Page 63 of Wild Card 13

And immediately discovered a huge problem.

There was only one seat left.

Unfortunately for me, it sat almost directly across from mine.

I closed my eyes briefly. When I opened them again, the seat had not magically disappeared. Neither had Lucy.

"Well," Marco announced loudly from three rows away, apparently spotting her at the exact same moment. "This flight just became significantly more attractive."

Lucy didn't even look up. "Good afternoon, Marco," she sighed.

The man actually put a hand over his heart. "I love when you say my name."

"That feels like something you should keep to yourself," Lucy hissed under her breath.

Jonah barked out a laugh. Zee nearly choked on a pretzel. Marco looked delighted. I wanted to throw him through the emergency exit.

Lucy reached her seat a moment later. The one directly within my line of sight. The one I was now going to spend the next three hours pretending not to stare at.

Fantastic.

She slid into the leather chair smoothly and immediately reached into her tote bag. A book appeared.

I stared. Then stared some more. Because apparently my life was a joke.

Three weeks.

Three weeks of seeing her around the arena.

Three weeks of pretending I didn't notice things.

And somehow this hit harder.

The book wasn't special. It wasn't even a book I recognized.

It was the fact that she opened it before we'd even finished boarding. No phone. No laptop. No scrolling. Just reading.

Exactly the same way she'd done it when we were sixteen. When she'd spent entire afternoons curled into coffee shop chairs while I tried unsuccessfully to distract her every six minutes.

The memory arrived unexpectedly. Sharp enough to sting.

Lucy crossed one leg over the other and disappeared into the pages without a second thought. Like she couldn't feel me looking. Like she didn't know. Like I wasn't sitting twenty feet away having a completely abnormal reaction to seeing my ex-girlfriend for the first time in an environment where she absolutely did not belong.

Lucy turned a page.

Then another.

Then another.

Completely oblivious. Or pretending to be. And if she was pretending, she was a hell of a lot better at it than I was.

I sank deeper into my seat and glanced toward the window. New York suddenly felt a very long way away.

The plane began taxiing a few minutes later. Seatbelts clicked. The cabin lights dimmed slightly.

Outside, snow drifted across the runway beneath floodlights.

The flight settled into the strange rhythm road trips always found eventually.