Flying Page 19

  She saw him before he saw her, and was glad of it because it gave her a minute or so to calm herself. This was Matthew, she reminded herself. She already knew him. This was going to be a great visit, she told herself. Stop worrying, Stella.

  He caught sight of her and waved. He pushed through the crowd. And then he was there in front of her.

  He was real.

  They hadn’t talked about how they’d greet each other—who would? But now Stella wished she had asked him if he intended to kiss her. If she should brace herself for a hug, or if they would simply stare at each other with foolish grins painted all over their faces while everyone around them thought they looked like morons.

  Matthew kissed her. A quick peck on the cheek, just at the corner of her mouth. Almost nothing, but then she was in his arms and he was holding her so tight she could barely breathe.

  “Hi,” he said into her ear.

  Stella found her voice. “Hi.”

  They smiled and smiled, and then she pushed up on her tiptoes to angle her mouth across his for a proper kiss. Long, lingering, the quick slip of tongues before she pulled away with flushed cheeks. She hadn’t let go of her carry-on’s handle, and it made standing so close to him a little awkward, but she didn’t want him to let go.

  “Hungry?” Matthew asked.

  “Starving.” Suddenly, she was. She’d woken just before dawn, too anxious to sleep longer than that. Tristan had been at his dad’s already. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, declined food on the plane. Her stomach was in knots, but at the sight of Matthew’s smile, all the tension had begun to drain away.

  He took the handle of her bag from her with one hand, and her hand with his other. Fingers linked, he led her toward the exit. “Breakfast?”

  “I can always eat breakfast,” she told him.

  “I remember.”

  He’d parked in the garage, which was far from empty at this time of morning. Somehow that didn’t matter when he pushed her up against his car and kissed her, hard. Stella’s arms went around his neck, holding him close. The kiss almost bruised her; she didn’t care. They gorged themselves on each other in those few minutes, until her knees got weak and her breath caught so tight in her chest she had to break the kiss or faint.

  Matthew pressed his forehead to hers. “You taste so good. It’s all I’ve been able to think about. Kissing you again.”

  “Wow.” Stella laughed a little self-consciously. “You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.”

  “Breakfast. I promised you breakfast. I’m a terrible host,” he murmured against her mouth.

  “Kiss me just a little longer,” she told him. “And I’ll forgive you.”

  He did kiss her, and more than that. Matthew slipped a hand between them to press between her legs. Swiftly, only for a few seconds, but the pressure sparked pleasure through her, and she shivered. The staccato blare of a passing car horn pushed them apart. Matthew looked a little guilty, maybe embarrassed, and Stella gave a mental chuckle. She’d done more than make out in a parking garage before...but she didn’t want to think about what she’d done with other men now. Not when she was standing with this one.

  He opened the car door for her, and shut it when she got inside. In the few seconds it took him to round the car and get in the driver’s side, Stella stole a glance in the rearview mirror. Her mouth was wet, lipstick a little smeared, but the weariness that had plagued her expression for the past few weeks had vanished. Bright eyes, pink cheeks. She pushed some stray hair out of her eyes and turned toward him as he got in the car.

  “Let’s go, Jeeves!”

  “Call me Alfred,” Matthew said. “It sounds better.”

  “If you’re Alfred, then that makes me Batman.” Stella made a face. “I don’t want to be Batman.”

  “Who doesn’t want to be Batman?” Matthew asked as he backed out of the parking spot and eased his car into the line of others waiting to get out of the garage.

  He drove a BMW, Stella realized as she looked at the dashboard and the logo on the glovebox. She hadn’t noticed before, so busy with his mouth on hers. It didn’t impress her, exactly. But it did sort of surprise her. “You should be Batman. Not me.”

  “Then does that make you Catwoman?” He shot her a grin.

  Stella lifted an eyebrow. “Meow, Bruce Wayne.”

  Matthew was not a patient driver. She saw that within the first few minutes as he muttered about the other cars in line and even flipped off, albeit discreetly below the level of the dashboard, one car that cut him off. What she hadn’t been expecting was that he drove like a Nascar racer with something to prove. Once he hit the highway, it was pedal to the metal and no brakes.

  Stella tucked her fingers into the door handle, squeezing it. Her other hand gripped the side of her seat. With both feet on the floor, staring straight ahead as Matthew wove in and out of traffic, it took everything she had not to “brake” every time he came up too close behind another car.

  * * *

  There aren’t many cars on the road this time of night, and in this weather, but the red flash of taillights up ahead reminds her of the lights on Brad and Janet’s Christmas tree. So do the traffic lights up ahead, glowing green, glowing yellow. The orangish-white of the streetlamps overhead. Everything is bright, everything glows, and she tips her head back against the seat and laughs and laughs at how good the world feels. From the backseat comes the shuffle and grumble of two little boys up way too late past their bedtime.

  “He’s touching me!”

  “He’s looking at me!”

  “He took my guy! Mama, make Tristan give me back my guy!”

  “Gage,” Stella says, twisting in her seat to shake a finger at him. “Can’t you share?”

  Then there is the squeal of brakes, the crunch of metal and glass and everything is cold.

  Everything is dark.

  * * *

  “Hey. You okay?”

  She’d closed her eyes against the sudden wave of nausea brought on by memory, too much coffee, not enough sleep, not enough food. Stella looked at Matthew, intending to smile and lie, but the ache in her fingers from where she gripped the door handle distracted her. The road ahead of her swarmed with cars and the flash of taillights, but it wasn’t night. The roads weren’t slick with ice.

  Matthew wasn’t going to rear-end a pickup truck and, in turn, be sideswiped by a tractor trailer.

  And there were no children in the backseat.

  He eased to a stop at a red light at the end of an off-ramp and turned in his seat to put a hand on her leg. “Stella?”

  She jumped at the touch, her breathing slowing through force of will, and gave him a weak smile. “You drive really fast.”

  “I do?” The light turned green, and Matthew took his foot off the brake, his attention still on her.

  “Eyes on the road,” Stella snapped. It was too harsh, she heard that at once. It embarrassed her, and she shut her mouth with a painful click of her teeth.

  Matthew had been reaching for her, but now he put both hands on the wheel with a nod, and focused his gaze on the road in front of them. They drove in silence for the next five minutes or so, getting away from the highway and onto local city streets. Each minute that ticked by left her feeling more and more embarrassed about her outburst, until by the time he’d pulled into the parking lot of the diner he’d taken her to last time, Stella was full of anxiety again.

  “I’m sorry—” she said as he turned off the ignition, but his mouth on hers stopped more words from coming out.

  “No. I’m sorry.” Matthew cupped the back of her neck, his fingers beneath her hair. “You told me about the car accident. I should’ve thought about that. My wife tells me all the time I drive like a maniac.”

  Stella didn’t miss the word wife, but she didn’t point it
out. She let him kiss her. “I’ve gotten a lot better. When I’m driving, I never have a problem. It’s only when I’m in the passenger seat.”

  “I understand.” He pushed her hair off her face and over her shoulder.

  He didn’t, not really. He couldn’t. Nobody could, not even Jeff, and he’d been in the car too.

  “It’s about being in control,” she told him. “When I’m driving, I feel like I’m in control, so it’s okay. But when I’m not, sometimes it all comes back.”

  Matthew didn’t say anything, which was the perfect response. He kissed her again, lightly. Then he took both her hands and simply held them for a few minutes until they stopped shaking. “Ready to go in? Or we could go someplace else.”

  “No,” Stella said, linking her fingers in his. “This place is perfect.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “I need to grab a drink.” Matthew shaded his eyes against the sun, looking out over the tents and stages set up all along the Riverwalk. “Will you be okay here?”

  Stella nodded, relaxing in the sunshine. The breeze off the water was brisk and would’ve been too chilly without the fierce overhead burn. She was glad for the sweater she’d tied around her waist but didn’t need right now. “Nope. I’m good. I’ll wait here for you. Enjoy the music.”

  It wasn’t her sort of music, actually. The Riverwalk was featuring some kind of indie rock festival along with charity and business booths, as well as carnival-type foods like corn dogs and fried dough. But it had been hard finding this spot on one of the benches, and she didn’t want to give it up.

  Matthew gave her a quick kiss and headed off into the crowd, where she lost sight of him after a minute or so. Stella stretched her legs, nodding along with the music and watching the people come and go. Five minutes passed. Then another five, and though she searched for him, she couldn’t find Matthew. She tapped out a quick text to him, then checked her emails, her Connex page, read a few of the blogs she liked to follow. Still no Matthew, and no reply to her text either.

  When almost half an hour had passed, she got up from the bench, squinting into the brightness to see if she could catch a glimpse of his red-and-black plaid shirt. Still nothing. She checked her phone to see if she’d missed his reply, but nothing had come through.

  For a moment, the pancakes she’d stuffed herself with an hour or so before threatened to make a reappearance. What if something had happened to him? It was unlikely in the middle of a music festival, in broad daylight, but...

  Stella’s high school friend Denise’s mother, Rosemarie, had epilepsy. Growing up, Stella had spent many nights sleeping over at Denise’s house, many hours hanging out in her rec room watching MTV and playing board games. She’d seen Rosemarie have several seizures, all of them scary, even though her family treated them pretty matter-of-factly. But one thing had always stood out in her mind, not something she’d seen but a story Denise had told her about how once Rosemarie had experienced a seizure while shopping at the local mall alone. She’d been seizure-free for several years by that point, able to drive on her own. She’d gone out looking for some new curtains and hadn’t come home for close to six hours, because after having the seizure she’d been unable to tell the EMTs who she was, and someone had been shitty enough to steal her purse while she lay fallen.

  What if something like that had happened to Matthew? How would she know? Pacing, Stella kept her phone in her hand, sending another text that was quite a bit less casual than the first had been.

  WHERE ARE YOU?

  She saw him then, cutting through the crowd with a look of determination on his face that scared her only a little less than how long it had taken him to return. He saw her looking for him and headed for her. He had an empty water bottle in his hand, which he tossed into a garbage can as he passed it.

  “Are you okay?” she cried. “I was getting really worried.”

  Matthew looked over his shoulder. “Yeah. Sorry. I—”

  She was so relieved, she hugged him. Hard. He hugged her back, after a few seconds. Stella pulled away to look into his face.

  “I texted you, and when you didn’t answer—”

  “Oh. Shit. I didn’t hear it. I’m sorry, Stella. I ran into someone and couldn’t get away.”

  She stepped back at that. “You were gone almost forty-five minutes. You didn’t think I might be worried? You could’ve texted me. I’d have come to meet you.”

  His expression told her that would not have been an option.

  Stella’s shoulders straightened. Her jaw tightened. “You could’ve texted me to tell me you were caught up. At least answered my texts to let me know you were all right.”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. At least he looked sorry. “I told you, I didn’t hear my phone.”

  As if on cue, his phone chirruped with a truly obnoxious ring tone. Stella looked at his pocket. Matthew pulled out his phone and swiped the screen to check the message. She waited, eyebrows raised, for him to say something, but all he did was put his phone back in his pocket.

  “You didn’t hear my text,” she said.

  Matthew looked guilty. “I... Your number... It connects to an app on my phone. I don’t always have it set to notifications, so I missed your messages. You’re right, I should’ve texted, but I was... It would’ve been noticeable if I whipped out my phone and started texting. It would’ve been hard to explain.”

  “An app?” That would explain why he had a Nevada phone number but lived in Chicago. The rest of it didn’t take much more figuring out either. “It was your ex, wasn’t it?”

  “We’re all still on the same phone plan. It was complicated for her to set up her own, and we have shared minutes and I keep meaning to get her on her own plan, but I just haven’t yet.”

  “And you don’t want her seeing that you’re calling or texting me. Because she checks that sort of thing?”

  His face said it all. Stella blew out a long, irritated breath. She forced herself to take a few more steps away from him, untying her sweater and shrugging into it, because now the wind was starting to give her the chills. Or maybe it was her anger. She hadn’t been here more than four hours, and she was already calculating if she could make it back to the airport and catch a flight home.

  “Hey. Hey, Stella. Don’t.” Matthew took her by the upper arm, turning her to face him. “I’m sorry. Really.”

  “I understand if you didn’t want to parade me around in front of her, but it’s incredibly rude of you to leave me here for all that time without even a message. I’m your guest, Matthew. If nothing else, I’m that.”

  Anger flashed in his eyes, but she didn’t care. Let him get defensive. She was pissed off, and not afraid to tell him.

  “No. I didn’t want to parade you around, as you put it. Caroline had the girls, and it would’ve been ugly. That’s all. Not just for them, but for you too. I didn’t want to subject you to that. When you meet them,” Matthew said, “I don’t want it to be at random, okay? Is that hard to understand?”

  Stella’s lip curled a little. “Oh, no, it’s crystal clear. I understand it just fine. But the point you seem to be missing is that I don’t care if you ran into your ex-wife. You could’ve run into your fifth-grade schoolteacher, your priest, your chiropractor or the guy who cleans your lobby. I don’t care who it was. You left me. Sitting. For forty-five minutes. Without telling me where you were. I thought something had happened to you.”

  She shook her head, crossing her arms to keep herself from pacing or making more of a scene than she already was.

  “You’re right.” He softened, reaching for her. “Shit, Stella. I’m really sorry.”

  She softened too. She let him pull her close, though she didn’t offer her mouth for a kiss. He looked sorry. He sounded sorry. The wary part of her still wanted to go home, but the other part, that darker
, greedy part, had not yet had her fill of him.

  “You want to get out of here?” Matthew didn’t look over his shoulder as though he were being pursued, but that was the vibe she got from him.

  Stella, who’d lost her taste for sitting in the sun, nodded. “Sure.”

  In the car, he didn’t turn on the ignition. He sat staring straight ahead for a minute or so while Stella waited for him to speak. She wasn’t going to pry it out of him, whatever it was.

  Finally Matthew turned to her. “The divorce has been really hard on her.”

  Stella said nothing.

  “It’s hard on everyone,” he added. “I’m sure you know what it’s like.”

  “Yes,” she said warily. “But I don’t still share a cell phone plan with my ex-husband. Nor would I ever have to hide from him who I’m texting or calling or visiting, quite frankly.”

  “What about your son?” Matthew said sharply. “Would you just randomly introduce him to strangers, just because you’re...”

  She waited for him to finish, thinking that if he said “fucking them,” she’d get out of the car and go home, even if she had to leave her bag behind.

  “My girls are young,” Matthew said instead. “And I haven’t dated anyone since the divorce. Caroline hasn’t either. I guess neither of us wants to be the first one to bring anyone around.”

  “But you are divorced, right? I mean, it’s official. Papers signed and everything?”

  “Yes.” He shrugged.

  “And she didn’t want it?”

  “No,” Matthew said, looking surprised. “She’s the one who asked for it.”

  Stella sat back in her seat, arms crossed. This relationship was too new for this sort of drama. This relationship, she reminded herself, wasn’t even a relationship, really.

  “I’m sorry, Stella. Really sorry. I’ve been a dick.”