Page 4 of For Her Own Good

I wake with a start to someone dropping into the seat next to me. I crack a crabby eye to see who’s disturbed me and instead of some standard road warrior in a Brooks Brothers skirt suit or a guy coming home from a bachelor party weekend with his buddies, I get hit with a bolt of lightning. It’s like a kick to the chest, and my lungs empty in a choking rush. It’s not possible.

But from the way he’s looking at me—blue eyes blown wide, ginger brows crunched, and his mouth slightly open—he feels the same way, which is what confirms it. It’s him. It’s really him.

After not having seen him for fifteen years, I have the…misfortune? Tough break? Devil’s own luck—yes, that seems most apt—to find myself trapped next to the only man I’ve ever really loved, the one who abandoned me when I needed him most, the one who alternately haunted and blessed my dreams even before he’d gone. And oh yeah, the man who saved my life and kept me from destroying myself when it was so, so tempting to end it all.

Lowry goddamn Campbell.

Or should I sayDoctorCampbell, since I only ever called him Lowry in whispers at night in the dark, half the time with my hand between my legs.

* * *

Lowry

I’d wondered when I first saw the woman in the window seat. Her long, chestnut-dark hair, the slope of her shoulder. I couldn’t see her face since it had been turned to the window, neck unnaturally bent in sleep, but those similarities alone had brought on a fond pang in my chest. That pang has turned into a riot of some sort, like the lads down at the football pitch, because it’s not an apparition. Or if it is, it is the most realistic one I’ve ever seen. Disturbingly so. If she is indeed a doppelganger, she’s going to haunt my dreams.

She’s glaring at me with those hazel eyes of hers rimmed with dark lashes.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

So it is Starla. If I’d had any doubts left knocking around in my head, they’d be cleared by the way she snaps out the question. She always did have a tongue like a whip, except when things were at their worst and I could barely get her to look at me, never mind speak. It shouldn’t please me, the way she cusses and looks like she’s going to dig my eyeballs out with her nails—wouldn’t please many people, that’s for sure—but a good portion of what I’m feeling is delight. Relief. She’s doing well. Looks tired, sure, since I woke her, but on the whole, very good. Healthy, vibrant, and very much alive.

I would’ve known if she’d died. If she’d… Well. But it’s not as easy to know from afar how a person is faring otherwise. Google alerts only tell a person so much, although more in the past three months than in the last fifteen years altogether. I suppose that’s when the fact she’s an heiress to a massive corporate conglomerate became much more relevant—since she’s not an heiress anymore. Simply one of the wealthiest people on the Eastern seaboard. She’s still just Starla to me.

“I…”You’re a smooth one, you are, Campbell.“My ticket’s actually for the window.”

She looks at me as though I’m rather daft with those forest-floor hazel eyes of hers and then shakes her head, muttering what I’m certain are more curses, and reaches for her seat belt.

“No, no. It’s fine. You don’t have to, I prefer the aisle actually. I just…”

Didn’t know what to say.It’s been fifteen years and I’ve seen photos of her, but had resigned myself to never seeing her in the flesh ever again.

She’s had an expressive face ever since I’ve known her, at least when she wasn’t drowning, and it’s remarkable how I can still read her, how the clues on her face have remained so similar, though her features have become concentrated somehow. Sharper. She was lovely then, and she’s beautiful now, her cheekbones and jawline more defined, making her wide mouth and her round eyes more prominent. She’s truly gorgeous, the fact that she wants to murder me not detracting from her appeal in the least.

“Whatever.”

She looks me over again, and if it were possible to send daggers through one’s eyes, I would be dead as a doornail right now.

“So are you going to answer my question?”

Question? Ah, right. What the fuck am I doing here?

“I live in Chicago. Well, lived, I suppose. I…I’m moving back to Boston.”

“You’re…you’re moving back to Boston? You left fifteen years ago without a goddamn word and now you’re back? You’re not supposed to come back. You’re supposed to be gone. Forever.”

Not exactly a hero’s welcome, but I’m pretty far from a hero. I do wish this had gone some other way but this is how it’s going and I scramble to make it a tad less awkward and, well, less likely to result in my death.

“I, uh, am sorry to disappoint you.” Not as sorry as I’d been fifteen years ago, but now I can tell her I’m sorry. “I hope you know I really am truly sorry about—”

She puts a hand in my face, the universal symbol for stop, and my mouth snaps shut. The fury in her eyes is still burning hot and even if it weren’t, I’d honor her request for silence. It is literally the least I can do.

“No. Absolutely not. I don’t accept your apology and I never will. You’re the one who taught me that I am not required to give anyone my forgiveness, that sometimes there are hurts too deep to be forgiven. That’s how much you hurt me when you left, and you don’t deserve my forgiveness so, no. You can shut your face and you can find yourself a new seat on this plane because I would rather sit next to a rathtar than you.”

Girl still lovesStar Wars. Not girl—woman. She’s thirty-three years old and a grown, mature, elegantly dressed woman.

Who still usesStar Warsreferences. I knew she’d see the new ones; had wondered as I watched them if she’d enjoyed them. I’d ask, but she’s punching the button to summon the flight attendant.

One bustles over, the red, white, and blue kerchief at her neck fluttering as she makes her way to us.

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