She slipped the notepad into her purse and put the journals back into the laptop bag. She yawned. She felt completely drained. She reached up and turned off the overhead lights, closed her eyes and, without thinking about it, reached out and placed her left hand in his right. Nathan's hand closed over hers with a reassuring squeeze. A slip of a smile spread over her lips. They both wanted answers to the same questions and she hoped that together they might be able to find them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The layover in Chicago was brutal. The flight attendant woke them shortly before landing as they had not been woken by the pilot's announcement of their impending arrival. Paige had blushed when she saw they were still holding hands. She felt completely foolish. The term school girl sprang to her mind. For his part, Paige wasn't sure if Nathan even noticed. He was still wiped out from the previous days and moments after bringing his seat into the appropriate landing position, he was once again asleep.
The landing went smooth and they taxied to their gate quickly. Paige woke Nathan again once they had opened the door to the terminal. He said nothing, but nodded at the appropriate times and followed her instructions. They were the last to deplane. The terminal was eerily quiet. It was the middle of the night and as such the foot traffic was slim and none of the shops appeared open.
Paige took the tickets from Nathan and looked to see where their connecting flight would board. It turned out they were only a single gate over from where they needed to be. The boarding desk was currently closed. While there were still people moving about the terminal, she noted that there appeared to only be one other passenger waiting for the same flight. A middle-aged woman was curled in a tight ball in the waiting area, fast asleep with her carry-on serving as her pillow.
Nathan nodded toward the woman, indicating that he thought she definitely had the right idea. He picked a row near the boarding area, sat down and quickly joined the other woman in slumber.
Paige wanted to join in on the party, but found she couldn't sit still. She wished the flight had been nonstop. She couldn't say why, but she didn't feel comfortable. She knew it was fear racing through her, but she wasn't sure what she was afraid of. No that wasn't entirely true, she knew plenty of things she was afraid of. She was afraid of finding out the truth. She was afraid of not finding out the truth. She felt afraid of getting back on a plane, which was silly since she used to love to fly. Part of her mind was screaming at her to stay away from Rhode Island. An unnatural desire gripped her and it took everything she had to resist the urge to run screaming down the concourse.
She wiped her sweaty palms on her pants and paced around the boarding area, circling the clusters of chairs again and again.
Did they need to go to Rhode Island? Should they? Maybe they could just go somewhere else. They?
"Are we a they?" she asked herself aloud.
When had she begun to think that way? She still did not believe that she was Nathan's Paige, in fact she was quite sure she wasn't. And yet looking at him asleep in the chair, she couldn't deny that she was starting to feel something for him. But why? The passion with which he had written in the journals was undeniable. She knew that part of her was responding to the raw emotion he had poured out in those words. She found his dedication to the woman he wrote about to be extremely attractive, almost sexy. And speaking of sexy, she had to admit she was more than a little attracted to him physically. But was that it? Was it just that she was attracted to the dedication he showed for his past wife and his cute smile? She didn't think that was it.
She had liked him instantly. She felt she could trust him, as was obvious from all the craziness she had followed him into. She had felt comfortable with him, even when he had scared the hell out of her back...here? She shook her head.
"This is where it all started." She looked around the terminal, what a difference a few days could make. For the life of her she could not remember what gate they had been at for that last flight, but part of her wondered if it hadn't been this very gate. What were the odds?
"Full circle. It started here, so why shouldn't it end here?"
She slapped a hand over her mouth. What had she just said? Why had she said that? Why should it end here? Why did she think it might or that it even should end?
She wiped her trembling hands on her pants again. It felt so hot in here. She felt a rush of warm saliva filling her mouth and darted for the rest room.
The muscles in stomach clenched into hard knots. She kept her eyes closed as she leaned over the sink, her hands gripping the sides tight enough to turn her knuckles white. She spit out mouthful after mouthful of saliva between the dry heaves. The pain in her stomach was enough to bring tears to her eyes.