43

Clyde is already at the airport when I arrive. He doesn’t call out to me but instead turns his back and leans against a luggage cart. I brush up beside him and allow him to set an envelope in my hand. I slide it up my sleeve until it’s concealed.

“Everything you need is here,” he says. “Someone will be in touch soon.”

And then he’s gone. Just like that. Leaving me alone.

I’ve never been inside an airport, never flown on a plane before, but I manage to get myself into a bathroom stall and examine the envelope. Inside I find a passport with my photo and the name Helen Henry below it. She’s twenty and from Buffalo, New York. There’s a new cell phone, several thousand in cash, and boarding passes for a flight to Fiji.

Numb, with my head hazy, I stumble through the airport security, find my way to a gate, board the flight. It’s when I’m sitting still, my head resting against the seat, that I nearly panic. Am I going to see my sister again? What about Dominic? Or Justice or… What the hell am I doing here?

A flight attendant walks by, and I tug at her sleeve, gripping onto it. “Have you locked the doors yet?”

She studies me for a moment and then smiles. “First time flying?”

I release her and nod.

“Don’t worry—it’s easier than it looks.” She pats my shoulder and then moves forward to stuff a bag into an overhead compartment.

I sink back in my seat, filled with a million thoughts, with unshed tears. I want to go back. To Holden, to Harper. To Miles. I close my eyes and try not to think about earlier that morning, of Miles and me tangled together in his bed. It was everything it should be, the start of something wonderful and new between us, and yet it was also goodbye. I knew it deep down in my gut but ignored it. I lean my head against the window and allow the weight of this broken heart wedged between my ribs to steamroll over me.

A warm body lands in the seat beside me and I breathe evenly, attempting to not seem like a depressed broken-hearted teenage girl.

“Helen, right?” a voice says from the empty seat.

A familiar voice.

My eyes fly open and sure enough, it’s real. He’s real. Miles. “What are you doing here?”

He glances over one shoulder and then leans his head close to mine. “I was just thinking about how much I hated that feeling of missing you…seeing you again and not knowing for how long. And when I told my dad this, he just said to leave.”

I’m confused and hopeful and way too many things to speak at first. I tangle my fingers in his. “Can you, though? Leave?”

“I should have done this in the first place,” he says, kissing me quickly on the mouth. “Should have left the grown-ups to take care of things.”

Despite my shock, I can’t help but say, “You might be a kid, but I’m twenty.”

Miles laughs, kisses me again.

The plane rumbles beneath us, and I stiffen. “What was that?”

“Relax, it’s just the engine.” He straightens in his seat but keeps our fingers laced together.

We pull away from the gate, and I watch the airport grow farther away. “Will we be able to go back?”

“Yes.” Miles lifts our linked hands to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “I promise.”

“And we’re going somewhere safe?” I ask.

“The safest.” He looks at me again, holding my gaze until my face heats up.

“What?” I demand.

“I love you,” he blurts out. “I should have said it before.”

“Me, too,” I rush to say, and then I kiss him long enough to get a look from the flight attendant. Once the cabin is secure, the plane finally lifts into the air. I squeeze Miles’s hand until it’s numb, I’m sure. I watch the world get smaller and smaller below us and wish that I could talk to my friends, my family one more time. I lean against Miles, feel his arm wrap around me. I glance up at him. “Promise you won’t jump out of these windows?”

He laughs again. “I promise. You get to keep me around for a while.”

“A long con,” I say. “This should be fun.”