Page 53 of Freak Show

Ari followed us onto the plane, her eyes wide as she shuffled along with everyone else.

When we got to the first set of seats on the left of the plane, I pushed her in gently and pointed to the chairs.

She took in all the people she was passing as well as giving back smiles to their curious stares.

In all, I wasn’t surprised when she took the window seat and put me between her and the rest of the team.

Her eyes were wide and intense as she stared around the airplane.

We had a nice plane. One that really resembled some of the planes that you took for the long haul that had the individual compartments with the sides that moved up offering privacy. The seat looked like a pod of sorts and went from a normal looking chair to a bed with a few clicks of a button.

“Where to first?” she asked curiously once she was seated, wiggling her butt in a very cute way. “I forgot.”

“Pittsburgh, Seattle, then Oakland, California,” I answered.

We took my usual seats, and Titus took his across from me before putting his headphones on and blocking everything out—he didn’t do well on planes.

Ari watched with wide eyes as everyone loaded into their chairs, her eyes straying to Joe time and time again.

“Who is that?” Ari asked, eyes wide.

Joe had his infamous scowl on his face. Something in which he never used to have before what the team liked to refer to as the ‘incident’ occurred.

CARISTONIA

“That’s Joe Hoyt,” Slone murmured. “Don’t talk to him. He’s in a perpetual bad mood after his divorce.”

I looked at this ‘Joe Hoyt’ dude.

He looked like he was angry.

Angry, and hella sexy in his suit.

“I feel like there’s some really juicy story about this divorce,” I murmured, studying the older man who looked like he could peel paint with his glare.

He was tall. Really tall, with silvering blonde hair that made him look amazing.

In the last few years, I’d really transitioned from thinking that older men were gross, to thinking they were super-hot.

And Joe Hoyt really had it going on.

Then again, so did Slone.

When he’d walked out in that suit earlier, I’d nearly had a heart attack. Hell, I still wasn’t convinced that I didn’t have a heart attack seeing as how my heartrate had skyrocketed when I’d gotten my first glimpse of the sexy man in all black.

Dressed down, he looked great. Dressed up? Wow.

Just wow.

“Joe Blow, you’re in my chair.”

I looked up to find every single man that’d come in wearing a suit earlier now openly changing out of said suits into shorts and a t-shirt.

I sank down until the only person in my line of sight was the woman standing up next to Joe’s extra seat that was open beside him.

The woman was around his age standing at the edge of his chair glaring at him.

“Jolene,” he said carefully, almost as if he was trying to control his temper. “I swear to Christ, we go through this every single time. Your chair is in the front with all the other personnel.”

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