Playboy Pilot(78)
When the noise stopped, I continued, “All this time we could have been together. I could have been the one to share in it with you. Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“The baby! Did you do it? Did you go through with it?”
She shook her head slowly and whispered, “No.”
A headache split through my head. “No?”
“No.”
“You mean to tell me, that all of this…” I paused to compose myself. “Happened…for nothing?” Rubbing my temples, I said, “I don’t even know what to say to you. I’m numb.” I looked down at the floor incredulously before meeting her gaze again. “You couldn’t get pregnant, or you couldn’t go through with it?”
“Can we go somewhere else to talk about this, away from all these people?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I have a car parked in the garage.”
“Alright.” Grabbing my travel bag, I followed Kendall to the spot where her older Ford Explorer SUV was parked.
We got in and sat in silence until she started talking.
“I went to Germany, spent some time with Hans and Stephen after I left you at the airport lounge. I was supposed to go home, get my things and go back. I did end up going back to Dallas and packing some stuff. I had a return ticket to Germany, but while I was at the airport, I just decided that I couldn’t go through with it, couldn’t bring a baby into this world for the wrong reasons. Moreover, I couldn’t bring a baby into this world and give it up. The money stopped mattering long before that point, I think. The inheritance didn’t mean anything anymore.”
“Why didn’t you come to me at that point?”
“I was afraid. I didn’t think I could handle what I thought was happening with you and that woman. It was just so devastating.”
I’d chosen not to tell her I visited the ranch in Texas. I didn’t want to divert from the issue at hand, which was finding out what the hell she’d been doing for the past eleven months.
“So, you didn’t go to Germany. Where did you go?”
“I was feeling so lost. It felt like it was the lowest point of my entire life. The only place I felt like going was back to that beach in Rio.”
My heart started to beat faster. “You went to Rio?”
“Yes. I stayed with Maria Rosa.”
What?
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“She never told me.”
“I know. I made her swear to never tell you I was there. There was a boarder who spoke English who was translating for me the entire time. Even though it scared the shit out of me, I asked Maria to read me, to tell me what I should do with the rest of my life.”
“What did she say?”
“It translated to the answer is in the sky.”
Holy shit.
With my jaw dropped, I let her continue.
“I thought long and hard about what that could possibly mean. The first thing I assumed was that she was telling me to go back to you. But I couldn’t do that. On my flight back to the states, I thought about how I didn’t really feel like I belonged anywhere. I became envious of you, because for the most part, your job didn’t require you to be in one place. That was exactly what I needed at that point in my life. I needed to fly, to travel, to live…to find myself. But I also needed enough money to survive. Then, it clicked. The answer is in the sky. A few days later, from a hotel room in Texas, I started researching flight attendant school, entering training a month later. After six weeks, I was hired, and because I’m newer, they stuck me on the commuter route from New York to Boston. I keep an apartment here in Everett, but I don’t spend a lot of time in it. I fly standby whenever I can to visit other places. I basically wander.”
Wow.
“Forgive me Kendall, but this is just a hard pill to swallow. You left me in an airport lounge, with my heart ripped to fucking shreds, so that you could basically fly around all day, like a shell of a person running away from life. Jeez…that sounds awfully fucking familiar to me.”
“I’ve basically become you.”
“Have you fucked that pilot?”
“No!”
The thought of her with anyone gave me murderous urges. Something in the air shifted as we stared at each other, and in that moment, I just needed to touch her, to feel her lips against mine before any other words were exchanged. Without thinking it through, I placed my hand on her knee and squeezed it. She closed her eyes and bent her head back upon the simple touch. Her breathing quickened, and I took my hand and placed it around the back of her head, pulling her into me and devouring her mouth.
The kiss was fervent and desperate, different from all of the others we’d had before. This one was releasing nearly a year of pent-up emotions and sexual starvation—for me, at least. I prayed it was the same for her—that she hadn’t been with anyone.