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SCARLETT

18 Months Ago …

D idn’t I tell you what was going to happen if you decided to be a bad girl again?

The male voice actor’s rasp is like warm honey in my ears. I’ve got my AirPods in to listen to my current audiobook while I’m on this short flight from Burlington, Vermont to Chicago, and it’s starting to get really good.

There are many drawbacks of modern technology. Like having to navigate the guys who inhabit dating apps, to choose a random example from a very long list. But at least the existence of audiobooks playable from your phone is one benefit.

My brow bounces as the narrator describes pulling Valentina flush against his chest, watching the defiance in her eyes melt into need.

How am I being bad? she asks, her voice a coy tease.

This fucking dress, he answers in a strained growl, you must be out of your mind if you think I’m going to let any man see you in it but me.

She fires back, You think just because of what happened last night, you get to tell me what to wear?

Roman chuckles, the sound dripping with arrogance. What happened last night? Oh, you mean …

His words fade as a thin, bouncing sound chimes in my AirPods, indicating that the charge is dying. My lower lip curls in disappointment. I could’ve sworn they were fully charged.

I can still hear the narrator’s voice, though … but it’s different. It sounds quieter, further away, like …

My stomach twists. I’m not the type who gets embarrassed easily, but the thought that just popped into my head has a feeling close to panic slicing through me. I quickly pull the AirPods out of my ears …

And I hear the narrator finish his sentence through the speakers of my phone resting in my lap, spilling out into the plane cabin for anyone near me to hear.

Oh, you mean how I pulled this very same dress above your hips, dropped to my knees, and made you promise that you’d be a good girl from now on if only I let you come all over my face?

My hands shoot to my phone. I fumble it like a hot potato before my motor skills kick in enough to find the pause button and silence the narrator before he drops one of the many synonyms for sex organs that the author liberally sprinkles throughout her scenes.

Once the sound is off, I stay hunched over my phone, my shoulders rolled forward. I have no shame in what I listen to, but that doesn’t mean I’m excited about an entire plane cabin getting an earful.

After a while of letting embarrassment vibrate up and down my back with my gaze pointed to my lap, I bring myself to glance around and see who might be looking at me with judgment in their eyes.

I’m in an aisle seat, so first I look to my left, and feel a wave of relief wash over me as no one’s gawking. The guy sitting to my right, by the window, seemed to be napping already when I took my seat. I just hope he still is. I slide my gaze to the side to check.

No such luck.

My stomach leaps into my mouth when I look to his direction and find a very much awake face staring at me.

Amusement dances in his eyes and etches on his expression, letting me know that he definitely got an earful of what blared from my phone.

That face, by the way? Drop-dead gorgeous.

It’s a collection of hard lines and sharp angles, softened by a full and plush set of lips and the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. The hood of his grey hoodie is pulled over his head, and thick locks of his blonde hair spill down his forehead, curling just above his brow.

If you asked Central Casting for someone to play the heartthrob, golden boy quarterback in some cheesy teen drama, this is the guy they’d send.

Which means he’s not at all my usual type. My taste in men tends to run more in the edgy, tattooed, and irresponsible direction.

Whether or not that’s been a good thing for me, I’ll give a no comment .

“Hey, don’t turn it off just when it’s starting to get good,” he says.

It takes a moment for his words to register with my scrambled brain. When they finally do, a laugh pushes from my chest at the same time blush floods my cheeks.

“Please just wipe the last thirty seconds from your memory,” I groan, keeping my voice low.

“No way, I’m looking for good book recs.” His voice is full of playful humor, and it helps to diffuse some of the embarrassed tension stiffening my shoulders.

“Yeah, you totally look like the mafia romance type,” I snark.

His brow jumps. “ Mafia romance? That’s a thing?”

I laugh, giving him a slow shake of my head. “Oh, you sweet baby,” I say with joking condescension, “the things you don’t know …”

“I didn’t expect to be introduced to the world of mafia romance when I got on this plane today. I don’t think the old woman sitting across the aisle from us was, either.”

Awkward laughter sputters from me, and I hide my face in my hands. “I’d rather pretend she didn’t hear.”

“Oh, she heard, alright,” he says in a conspiratorial whisper. “Something tells me your book made her feel things she hasn’t felt in a long, long time.”

I have to bite back a guffaw even as embarrassment has me cringing so hard I almost vibrate. “You’re not helping,” I tell him.

“Don’t feel bad about what you read,” he answers breezily. “You know, with?—”

He doesn’t get to finish that sentence. Suddenly my stomach’s leaping up my throat again, but for a very different reason.

The cabin lurches wildly, the plane rocked by a wave of the worst turbulence I’ve ever felt. Gasps fill the enclosed space as it shakes. Just when I think it’s calming down, a new tremor hits us like an earthquake in the sky.

My stomach curls into a tight, heavy ball as my anxiety spikes. My knuckles go white, my hands clenching into the armrests.

When the turbulence finally subsides and I’m able to feel something other than panic, I realize how different the armrest to my right feels than the one to my left. It’s firm, but giving. And warm. Like …

I glance down to see that my right hand isn’t clenched around the armrest between me and the window seat; instead, it’s clamped onto the forearm of the guy I was just talking to, my fingertips digging into the muscle that feels hard and dense even through his sleeve.

When I notice, tendrils of heat shoot from my hand and snake through my body, settling low in my center with a tight thrum. The sensation mixes with the adrenaline coursing through my veins to make a buzz of arousal spread through my chest.

I pull my grip away from his forearm. “Sorry,” I say.

He tilts a grin at me. “No problem. That was pretty freaky, huh?”

I blow a heavy breath through my lips. “Yeah, I’ll say.”

“Lane, by the way.” He holds out his right hand.

I slide my hand into his. It’s massive, and the gentle but firm pressure he applies sends sparks skating across me. “Scarlett,” I introduce myself.

“Is Chicago your stop, too, or are you heading off further?”

“Yeah, Chicago’s my stop.” Recalling the reason for this trip throws enough cold water on my mood to douse the sparks on my skin and the heat in my blood stirred by contact with Lane.

Caleb’s face flashes in my mind’s eye. My ex.

A heavy concoction of anger, regret, and more doubt than I’d like to admit rolls through me. I try to push the thought of him and all the emotions I associate with him into a closet in my brain and shove the door closed, but I know it won’t latch shut.

“What are you doing there?” Lane asks.

“Visiting a friend,” I answer truthfully. And running away from the wreckage of a relationship that took way too much from me and that I waited way too long to end. I don’t say that part out loud. “How about you?”

“I’m working as an assistant coach at a summer hockey camp,” he answers. “Gonna be there until early August.”

“Hockey? Not football?”

He cants his head to the side, and his cheek twitches. “Football? You thought I was a football player?”

“You just looked the type. You know,” I wave my hand around, “golden boy football captain. From a small town in the Midwest. Engaged to your high school sweetheart. Maybe a volunteer firefighter or something like that.”

His eyes crinkle while he chuckles. “You’ve spun up quite a story for me in your head.”

Before I can respond, the cabin thrashes with turbulence again. Not as bad this time, but with the severity of the tremor that just rattled us minutes ago fresh in my head, anxiety still goes galloping through me.

This time, I don’t curl my grip into Lane’s beefy forearm. Instead, his palm blankets the back of my hand, his rougher skin warm and reassuring against my own.

“Breathe,” he tells me. His voice steadies me. I unclench my jaw and let my chest expand, pulling in a deep breath before releasing it slowly.

I do it a couple more times.

“Good,” Lane says. An intrusive scenario seeps into my mind: Lane giving me a very different set of instructions, and praising me when I follow them to a tee. I manage to chase it away.

“You know,” Lane says with confident reassurance once the flight becomes smoother. “Turbulence might suck, but it’s actually never caused a plane to crash.”

“Really?” I ask, allowing a flame of relief to flicker in my chest.

Lane shrugs. “I dunno. I made it up. I think it’s true, though.”

An incredulous laugh pops out of my mouth. I roll my eyes, but Lane’s jesting attitude actually succeeds in unwinding some of my anxiety.

“Let’s find something to talk about,” I propose. “To keep our minds off this near-death experience.”

I’m exaggerating, but this stop-start turbulence is wreaking havoc on my nervous system.

“Yeah, good idea,” he replies.

What follows for the next couple beats is a distinct lack of talking.

“Well?” I prompt him.

“What? I have to come up with the topic?”

“Yes.”

“Geez, that doesn’t seem fair.” He scratches thoughtfully underneath the sharp edge of his jaw. “I’m not really that good at coming up with random small talk.”

“Most guys develop that skill when they learn to chat up girls,” I snark, recalling seeing this skill acquisition play out numerous times at all the bar and restaurant jobs I’ve worked. Mostly under the table since I’m not twenty-one yet. “But I guess all you have to do is walk into a room and they fall to your feet.”

His emerald green eyes glimmer as a smirk tilts on his plush mouth. “You said it, not me.”

“Your eyes said it,” I shoot back.

He chuckles. “Eyes can’t talk.”

I shake my head. “Oh, you’re wrong about that. Eyes can say so much more than words.”

There’s another couple beats of silence, Lane looking at me. There’s interest dancing in his gaze, but also a sort of questioning expression. Like he’s not sure how to figure me out.

“Well, pick something for us to talk about already!” I bark. “Like something … I don’t know, deep. Philosophical. Something that’ll really get our minds off where we are right now.”

Lane purses his lips, and I can’t help but let my gaze latch onto them. They look like the perfect combination of soft but firm, like the one perfect pillow you happen to sleep on in a random hotel room that you never stop thinking about.

“Hmm,” he muses. “Uh, do you believe in an afterlife?”

My brow leaps for my hairline in outrage. I hit his shoulder with the palm of my hand. “Lane! You’re asking me to contemplate my mortality at a time like this?”

His boyish smile makes my heart do a little twirl, even though boyish smiles are never something I’ve traditionally been into.

“Sorry,” he says, curling his arm to rub the back of his neck in a way that makes his bicep pop even through the heavy fabric of his sleeve. “Like I said, this isn’t my strong suit. Let’s circle back to what you just said about women falling to my feet. Was that some kind of offer?” His eyebrows wiggle playfully.

I blow a raspberry through my lips. “You wish. You’re not my type, pretty boy.”

Surprise splashes onto his angular face. “Really?” he asks, taken aback.

I hold back a grin. It’s true that he’s not my type, but he’s fun to talk to, and I expect that you’re not my type isn’t something he hears from women often. Or ever.

“What, so hard to believe? Think you’re every woman’s type ?”

“Is that what my eyes said this time?” he asks.

The airplane speakers chime, and the voice of the pilot informs us that we’re about to make our descent into Chicago. Even with the turbulence nightmare, time has totally flown by ever since my AirPods died.

“See?” Lane says. “We made it safe and sound.”

A skeptical grunt pulls from my throat. “Don’t jinx it. We still have the landing to get through.”

“You know, statistically the landing is the safest part of any flight.”

“Really?”

“No. Actually, statistically it’s the most dangerous part.”

I huff a heavy breath and slam my elbow into the side of his arm, to which he responds with a roguish laugh.

We’re both going to be spending the summer in the same city. There’s definitely a chemistry here, even if he’s not my normal type.

Of course, I know nothing about him. For all I know, he’s got a girlfriend. Granted, given the way I’ve seen his gaze tick down to my body and flash with appreciation from time to time during this conversation, he’s not a very good boyfriend if he does.

There are plenty of not-good boyfriends out there, though. I’m the last person who needs to be told that.

Still, I definitely get a single vibe from him. The possibility of exchanging numbers and meeting up in the city sometime after we get settled flickers in my mind.

I’m staying with a friend of mine from high school who’s going to college in Chicago and offered me an empty room for the summer in the house that she and some friends of hers rent. After just breaking up with my boyfriend of almost two years, I leaped at the opportunity to put some much-needed distance between me and Caleb, and to take a much-needed break from my normal life.

Is jumping right back into a summer fling with another guy so soon really the right move?

Or is not my type exactly what I need right now?