.
“Perfect.”
The word comes out rougher than intended, loaded with all the frustration I’m trying to keep locked down. He goes very still beside me, and when I look at him, there’s something in his gray eyes that looks almost like regret.
The flight levels out, and I try to distract myself by reading the magazine he passed me. Some article about investmentstrategies that might as well be written in ancient Greek for all the attention I can pay to it. My brain keeps circling back to last night—the silk pajamas that felt empowering until they felt foolish, the way I’d rehearsed what I was going to say when he walked through that door.
The way he never walked through that door at all.
I steal glances at him while he scrolls through his phone, probably checking team emails or hockey stats or whatever it is professional athletes do when they’re not breaking amateur hearts. His jaw is clean-shaven, his hair still slightly messed from sleep, and he looks completely unaffected by what happened this weekend.
Meanwhile, I’m cataloging every accidental touch like a lovesick teenager.
“Clare—”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re beginning our descent into Dallas.”
The pilot’s announcement cuts through whatever he was about to say, and maybe that’s for the best. Because I’m not sure I want to hear his explanation, his careful reasons why keeping things professional was the smart choice.
I already know it was smart. That doesn’t make it hurt less.
The plane descends through clouds that look like cotton candy, and Dallas spreads out below us in all its sprawling, familiar glory. Home. Work. Reality.
The place where Mitchell Drake goes back to being my colleague and I go back to pretending I don’t know the sound he makes when he comes.
“Back to the grind,” he says, watching the city grow larger beneath us.