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Graham

Flying commercial wasn’t fun but there was no way I was leaving my team down two men by having Oxford fly me home to visit my son.

“Excuse me.” A soft voice that didn’t match the nearly six-foot woman standing in the aisle pulled me from my thoughts. “That’s my seat next to the window.”

I stood up from my first-class seat and stepped into the aisle to allow her plenty of room to pass that would ensure we didn’t come in any form of contact.

Nothing against the pretty woman whose left side of her face was covered in shadow by her long auburn hair, but it had been months since I touched a woman who wasn’t part of my job. and I preferred to keep it that way.

The only woman in my life—my son’s mother—gave me enough problems to last me a lifetime. I was in no hurry to add any others to my plate and that included talking to random strangers on this long-ass flight. If it weren’t for a full flight, I would’ve purchased the seat next to me just to ensure no one sat next to me. I had done it plenty of times before, but it was unavoidable.

I made a big production of putting my wireless earbuds in my ears and made it look like I planned to listen to music or maybe even a movie. It worked because the beautiful woman next to me didn’t say a word. She just pulled a book from her bag and started to read.

I had no intention of actually listening to anything. I never did on flights. I preferred to pay attention to my surroundings while others thought I was lost in my own world.

I listened as the flight attendants gave their safety demonstration. I declined a beverage and snack despite the long flight I had ahead of me. It was an international flight through a Canadian airline. The first of its kind for me considering I normally visited my son in the States but my son’s mother thought she could pull a fast one and take him on vacation to avoid having me see him. Little did she realize I would travel anywhere to get my time with my son.

We were halfway across the Atlantic when I felt the sudden shift. There was no mistaking that the nose of the plane was no longer going the direction it was supposed to. My assumption was confirmed when the pilot’s nervous voice filtered through the cabin.

“Rapid descent, rapid descent, rapid descent.”

“What’s happening?” I glanced to my right and met the scared gaze of the woman sitting next to me. Except this time her hair was no longer shadowing her face and I could see the long, jagged scar running down her cheek. It was strange to think it mirrored the one I wore.

Face masks dropped from the ceiling as the cabin pressure plummeted along with the plane and screaming erupted throughout the aircraft.

“I think we’re crashing.” Surprisingly I kept the terror out of my voice, but it didn’t stop the emotion from swirling in my belly.

This couldn’t be how it ended. I had so much more I wanted to do in my life. I wanted to see my son graduate high school. Go to college. Get married and have children.

I didn’t want him to be raised by himself with a mother who cared more about using him as a weapon against me than loving him unconditionally.

The woman in the seat next to me whose name I didn’t know because I hadn’t wanted her to speak to me now clutched my hand like I would be the one to save her from our fate as the captain’s voice once again echoed throughout the cabin. “Brace, brace, brace.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out we were close to crashing as the flight attendants repeatedly hollered, “Emergency, bend down, stay down.”

Maybe for the final time, my life flashed before my eyes and all the things I missed out on.

Read Graham’s story in Scarred by Love.