Page 186 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

She had to.

She gripped the yoke hard and pushed down, bringing them lower and lower, and she turned around just briefly to take a look at her passenger, who was beginning to undo his buckle, his expression one of concern. “Stay buckled,” she shouted. And then, she lost control. A thermal shot up, and rocked the plane, and suddenly, she found herself disoriented. And the descent became bumpy.

She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to shield herself from the reality of what was happening. She had to keep them open. She was the one in charge.

She was the one that was going to keep them alive.

An echo of her life these last few years.

And all she could think was that it really would’ve been nice at one point to have somebody who took care of her. Instead, she was going down in a blaze of pointlessness.

Leaving behind seven people who counted on her for their care.

Her dad had always thought it was dumb her mom had died of an illness when he flew cargo planes for a living.

He had always thought it should’ve been him. Flying around in his rattly old contraption that somehow she’d convinced herself was safer now that she was flying it and making sure to dot everyiand cross everytbefore taking off.

But no. Apparently not.

She didn’t even have time to say a prayer, before she realized they were in the tops of the trees. Before the wing clipped a pine, and they went hurtling toward the earth. After that, she didn’t remember a thing.

CHAPTER THREE

Hewasherebecause he had decided to take a cargo plane to his wedding. It all came back to him in a flash of light. The bar. The terrible scotch. The tiny little woman in a very large coat with a round, earnest face and freckles on her cheeks who was supposedly a pilot, but didn’t look old enough to be a high school graduate.

She’d crashed.

Suddenly, Adonis sat upright.

The full-scale force of the cold hit him then. The wind slapping him in the face.

“What happened?”

“Stay calm.”

Stevie.That was the girl’s name. The pilot.

“What the hell have you done?”

“The instruments went out on the plane. I didn’tdoanything.” She paused for a moment. “Other than save your ass, that is.”

The plane.

He looked around, slowly taking in more details.

They wereinthe plane, sort of. But the outside had come inside, because the back end was broken off, and he supposed they had been saved only by the fact that somehow the front of the aircraft had remained intact. “It really is a good thing you kept your seat belt buckled,” she said. “Otherwise…” She looked meaningfully back at the open end of the plane. And he could see the cargo strewn all over the ground. Spreading out for a good distance behind them.

He wasn’t given to fear, and he could confidently say that his behavior in the past had been self-destructive at best. But that hit. Hard. A very real echo of the reality of mortality.

It was an inglorious end. Or would’ve been.

He frowned. And he put his hand back on his leg.

The pain suddenly cut through his delirium, and it was like the world had split apart. The pain was excruciating and the cold was unbearable. Her face was too sharp and too clear, and too pretty to bear and he had to fight to keep from being torn into pieces by the competing feelings.

Shock.

Pain.

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