Page 285 of The Lies We Play

The glance that checks without checking. The small shift of his mouth when Derek straightens. The pause Derek gives him in return, as if there is an entire conversation tucked into the space between ready and almost.

Derek gestures toward the sitting area. “We’re wheels-up in four minutes. Buckle up for takeoff. After that, walk around as you like. Galley is yours. Couch is yours. Wi-Fi will come on at cruising altitude. There’s a satellite phone in the cabinet by your seat if you prefer it. Anything you need, press the call button. I’m the co-pilot⁠—”

“You’re not co-piloting, babe,” Finnegan says. “You’re my plus one.”

“Same thing,” Derek says, and laughs under his breath. “Your cousin Lang sending you to do his bidding on your own was very . . .”

He looks at me, then back at Finnegan.

“I’m not a fan.”

“Two of his kids are sick,” Finnegan says. “Ours are healthy, and Piper has everything under control.”

Derek gives him a look that says this isn’t the point, and that also I love you too much to fight about it before takeoff.

Finnegan shrugs and looks at me. “The wife always has everything under control. Or our in-laws are there.”

It doesn’t take me long to do the math.

A wife.

Ours.

In-laws.

Children.

A life built with more than two hands holding it up.

The realization moves through me quietly, then hurts more than it should. Not because they have it. I don’t resent them—that. I'm not that far gone.

It hurts because once, I had everything.

Two men.

A plan.

A future that had started to feel less impossible every time one of us said when instead of if.

Now I have a bag, a burner phone, and a pastry I may never eat.

Who knows what waits for me on the other side of this trip?

“Ready to head home, Ms. Crane?” Derek asks.

“Call me Livia,” I say, instead of correcting him that my home is Italy.

Or was.

Or that I don’t know exactly where I belong anymore.

“Livia,” he says with a nod.

“Thank you, both, for helping us,” I add, because ‘thank you’ is the only sentence I have that doesn’t leak grief.

“No need to thank us,” Finnegan says from near the cockpit.

Derek nods toward the back. “Once we reach cruising altitude, the flight attendant will come through and help you settle. Food, tea, anything you need. Until then, buckle in.”