Chapter 18: Escape Velocity
The jet’s engine hum was a low, steady thrum that vibrated up through the soles of Pedro’s shoes. He watched Cynna stare out the window, her forehead resting against the cool plexiglass. She’d been quiet since they left the tarmac, since the driver navigated away from the paparazzi scrum outside their building with a professional disregard for traffic laws. The marks on her skin were hidden under a loose linen shirt, but he could still see them in his mind’s eye. Brands. Questions.
“Champagne?” he asked, hovering near the polished galley bar. The bottle sat in a chiller, beaded with condensation. A prop for a different kind of scene.
“It’s nine in the morning,” she said, not turning.
“It’s five PM in Santorini. We’re technically traveling towards evening.” He popped the cork anyway. The sound was absurdly loud in the pressurized cabin. He filled two flutes, the bubbles rushing up in frantic, celebratory streams. He carried them over, sitting in the seat facing hers. He placed one glass on her table. “To perceived betrayals.”
Her eyes cut to him, sharp. Then, a flicker of something else—exhausted humor. The corner of her mouth twitched. She took the glass. “You’re an ass.”
“I am,” he agreed, clinking his flute gently against hers. They both drank. The champagne was bone-dry, crisp. It tasted like escape, or the expensive imitation of one.
The jet hit a patch of turbulence. It was sudden, a series of quick, jarring drops that made the glasses tremble in their hands. The fasten seatbelt sign dinged on overhead.
Cynna’s knuckles were white around the stem of her flute. She wasn’t afraid of flying. She was afraid of the freefall, the loss of control. He saw it in the rigid line of her shoulders.
He unbuckled his own belt. “Pedro, sit down,” she said, her voice tense.
He ignored her, setting his glass down. The plane shuddered again. He stepped over, his balance shifting with the movement of the cabin, and sank to his knees on the carpeted floor between her seat and the window. He looked up at her. The sunlight from the window haloed her, turned the edges of her hair to fire.
“You asked me a question,” he said. The engine noise filled the space where his words faltered. “On the floor. You asked if I loved you, or if I just saw a mess to fix.”
Her breath hitched. She didn’t look away.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice rough. “I am on my knees in a shaking airplane. I am terrified. Not of the turbulence. Of you. Of your silence. Of the fucking abyss I put between us because I was too scared to say no to a friend and too stupid to see I was saying no to you.”
He took her free hand. It lay limp in his. He pressed it to his chest, over his heart. It hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird. “Feel that? That’s you. That’s the mess. That’s the love. It’s all the same frantic, messy, fucking terrified beat. I don’t get to separate them. I look at you and I see my best mistake and my only redemption. I see the woman I would burn every other bridge for, even if she’s the one holding the match.”
A tear escaped, tracing a path through the faint dusting of powder on her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.
The plane stabilized, the ride smoothing into a gentle cruise. The seatbelt sign went off. The quiet returned, deeper now.
“I love you,” he whispered, the words finally bare, stripped of any theatricality. “Not the idea of you. Not the you before Maya. The you right now. The one who claws and cries and asks the hard questions. The one who is so angry she shines with it. I love you, Cynna. And I am so sorry that my love has been a thing that hurt you.”l
She pulled her hand from his chest, but only to set the champagne glass down with a soft click. Then she cradled his face. Her thumbs brushed over his cheekbones, his stubble. Her gaze was a physical weight, searching, assessing.
“Say it again,” she said.
“I love you.”
“Without the apology attached.”
He swallowed. “I love you.”
She leaned down and kissed him. It was nothing like the violence of the night before. This was slow, deep, a tasting. Champagne and salt. A verification. He sank into it, his hands coming up to grip her waist, anchoring himself. When she pulled back, her forehead rested against his.
“We’re going to Greece,” she murmured, her lips brushing his as she spoke. “And you’re not going to look at your phone. You’re not going to take calls from lawyers. You’re not going to say her name.”
“I won’t.”
“It’s just saltwater and skin. For two weeks. You and me. We’ll eat tomatoes that taste like sun. We’ll swim in water so blue it doesn’t look real. We’ll sleep tangled in sheets and forget what day it is.”
“Yes.”
“And then,” she said, pulling back to look at him, her eyes clear now, resolved, “we go back. We face it. The trial. The headlines. The fucking ‘perceived betrayal.’ Together. Not you protecting me. Not me screaming at you. Beside each other. You swear?”
He saw the strategy in it. Not just a vacation. A recalibration. A deliberate, conscious storing of light before walking back into the dark. It was more than he’d dared hope for.
“I swear,” he said, the vow settling in his bones.
She kissed him once more, soft and final. “Good. Now get off the floor, you dramatic bastard. And pour me more champagne. I’ve decided it’s definitely evening.”
He laughed, the sound strange and welcome in his own ears. He stood, his knees protesting, and fetched the bottle. As he refilled her glass, she turned back to the window, where the endless blue stretched out, holding the promise of a different kind of horizon.
“The water there,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “It’s supposed to be so clear, you can see straight down to the bottom. No shadows. Just light, all the way down.”
He followed her gaze, the jet soaring towards the sun. For the first time in months, the future didn’t feel like a cliff edge. It felt like a horizon line, distant but sharp, waiting for them to reach it.