Page 24 of Cruel Dreams

The saliva dries in my mouth. Max is ahead of me, dumping his things into a shallow grey bin to go through the x-ray, and I try to act like I fly every day and not freak out.

“I wanted to try a new color,” I say calmly, attempting to smile. “I’m wearing contacts.” Sweat slides down my back.

“Nice choice. Green definitely suits you. Have a nice flight.” She slides my license and boarding pass across the small counter, and her attention shifts to the woman next in line. I’m already forgotten.

Quickly, I shove my driver’s license into my wallet and put my things into a bin. I only brought my purse and cell phone. I nudge my sandals off and add them too, and it feels strange standing barefoot holding my hands above my head in a twirly thing as it scans my body for weapons.

Max is finished and he waits off to the side, his shoes on his feet. He said he was worried about my fake IDs, but the TSA agent seemed more concerned with my eye color than the look of my license. A definite miscalculation on our parts, and I’ll ask Mel if I should wear the contacts or not on the return flight. I have to remember my name is Kendra Lovelace and if someone addresses me that way, I need to respond. Nathalie’s mistake scared all of us.

I don’t blame her. I didn’t notice her slip-up until Zane jumped on her the second we stepped into Max’s suite. He assumed she did it on purpose, but we can’t be like that. We have to trust each other. Nathalie didn’t mean anything by it, and I can only hope Huxley was too busy screaming to hear anything else.

It was a valuable lessoned learned. We can never let our guard down, not even for a second.

Max and I walk to our terminal. He’s confident and he knows where he’s going. The airport beyond the security checkpoint is like Zane described. Lots of shops, restaurants, and bars. People drinking though it isn’t yet noon. Little kids running around, and harried parents chasing after them. Everyone is pulling carry-ons behind them. Max and I are traveling light—we didn’t want anything slowing us down. A suitcase for each of us that wechecked when we printed our tickets. He doesn’t have a bag to take on the plane, and I only have the purse Zane bought for me.

Bored but efficient, the gate agent scans my boarding pass, and I walk into the jetway, heat from the outside pushing away the airport’s air conditioning.

The plane’s aisle is crowded, people storing their carry-ons in the overhead compartments and trying to get comfortable before takeoff, and we stand awkwardly idle, the scent of the plane foreign and stale, waiting for several passengers to sit down. We find our row, and I settle into the seat next to the window. Max sits in the middle, and a woman plops into the aisle seat, earbuds in her ears.

“Thanks for helping me through security,” I say, twisting on the cushion, the armrest digging into my side. My heart’s thrumming and I’m too nervous to look out the window.

“Yeah. You’ve flown before, haven’t you?” he asks, noticing my fingers twisted in my lap.

“No. I’ve never needed to. I’ve never been out of the city.”

Max chuckles. “Christ.” He half rises out of his seat, turns toward the rear of the plane, and gestures to a flight attendant. She scoots around a passenger standing in the narrow aisle and approaches us.

“This woman’s never flown before. She needs a drink, as soon as possible.”

The flight attendant winks. “On the house.”

She returns holding a stemless wineglass, and I sip the rosé. I didn’t need it, but protesting would have seemed rude. Max pats my knee and buckles his seatbelt. Sitting on the plane isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but after Zane’s panic attack, it’s difficult to push Lark and Kagan out of my mind. How scared they must have been, knowing they were going to die and not being able to do anything about it.

I finish my wine, and a flight attendant snags the glass as she quickly passes our row. She doesn’t ask if I want another, but I wouldn’t have ordered one anyway.

We watch the safety demonstration, and unease prickles my skin. I don’t like listening to the list of precautions and I’m glad my seat isn’t located near an emergency exit. I’d be too paralyzed by fear to help anyone.

The plane begins to taxi down the long runway, and we gradually pick up speed. During takeoff, I grip the armrests and breathe through my nose. The warm, stuffy air turns my stomach, and the angle of the plane doesn’t help. Despite the wind and the rain, the ascent is smooth and as we level off, so does my nerves.

The pilot greets us, his voice tinny over the speakers, and says the flight from King’s Crossing to DC is a little over three hours. He tells us we’re free to stand if necessary and invites us to enjoy the flight.

“So, you and Zarah.” I’ve been wanting to talk to him, but at the Crowne, we’re never alone.

The woman sitting on his other side unlatches her seatbelt and stumbles down the aisle toward the lavatory, and Max waits to speak until she’s out of earshot. “She’s so...pure. Unjaded, you know?”

His answer disappoints me and I quirk my lips. “She’s like that because of the drugs, Max. Once she’s off that crap and all her memories surface, do you think she’s going to still be so demure? She was sexually assaulted, God knows how many times. I saw the bruises on her body myself. Ash sold her to men who paid to hit and rape her. They hated who she is and what her father did to them, and they wanted revenge. Her doctor’s going to wean her off that garbage as quickly as he can, and unjaded is the last thing she’s going to be.”

Max slouches in his chair. “I know. I guess I didn’t mean it like that. Sheltered doesn’t mean unworldly.”

“Sheltered? No. Imprisoned? Yes.”

“How did you live through it?” he asks, shifting. He’s too tall, and his knees bump the seat in front of him. Mel was going to purchase us first-class seats, but she changed her mind and said sitting in business class would help us blend in.

“By planning this. Hoping for this. I hated Zane for a long time, for believing Ash over me. I love him, but I’m going to need a lot of time to learn to trust him and to let all this go. His lifestyle isn’t what I pictured for myself, and you have to remember where Zarah comes from. She’s the heiress of Maddox Industries. She has more money hanging in her closet than you make in several years. When I met her, she had no career aspirations, no plans.”

Max’s eyes scan my face. His glasses are smudged. “You don’t think much of her.”

Shaking my head, I say, “I love her like a sister. Denton showed me a clip of her breakdown at the Lyndhurst, and my heart broke. I knew she didn’t belong at Quiet Meadows and that we had to get her out of there, and I’m grateful Zane finally understood that too, even if I had to break into her room to get him to see it. But her life, Zane’s life, they don’t live how we live. The things we depend on, they take for granted. It was hard to feel like I belonged with Zane when he and I started dating.”

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