Page 54 of Reclaiming Adelaide

She handed me my drink with a lemon on the rim. I gave Jake a smug look, then took a sip. The smile fell from my lips from the lack of pleasurable burn.

“Water?”

“That’s what I said.” Jake took the drink she gave him and placed it in the cup holder running along the ridge of the plane.

“Prudy, a vodka tonic, please.” I held out the cup in my hand. “I hate flying.”

“You’ll have the water. She won’t get you anything else.”

“You sure know how to make things dull, don’t you?”

I plopped the water back on the tray, balanced in her palm, but kept the lemon, sucking on it with a puckered face.

Prudy walked away to the front of the plane while Jake glared.

“Watch it.”

“Or what?Hmm?“ I leaned forward, pulling the fruit from my lips with a slurp. “What are you going to do? Toss me from the plane?” I shrugged and licked my lips clean. “Please do.”

“What’s going on between you two?” Becca said, interrupting his death stare.

“Your brother has a hard time letting go.” I leaned back in my chair as the airplane moved down the runway and picked up speed. My gaze never left his as he crossed his ankle over his knee and sipped on his liquor.

I never thought Jake could look at me as if I were the vilest human being on the face of the earth, but here we are, his gaze slicing my skin with each shift of his eyes.

His hatred of me didn’t match the crime. Or maybe it did, and denial ran heavily in my veins.

“You’re going to paintmeas the bad guy?“ he scoffed, putting his glass down as the tires lifted off the tarmac.

The plane shook as it rose into the air, my heart sinking in the opposite direction.

I gripped the armrests, digging my fingernails into the leather material, my stomach swirling with unease.

“Just take a deep breath,” he said.

Oh, so now he wanted to offer me comfort when the liquor would’ve done it for him.

His hands slipped onto my knees and gripped them just in time for my screams to echo as the entire plane bounced in midair as if it hit a fucking pothole.

“Once we get to elevation, it’ll be smooth. You’ll never even know you’re on a plane.” He squeezed my knee a little tighter, his King of Hearts tattoo teasing the genuine pain in my heart.

I’d notice.

I’d notice that my feet weren’t on the ground but rather, forty-thousand feet in the air. It made it worse that we were on a private aircraft. They typically flew ten thousand feet higher in the air to avoid all the commercial traffic.

I was amazed by the random tidbits of useless information I picked up as I skimmed the internet every day.

I counted down the time in my head. Seconds led to minutes, and minutes led to fragile peace. Did it say ten or fifteen minutes for a plane to hit altitude?

Either way, it was ten or fifteen minutes of Hell. Although, if I recalled correctly, no plane had ever crashed from turbulence alone.

What did Google know anyway?

I swiped his hand from my knee and glared at him.

How could he be nice to me one second and hateful the next?

“Don’t touch me.”

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