Page 10 of Broken Vows (Marital Privileges #4)

“If you want to speak, just hit this button.” He points to an unilluminated microphone button in a panel in front of me. “I won’t be able to hear you unless you push the button. Understood?”

Again, I nod.

I want to ask a million questions, like when was my name engraved on my headset, but I lose the chance to say anything when an air traffic controller gives takeoff instructions to Mikhail.

I listen with interest, suddenly fascinated.

Fear should be gripping me. I’ve never been on a plane, much less one this small, but fright is the last thing on my mind. I’ve barely lived the past ten years, so the thudding of my pulse in my ears is extremely cherished and missed.

After a handful of instructions and a brief weather update, Mikhail looks at me. He smiles as if he can feel the thrumming of my veins before asking, “Ready to take this bird in the air?”

His smile augments when I nod. It is embarrassingly eager but the most honest I’ve been for an extremely long time.

The faster the plane races down the runway, the more my pulse quickens. It is thrilling and scary at the same time, like a rollercoaster ride or an orgasm after prolonged foreplay.

As the plane lifts into the sky, my hands seek something to clutch. There are no door handles, no bracings. There’s nothing but Mikhail’s thigh that I sink my nails into the instant a weird stomach-dropping sensation hits my midsection.

“That’s normal,” Mikhail announces, bringing my breaths down a notch but doing little to save his thigh from being shredded. “As is that,” he adds when a second weird screech fills my ears. “That’s the wheels tucking in.”

I stab the mic button, my hand shaky, before saying, “Don’t we need them?”

He winks at me, increasing both my giddiness and my clutch. “Not while we’re in the air. I’ll bring them back down before we land.”

“Which is how long away?”

I’m not scared. I am merely wondering how long the best foreplay of my life will last. This is exhilarating, but for all I know, it could be over as fast as our quickie marriage ceremony.

I only skimmed the contract terms. I have no clue where we’re going or how long it will take us to get there.

I stop drinking in endless miles of snow-battered countryside when Mikhail says, “Depends.”

Eagerness and another emotion I can’t quite describe highlight my tone when I jab the mic button again. “On what?”

There’s a radio crackle, and then, “On how long we want to stay up here.”

I’m lost. Completely and wholly lost.

Mikhail laughs as if my daftness is cute. I’d whack him for his misconception if I knew how to fly and land a plane. Mikhail once said my chin jabs could take down a world champ. He was most likely lying, but I’m unwilling to test the theory while thousands of feet in the air.

“I thought we were going to the estate you inherited?” I almost said our marital home, but changed things up when the thought alone had me choking up.

Our plan was to go house hunting after our elopement and honeymoon. I unpacked boxes alone in a new sublet apartment six weeks later.

That was the first time it sank in to me that he wasn’t coming back.

“We are.” Mikhail waits a beat before saying, “But that’s only a three-hour drive away, and it doesn’t have an airstrip.”

My brows furrow, sprouting lines across my forehead. “Then why are we in a plane?”

“Because I spent a fuck ton of money on her and didn’t get to take her out once. So I thought, what the hell, why not do it now?” A flash of anger he’s too slow to shut down says the words his mouth refuses to speak.

This was another wedding gift. That’s why my name is engraved on the headset.

Mikhail didn’t have a dime to his name when we met. Well, he did, but it was swallowed by the jukebox at my family’s bar seconds before he asked me to dance.

During our courtship, I knew his family was rich and ruled all aspects of his life with an iron fist, but I didn’t know the full extent of their influential power and wealth until the month before we broke up.

Mikhail had recently turned twenty-one, so the trust fund he had no clue about paid out.

He was a little flashy with some things he purchased, like a service for the jukebox, some newer, updated records for us to groove to, and an engagement ring for me.

But for the most part, he was responsible with his money.

Or so I thought.

Emmy isn’t engraved on just my headset. It is on Mikhail’s as well, and it is the name he gives the air traffic control officer when he announces that we’ve reached our desired elevation. “Lidny Traffic, Emmy 152, seven thousand feet.”

As the control tower replies, I remove my hand from Mikhail’s thigh and stray my eyes to the scenery, needing time to think.

I don’t understand Mikhail’s game plan. Honestly, I don’t. Why would he buy a plane and name it after me and purchase half of my mother’s bar, then throw away our relationship as if it were worthless?

Did the gaudy purchases make him realize he deserved better than me?

They must have, because that’s the only explanation I can come up with as to the cause of his motive to end everything, and it pisses me off.

“We should go back. I don’t like this. You…”

I stop talking when my shaky hand causes me to flick the mic button on and off during my last two sentences.

The break in transmission and the crackle of our connection make it seem as if I said I don’t like you instead of I don’t like this, and the misconception ensures I’m not the only one now angry and confused.