Page 49 of Wells

"Locke! You're not going to believe this. I'm flying on the Stone Intermodal PJ today for an overnight in Florida!"

"Come again."

"Wells has some kind of security thing there, and he wants me to go so we can work on this project we have due next week."

"Sounds like he ginned up a reason to get you to himself for a night."

"No. Really? Do you think that's what this is?"

"Yep."

"Listen, I've got to go. The car's picking me up in forty-five, and I still need to pack. Sorry I'll miss our Saturday yoga."

"Go live your best life, girl. Yoga will be here when you're done."

I end the call and run in.

The company jet sits like a sleek beast on the private tarmac. I climb the narrow stairs with my bag slung over one shoulder. Inside, cream leather seats face each other across a polished wood table. The cabin smells faintly chemical, the air already pressurized.

Wells sits in the far seat, laptop open, his jacket folded next to him. He doesn't look up when I drop into the seat across from him.

A flight attendant appears long enough to offer drinks. I take water. Wells takes nothing. She disappears into the front of the plane, and the door seals shut with a pneumatic hiss.

"The biscuits are supposedly good. I never eat on the plane, but I wanted to mention it."

Biscuits on a plane? Okay, that's something. This is my first time on a private jet, so I'm going with it.

The engines hum as the world outside the window starts to slide backward.

The cabin is quiet, the kind of quiet money buys. There are no strangers, no buffers. Just me and Wells and the sky pulling us somewhere else.

I watch the city drop away beneath us. The Mississippi uncoils silver through the grid. The buildings shrink into geometry and then into texture and then into nothing. We climb through a thin layer of clouds and break into open blue.

Wells closes his laptop. He leans back in his seat and stares out the window. The light catches the sharp line of his profile. His hands rest flat on the armrests, controlled even in stillness.

He smells like cigarette smoke, like he always does up close. Normally, that would repulse me on a plane. On him, it goes straight through me, low in my belly, and I've stopped trying to understand why.

I wonder if the no-smoking rule applies to private jets, too.

I've never seen him outside the office. The context shift makes him less familiar, less my boss, and more a man in a suit on a plane with no desk between us and no meeting to anchor the reason we're breathing the same air.

My pulse ticks higher without permission. He turns his head, and his eyes meet mine.

"You good?"

"I'm good. Just a little giddy because I've never done this before."

"Flown?"

"Private."

He nods once. His gaze holds a beat longer than necessary, and then drops back to the window.

I pull my laptop out and try to focus on the file. The numbers blur. I keep catching him at the edge of my vision, how his shoulders drop when he exhales, his fingers tapping once against the armrest before they still.

The plane levels out. The flight attendant reappears with coffee neither of us asked for, and she offers me the biscuits. Wells takes his black. I wrap my hands around the cup and let the heat ground me, accepting the biscuits since they come so highly recommended.

I sip my coffee and watch the clouds slide past, and try to convince myself this feeling in my chest is just turbulence.