Page 126 of Boiling Point
She opened her mouth, but I shook my head.
“No one’s dragging you into this. I won’t allow it. They’ll come for me, and I’ll take it. But you—” I laced my fingers through hers. “Your hands stay clean. Got it?”
Her tears brimmed on the ledge but refused to fall. “You think I’d let you take the whole hit for this? That’s not?—”
“It’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
She steadied herself, voice trembling but stubborn. “You don’t get to decide what I can live with. I choose you, Cal. Even if it means choosing the fallout too.”
Silence. The kind that seeps into drywall cracks, baseboard seams, the marrow of old houses built on shifting earth.
I tried to memorize the angle of her jaw in profile, the wary intelligence in her eyes, the pale ring of baby-fine hair at her forehead. Assuming, of course, that one day I’d be asked to reconstruct this moment in painful detail—for a committee, a tribunal, or some future version of myself. Or for the version of her that survived whatever was coming.
She deserved more than memories. More than careful erasures, closed doors, and whispered I-love-yous in the dark.
I kissed the inside of her wrist. Let my lips linger a breath longer than necessary.
Then I looked up. “Take me flying, Gabrielle.”
She blinked. “Flying?”
“You heard me.”
“Now?”
“I’m on leave. It’s not like I’ve got pressing plans.”
She pulled back an inch, like she was checking to see if I was joking. “You mean in a—what did you call it—‘tin can with wings’?”
“Flying tin can,” I corrected softly. “But yeah.”
“Cal…” Her voice dropped. “You hate flying.”
“I do.”
She stared at me, trying to make sense of it. “Then why?”
I gave her the only truth that mattered. “Because fear doesn’t get to decide anymore.”
Chapter 46
Gabrielle
“You know you don’t have to impress me anymore.” My voice echoed in the headset, metallic and oddly detached—a sound I still hadn’t gotten used to. I leveled the plane out of a gentle turn. Above and around us, the cornflower sky stretched like a glass dome, seamless and vast. The heat rising off the earth wrapped around us, thick and close—a sunbaked June embrace.
Cal’s voice crackled through the intercom. “I’ll never stop trying to impress you. Not ever.”
He gripped his harness so tightly his knuckles were white, but he still managed a show of bravado. His hair was mussed from the headset and wind, and I loved him more for the faint sheen of terror on his brow.
I angled the Cessna into a slow climb, the world outside resolving into that private geometry known only to pilots and gods. Heat and light shimmered over Lake Texoma. The air above us was clean—ancient, unjudging.
“You know, for a physicist, you’re showing a tragic lack of faith in Bernoulli’s Principle,” I teased.
“I trust Bernoulli completely. What I don’t trust is how his principle was applied in building this aircraft. That’s why I’m atheoretical physicist. The maths never lie.” He released his grip on the harness long enough to fumble for his pocket. “But…”
“But what?”
“I have complete faith inyou.”
