Chapter 12: The Reckoning
The hum of the jet engines filled the silence he’d created. His hand was still covering hers on the cool tabletop, a barrier over a tremor she couldn’t quite suppress. Her pupils were wide, dark pools in the dim cabin light, but her expression was smooth marble. The kind they’d been pressed against just days ago.
“Statistically unlikely isn’t zero,” Matt said, his voice lower now. He withdrew his hand, the loss of contact feeling more significant than the touch itself. He picked up his whiskey, took a slow drink, letting the burn ground him. “It’s a simple question, Dasha. Yes or no.”
She finally looked away, out the window at the consuming blackness. “No.”
The word was so quiet it was almost eaten by the engine’s drone. It landed in his gut like a stone.
“Okay,” he said, after a beat too long. He swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “Okay.”
“‘Okay’?” She turned back, a flicker of that sharp wit surfacing through the shock. “That’s the executive summary? I’d hate to see your notes on a script crisis.”
“What do you want me to say?” He put the glass down with a soft click. “Panic? That seems redundant. You’re clearly already there.” He nodded at her hands, now folded tightly in her lap.
“I’m not panicking. I’m calculating variables.”
“Including the variable where you might be carrying my child?” The words, out loud in the hushed cabin, sounded absurd and terrifyingly possible.
She didn’t flinch. “It’s one variable among many. Timing. Biology. It’s a low-probability event.”
“You sound like a medical textbook.” He couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice. It wasn’t anger at her. It was anger at the situation, at his own lack of control, first in the steam of the shower and now here, thirty thousand feet in the air. “This isn’t a logistics meeting. This is the consequence of fucking without thinking.”
“I was thinking plenty,” she shot back, her composure thinning. “You were the one who didn’t seem interested in a conference call about contraceptive options at the time.”
He leaned back, the leather seat creaking softly. A faint, humorless smile touched his lips. “Fair.” He ran a hand over his jaw. The stubble was rough. He felt unshaven in more ways than one. “So. The plan.”
“There is no ‘plan’. There’s a wait. There’s a test. There’s a result.” She recited it like a checklist.
The casual corporate phrasing should have been a relief. It just made him feel colder. “You’ll handle it.”
“It’s my body. And my job, ostensibly, is to handle things for you. Even this.” She reached for her tablet, a clear dismissal. The screen glowed, casting a blue light on her pale face.
He watched her. The efficient tap of her fingers. The tight line of her shoulders. He remembered the exact feel of those shoulders under his hands, the give of her skin under his teeth. The way she’d said you in the shower, like it was being ripped from her throat. This was the same woman, now walled up behind bullet-points and probability.
The plane hit another patch of turbulence, a sudden, brief drop that made his stomach lurch. Her knuckles went white on the edge of the tablet.
“Scared of flying?” he asked, his tone deliberately lighter, shifting the ground.
“I’m scared of crashing,” she said, not looking up. “Flying is just the tedious prelude.”
He laughed, a short, surprised exhale. “Always with the bleak optimism.”
She glanced at him then, and for a second, the mask was just transparent enough. He saw the fear, not of the plane, but of the freefall they were already in. It was there and gone, replaced by bland focus. “The briefing for the morning meeting with the foundation heads is updated. You should review the donor profiles. The Al-Farsi family is particularly sensitive about photographic permissions.”
And just like that, they were back on script. Assistant and principal. The shower, the dresser, the unspoken terror hanging between them—all filed away under ‘miscellaneous.’
He took the tablet she offered. Their fingers didn’t brush. She’d timed it perfectly.
For the next hour, they worked in a silence that was no longer comfortable. He scanned documents, made curt notes. She answered emails, her typing a quiet, constant rhythm. The space between their seats felt vast, charged with everything they weren’t saying.
When the pilot announced their initial descent into Dubai, the cabin lights brightened. Dasha gathered her things with mechanical precision.
“The car will be on the tarmac. We’ll go straight to the hotel. You have a two-hour window before the first dinner.” She stood, smoothing her trousers. She looked impeccable. Untouchable.
He remained seated, looking up at her. “Dasha.”
She paused, her hand on the headrest of her seat. “Matt.”
“However this goes,” he said, choosing the words with more care than he’d chosen any line in years, “we will figure it out.”
Her breath caught, just a tiny hitch he might have imagined. The professional mask held, but it was strained at the seams. She gave a single, tight nod.
“Understood.”
She turned and walked toward the front of the cabin to speak with the flight attendant. He watched her go, the elegant line of her back, the way she held herself so rigidly. He was hit with a sudden, visceral memory of that same back arched under his hands, slick with shower spray and submission.
He looked down at his own hands. They were steady. He didn’t feel steady.
The wheels of the jet touched down with a shriek of rubber, rushing them toward a city of mirages, and toward a wait that suddenly felt like the only thing in the world.