Page 137 of That First Flight

When I enter the restaurant, I see Avery and Emiline are already seated.

“Drinks on you,” Avery says to Em after they lay eyes on me.

She rolls her eyes in response. “Fine.”

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“We took bets on how much you’d be glowing when you walked in here after your rendezvous with Oliver.” Avery winks.

My cheeks pink as I sit down. “That obvious, huh?”

“Yes. Now spill.” Avery leans forward on both elbows with her hands clasped together under her chin.

I cover my face with my hands, feeling shy all of a sudden because I don’t know how to talk about it. “It was a really nice getaway. Since you already seem to know, we had sex. Lots of it.”

Avery’s smile grows wider.

“And I feel a lot of things… like a lot,” I continue.

“Explain,” Avery encourages.

“My feelings for him are growing at a rate I can’t grasp. I’m feeling things that are wildly new to me in every way. I’ve never loved a man before or had attraction to this extent. It scares the shit out of me because it’s so intense.” I pause to gather my thoughts, my gaze bounces between the two girls. “And if things don’t work out, I’m setting myself and Mackenzie up for major heartbreak.”

Silence falls at the table. Avery has a soft smile on her face and Emiline has a look of complete shock on hers, like she didn’t expect that out of me.

“Have I told you the story about Marc and me?” Avery says.

I shake my head, and hear Em let out a scoff. “This is a good one.”

She releases a sigh. “Marc and I knew each other through Thomas and Peyton. He needed someone to be his fake date to this holiday gala he had to attend. I thought it was a one-time thing so I agreed to play the stupid role of a doting fiancée. Things got… interesting that night.” Avery blushes thinking about it. She doesn’t even need to say it for me to know what she means. “Mind you, I was also his assistant at the time. I took some time off work to help my mom because she broke her hip. When I came back, Marc told me we needed to put on the act for the whole summer to impress his boss.”

“Wow.” My eyes widen.

“Yeah.” She laughs. “I didn’t want to do it because I’d never been in a relationship. I swore off all men because of some daddy issues, which is a story for another day, but the point is, I was in a similar situation and scared out of my mind because I never had feelings for a man before Marc. It was so scary for me.”

“Her admitting that is a lot,” Emiline adds. “Avery doesn’t do feelings.”

“Facts,” Avery exclaims with a finger in the air.

“You two looked so in love when I met you that time in the mountains though.”

Avery nods. “That was for show. But things were already escalating quickly at that point. I was trying to fight off the feelings I knew I had for him, but just didn’t know how.”

“How did you handle it?” I ask.

She holds up her hand to show off the diamond on her ring finger. “I fell anyway. I let him catch me.”

Ugh, that’s adorable.

“It was a major chance I took to finally say those three words to him. But it was a risk I was willing to take with him because I fully trusted him with my heart at that point,” Avery says.

“Knowing my brother,” Emiline adds, “he won't let you fall alone either.”

My insides flutter. I trust Oliver with my life. I know without a single doubt in my mind that he would never let me fall alone. I also feel like this can’t be one-sided between us. There has to be more on his end.

I remember so vividly the look in his eyes on the trip when he loomed over my body just before driving into me. It was a look that screamedI love you, or better yet a look that saidI want to make love to you.

“I guess I’m just nervous after hearing about his history with women. I’m not as experienced as he is so I’m not sure how to process all of it. What if he gets bored with me? What if he ends up changing his mind in a month? I don’t know how the male mind works.”

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