Page 53 of Love at First Flight

She considered correcting her sister. Even if Dex had loved her, he certainly didn’t love her now. She imagined he’d get over her quickly, as most guys in her experience did. Instead, Selah said, “We’ll see.”

She didn’t like making promises she didn’t know she could keep. There might be some truth in what Hailey had said about her. Selah had switched to autopilot after receiving that horrible phone call from her mother telling her Robert was dead. This had been the only way she knew how to deal with the magnitude of her loss. Since that point, she’d never switched back and wasn’t sure she had the strength to manage piloting without it, to trust her own judgment. Selah was maintaining whatever course she’d set up and that was that. She hadn’t taken into account any changes of feelings or circumstances, seeing them as challenges to overcome instead of something to be embraced.

Regardless, Selah lifted her chin and gave her sister an encouraging smile. “Either way, you’re going to fly inThe Blue Wonderwith Dad again. We all are. We’re going to make it happen, okay?”

Her sister sniffed. “You’ll help me?”

“Yup. That’s what I’m here for.”

She hoped it would be enough. Something deep down inside told her she needed this too. Because, for any chance of moving into the future, whatever it might look like, they needed to follow Robert’s last advice to Hailey and try to be happy.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“You doing okay?”Jon asked. Dex stood beside a fence post as the audio guy fitted him with a wireless lavalier mic on the button placket of his shirt.

“Fine,” Dex responded, regretting he’d agreed to move forward with this interview withWake Up, USA, especially since he’d be doing it alone. He’d asked Jon to show up for emotional support but, so far, all his coworker had done was ask him annoying questions likeWhat happened to Selah?andWhy is Harper being an asshole this morning?

The answer to both of these questions was the same—I don’t know. Both Selah and Harper were a mystery to him, and he was mad at both. In Selah’s case, it was because he’d given his heart to a woman who didn’t want it. And Harper? For some unknown crow reason, she was annoyed with him and wouldn’t stop pecking and pulling at his clothes, skin, and arm hair. If he were to guess, it would be because she wanted to do her own thing while Dex forced her to stay on his arm with a bird lead attached.

It didn’t help they’d been made to wait around forever because they’d shown up for a morning segment on East coast time, only for it to get pushed back an hour. They still had another forty minutes to go.

“You don’t look fine.” Concern was etched on Jon’s face.

“I’m fine. I’m going to go on, talk about Harper and the rehabilitation center, and that’s it.” He didn’t want to talk about Ava or Selah or anything else about his personal life. His life wasn’t for the entertainment of others. He wasn’t some chess piece someone could manipulate around a board for their own amusement.

Harper cawed loudly and pulled again at his sleeve hemline, nipping painfully on his arm in the process. “Okay, fine. You wanna leave. Go ahead. Leave.” He unwrapped the small lead, detaching the bird, and Harper immediately flew away. Well, fine, now he didn’t have Harper to do the interview with either. It would only be him.

The guy behind the camera exchanged a glance with the audio guy before saying, “Um. That bird knows to come back before seven, right?”

Dex shrugged, not caring about the situation anymore. The whole interview felt like a mistake. He wasn’t sure if he should cancel or find a way to stumble through it.

“Dex?” Jon said.

“I’m fine. Really. Harper isn’t a pet. If she wants to go, then she can go. I don’t care. She can do whatever she wants. She’s probably happier being free of me, anyway.”

Jon motioned with his hands for Dex to calm down. “It’s going to be okay. I’m sure she just needs some space. It’s okay to step back and really think things over, you know.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dex agreed, but the ball of anxiety in his gut unraveled. “But what am I supposed to do in the meantime? I feel like I finally found someone who really got me, where I could just be my weird self, and it didn’t matter. And I thought she felt the same way. I’m just tired of being wrong all the time.”

The cameraman and audio guy exchanged looks again. The audio guy then busily fiddled with his equipment, but under his breath, he said, “Man, that must be some crow.”

“Yeah, and maybe you’re not wrong. Maybe it’s just complicated,” Jon said.

Dex wasn’t sure if he believed him. Maybe Selah did love him, but it was hard to see everything when he was so hurt and she never said anything. All this time, he thought he wanted something big and messy and complicated, but now he wasn’t so sure.

His fellow ranger continued. “Hey, isn’t that Selah’s sister?” He pointed in the direction of a wooden picnic table not too far off in the distance, where the young woman sat on the table with her feet on the wooden bench seat, watching them.

While he sometimes searched the early morning horizons for any sign of a blue hot-air balloon, this sight was an unexpected one. “How long do I have until the interview?” he asked the crew.

The cameraman glanced at his smartwatch. “’Bout twenty-eight minutes.”

“Okay, give me a minute.”

He shoved his hands in his pocket as he strolled to the picnic table, but not before he heard the cameraman say to someone, “He’s coming back before seven, right?”

When Hailey noticed him approaching, she appeared somewhat sheepish, but gave him a small smile. “Hi.”

“A little early, isn’t it?” Hikers at this hour weren’t unusual for the park, as they opened at dawn, but Hailey didn’t give the impression she was there for hiking.

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