Page 35 of Bound By Destiny

He winks, and then he’s gone.

I rise as well and brush the hay off my jeans, because I know what I have to do – and it doesn’t involve mulling over the situation for the hundredth time. Now it’s just a matter of hopping on the first plane to Arizona, and making it up to the woman who’s meant for me.

Destiny

Guild will send you a formulary to confirm that you got proper instruction. Also to schedule a meeting at your convenience.

Won’t be there.

Those few scribbled sentences are all Dane left behind, the morning I found my sofa empty and his toothbrush gone. It’s what’s at the bottom of the page though, in even more illegible writing, that I read over and over again:

P.S: It’s time to spread your wings now. Don’t give up!

I can almost hear him shouting those last few words as I make yet another botched attempt to fly. Come to think about it, despite his gruffness at times, he was pretty patient with me. Now that I drive every weekend to the desert and dare to sail higher through the skies, I realize how ridiculous I was being at first.

I miss Dane.

I knew I’d miss him. That I’d long for those rare, sexy smiles and I’d curse everything holy for creating a man so fine, yet so glaringly absent on social media. I suppose it’s part of his anti picture policy.

But what I didn’t know, is that I’d miss Dane so profoundly that it feels like I’ve lost a kidney, or a lung, or some other vital part of me. With each day the feeling grows. Pain, but also a deep-set anxiety that makes me even jumpier than usual. Yesterday at work, I could hardly breathe for a couple of minutes. My boss sent me home, believing I was having a relapse ofdorsoetc etc.

Bored in my apartment with nothing to do, I zap through the channels. The restlessness is still there, gnawing at my insides. All of a sudden a sharp pang, along with a flash of Dane’s handsome face, has me buckled over in pain.

“What the Hell…?” I mutter through clenched teeth when the agony has subsided.

“...inhabitants of the western part of the country have been reporting extreme weather,” the lady drones on inside my TV. “The images that follow are telling enough.”

They play a series of videos filmed with cell phones, showing a roof being torn off by the sheer force of the wind, as well as trees bending backwards. My eyes wander down to the lower part of the screen, only to widen when I realize I accidentally fell upon the Australian weather channel.

My heart misses a beat. Australia is a big country, and I have no clue where to place Dane’s ranch on the map. Yet as I watch the ravaging images, I’m struck with a budding sense of recognition.I have no logical explanation, no true reason to believe apart from the fact that I know, deep down, that this is the thing I’ve been fearing since he’s been gone. Dane is in danger.

A little over a month ago, I would’ve discarded such worries as baseless and plopped myself right back on my sofa. But the new me can’t ignore my grim intuition.

I stuff a few random clothes in a suitcase and drive myself to the airport, dread rising with each second ticking by.

My panic begins to soar as the Infinite agent tells me that the airport closest to my destination, Perth, is closed due to extreme weather. Thankfully there are options for a smaller airport in a town called Busselton some one hundred and fifty miles away.

It’s only when I’ve bought my ticket that I realize Dane might not be too glad to see me after my awkward confession. A memory of his stunned face that night makes me cringe. I’m glad I worked up the nerve to tell him my feelings, but rejections hurt – especially when they come from the man who gave me courage to be passionate in the first place. I’ve been replaying the memory countless times in my head since he’s gone, cowering beneath the covers in shame though there’s no-one in my apartment to hide from in the first place.

Yet as I board the plane, my resolve doesn’t waver. Something’s dreadfully wrong, and I don’t care that for the first time in my life, I have nothing to prove it. All I know is that I need to find Dane.

* * *

When we finally land on steady ground, I’m feeling like less of a superhero.

I forgot that I’d never taken a plane. And even if I’m working on it, I can’t turn dauntless and daring overnight.

Especially when I’m the one who designed the safety of the plane. It was one of my very first projects when I was freshly hired at Infinite.

Seats are too dense,I thought to myself the second I sat down, testing the springiness of the foam.These will sink like a rock.

Then I was horrified to see most of the passengers dozed off while the security instructions were given. InstructionsIscripted.

I also earned myself a dirty look when I wiggled the seat in front of me with my foot.When’s the last time they tightened the screws?I made multiple bathroom trips as an excuse to examine the rows of seats, gauging the distance between them.These things should crunch down like an accordion to dissipate some of the energy in case we crash, but aren’t they a little too tightly packed?Somewhere around my fiftieth expedition, a disgruntled flight attendant ordered me to stay put until we were on ground.

It goes without saying, I was glad to land after nearly twenty nerve-wracking hours. Even more relieved to see that outside the airport, the weather I saw on TV seemed to have settled. Nothing but endless blue stretching into the horizon and a brilliant sun.

Heading towards the taxis, I smirk as I retrieve a piece of paper from my purse. I’m pretty sure Dane had no clue that as he was cutting bridges with me for good, he was also handing me the very means to find him again.

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