Page 63 of Cruel Love

“I’m not scared,” I say quickly.

“Lucy Vaughn, the foul-mouthed dancer from Chicago, is scared of heights?”

“No.” I exhale hard. “Maybe a little. I don’t know. I was fine earlier, I just…”

He turns up his right hand and I release my iron grip on the armrest to take it. His large fingers circle my entire hand, holding tightly.

“You’ll feel better once we’re on the ground again,” he says. “Just a few more hours.”

“Yeah, if we even make it.” My eyes flick toward the closed window but I squeeze them shut. “There’s a… lot of water down there.”

He chuckles. “Luce—”

“Aren’t you nervous?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Didn’t you hear the lady before?” he asks. “Your seat is a flotation device.”

I scoff. “Yeah, sure, but I doubt that makes a difference if the cabin splits in half and I’m jettisoned out at thirty-thousand feet.”

“The cabin will not split in half,” Dante says. “You will not be jettisoned out at thirty-thousand feet.”

“But what if I am?”

“Then, I’ll save you.”

I look at him and he stares back at me, completely serious. As nonsensical as it may seem, it soothes me, and a little bit of my fear goes away.

I breathe out. “I’m not really scared of the cabin splitting in half,” I admit. “I don’t know why I even said that.”

He nods. “I know.”

His hand squeezes mine a little tighter.

“I’m just…” My voice falls.

“I know,” he says again. “You’re going to be okay, Lucy.”

“I’m not worried about me,” I say. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Fox and I have everything under control,” he says with a shrug. “You don’t have to worry about—”

“That’s not what I mean.”

He pauses and stares forward with a creased brow.

I hesitate. “You’ve barely slept since Elijah—”

“I barely sleep anyway,” he says. “You know that.”

“That’s not true. It may have been true before, but since we moved to the lake, you’ve gotten better. You weren’t a…”

“A what?” he asks without looking.

“A killer anymore,” I whisper. I swallow the lump in my throat. “When we met, you told me that’s all you were. I’d look in your eyes and I wasn’t sure who or what was staring back at me.”

---