Page 74 of To the Chase

“Of course.” I trailed my fingers over the buttons on his shirt. “Tell me something about planes.”

He hesitated then lifted his hips a little so he could reach into his pocket and slip out his phone. Swiping the screen, he scrolled over a few app icons. For a moment, something caught my eye, but he was past it and clicking on a yellow one with a black outline of a plane before I could figure out what it was.

“I like to watch this route.” His fingertip hovered over a thin black line swooping across the screen. “It goes from Johannesburg to Sydney, passing within a couple hundred miles of Antarctica. Right now, there are only two airlines that fly over the Southern Ocean.”

He enlarged the map, pointing to the lines going from the bottom of Africa to Australia, then he showed me Europe, which was almost invisible beneath the zigzagging lines.

“Do you see?” He moved back to the Southern Ocean. “That sky is almost empty. When you’re flying up there, it’s just you and the people on the plane with you. Nothing below you, nothingabove you.”

“That sounds…” A little scary. Desolate. Cold.

“Calm,” he finished. “There’s a flight path from Chile to Sydney no other planes take. They call it the loneliest flight in the world.”

“Have you taken it?”

“Not yet.” He exhaled. “It would mean taking a lot of time off work, and…well—”

“That doesn’t happen.”

“No. Not as often as I’d like.” He laughed dryly. “When I go, I’ll take you.”

“Okay.” I grinned, playing along. “I guess since we’ll be vacationing in Chile and Australia, I should get a passport.”

“You absolutely should. There are a lot of places I’d like to take you.”

I loved the sound of that little fantasy. “Will you do that between meetings and building walls of fire?”

There was a long beat of silence then he huffed a laugh. “Firewalls, right?”

“Right,” I agreed.

“To be honest, when we met two years ago, I wanted to be with you, but I’m almost certain you wouldn’t have enjoyed what that would have looked like.” He stroked a long line down my back. I barely breathed, listening to his every word. “When Tia died, I made necessary changes in my life.”

“Like what?”

“Like actually giving myself the opportunity to live. It’s never enough, but if I didn’t set an alarm to end my workday, I could easily get lost and spend the entire night staring at my computer screen.”

“I have a feeling you still spend more time working than most.”

“That’s undoubtedly true. But I’ve become capable of shutting it off. That wasn’t always the case.”

“I’m sorry you lost your sister, Salvatore. More sorry than I can say. But I’m glad you had a wake-up call. You deserve more than just your job.”

“Can I kiss you now?” he asked.

I sighed, lifting my face again. He caught my chin with his fingers and tapped on the dimple in my cheek.

My stomach dipped and thousands of butterflies took flight. “I appreciate you asking me, but I think we should talk about this.”

He started to release his hold on me, but I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, keeping him there.

“Tore…” I licked my lips, “I love that you asked to kiss me, but you don’t have to anymore. I want you to.”

He cocked his head. “Yeah?”

“Mmmhmm. And when we played, I loved you checking in. But if you want, we could pick a safe word.”

He brought his other hand up to my hair, combing his fingers through the side. “What would you choose?”