Page 7 of Home Coming

The born and bred southerner was obsessed with the white stuff that had been the bane of Quinn’s existence growing up.

Anyone who had to shovel after every storm, even if it meant a snow day and no school, had a love-hate relationship with snow.

Quinn let out a laugh as he caught sight of the flight board and veered in that direction. “I hope not.”

Stopping in front of it he scanned for his flight number…and caught sight of that dreaded word. DELAYED. The only word worse was CANCELLED. There were a couple of those on the board too.

“What the fuck,” he groaned as he realized there was no guarantee his flight wouldn’t go from delayed to canceled too.

His mumbled cuss had Rich saying, “Don’t like the sound of that. What’s up?”

“There’s a delay.”

More than a delay. Most of the board showed delayed or cancelled flights.

“What the hell is going on?” Quinn asked, not really expecting Rich to have an answer.

What had happened while he’d been in the air crossing the country?

His friend elbowed him in the side and said, “I might have a good guess. Take a look at the TV.”

AnotherWhisky Tango Foxtrotescaped his lips as he turned and glanced at the television mounted high on the wall.

Wind was blowing snow sideways. Then the shot switched to people shoveling out buried cars and a headline that read,Massive storm wreaks havoc on travel.

No wonder flights were fucked.

“How long’s your delay for?” Rich asked.

“Five hours.”

“Just come home with me. I’ll run you back here later.”

He almost agreed, but shook his head. “Thanks. Really. But I’ll just hang here and wait it out.”

“You wanna hang here for seven hours when you could be kicking back having a beer and a decent meal with me?” Rich’s dark brows rose.

“Five hours,” Quinn corrected.

“Look again.” Rich tipped his chin toward the board.

Quinn followed the motion and let out a frustrated breath when he saw the new departure time, which had somehow changed since he’d glanced at it a minute ago.

If he left with Rich now, he’d get more than just a decent meal. It would be amazing. Rich’s family owned an award-winning soul food restaurant in Buckhead.

The offer was very tempting but ridiculous. Traffic in and around Atlanta meant they’d spend a good portion of that down time on the road on a good day. Add in the complication of what looked like sleet that had just begun to fall and the roads would be worse than usual.

The South couldn’t handle any type of weather like this. He’d be taking his life in his hands…if they didn’t close the road completely because of the freezing rain.

He couldn’t do that to his teammate. They’d spent enough time on transports this week.

Quinn’s journey might not be over quite yet, but Rich’s could be.

Besides, the one predictable thing about commercial airlines was their unpredictability.

Quinn’s flight had been delayed out of Albany on his last visit home a year ago—and boy did the knowledge that it had been an entire year carry a heavy amount of guilt with it. But first the delay had been for forty minutes, then for four hours, only to be bumped back again.

They ended up taking off with just an hour and a half delay from the originally scheduled time. If he’d left the airport then he would have been screwed and missed his flight back to base.

---