Page 20 of Renegade Ruin

“Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.” His eyes are hard and filled with nothing but contempt as he shifts his stare to meet mine.

“I told you I’m fixing it.”

“Fixing it?” A manic laugh slips from his throat. “You’re going to use them. This is why you’ve been so involved. Not because you give a shit about the team. You’re going to use their deaths to fundraise for your foundation.”

“No, that’s not?—”

“I can’t believe this shit. What happened to the woman I met who couldn’t even talk to a room full of socialites without having a panic attack? The soft soul who gave a shit about other people? How did she become”—he lifts his hand and gestures up and down—“this.”

She’s still here, I want to say, but words fail me. I want to tell him I had to learn to channel that panic into something more. There wasn’t room to be both. The crash didn’t only takethe lives of the dead. It took mine, too, and forced me to figure things out on my own.

Fuck him for using that against me.

Bishop shakes his head, and before I can figure out how to explain myself, he twists the knife he thrust in my chest. “I knew you’d allowed yourself to become cunning and manipulative, but I didn’t think you were a fucking monster. For fuck’s sake, Willow, they lost their parents. I know that’s your whole schtick, but to use them as a way to make money? To use Phoebe?”

An image of the youngest Roberts forms in my mind and how she possesses more strength in her nine-year-old body than most adults. The way just yesterday she talked about Bishop like he hung the damn starts. My eyes prick with tears, and it takes everything in me to choke back the sob in my throat. How can he possibly think that’s who I am?

“Bishop, listen, it’s not what you think. I swear.” My words wobble despite their sincerity. “It looks bad, I know, but I promise I didn’t?—”

“No, you listen,” he yells, slamming the laptop closed before shoving it across the tabletop toward me. “This might technically be your team now, but they aren’t yours to puppet.”

“I know.”

“You don’t,” he growls and for the second time this week, fear wraps around my spine and I shrink away from him, pressing myself into the window. “It’s clear you don’t know a damn thing about what it means to be a Renegade. Your father would be ashamed.”

My head screams with the logic that he’s lashing out in anger and pain, but my heart can’t do the same. Not when it’s him giving life to my greatest fear. My eyes find the table, and I do my best to ignore the gut-wrenching feeling swirling inside me. I’ve somehow managed to keep my walls up until now, but one flight with Bishop is enough to have them crashing down around me.

“Bishop, I?—”

The plane picks that moment to jerk and my hands drop to the leather cushions of the sofa-like seats, digging in. I press my back straight and slam my eyes shut.

In for one. Out for two.

Breathe.

It’s just turbulence.

In for two. Out for three.

As soon as the panic subsides to a dull roar in my chest, I open my eyes and find Bishop’s eyes still on me, wide with fear of his own. He hasn’t returned to his seat. He furrows his brow in a way that almost gives the impression he’s concerned.

And the award for emotional whiplash goes to Bishop Lawson.

“You really don’t like flying.” It’s not a question.

I shake my head slowly as frustration replaces anxiety. “No. I don’t.”

He’s never had the pleasure of flying with me. Usually, I need anything and everything to either distract me or force me to sleep. That wasn’t an option today since I’m on babysitting duty.

“And it has nothing to do with…It hasn’t gotten worse because of…” His voice trails off and his chest sputters between breaths. “What happened.”

I shake my head again, silently wishing he would just let me suffer alone.

There was a time I’d turn to him, to just about anyone, but I’ve become accustomed to my solitary suffering.

He opens his mouth then shuts it when the flirty flight attendant strolls up and places her freshly manicured hand on his bicep. With a sickly sweet smile, she croons, “We’re starting our descent. The pilot also asked me to let you know there’s a storm in Fort Myers, so it’s going to be a bumpy landing.”She turns on her heel and heads toward the galley, completely unaware of the death sentence she’s just delivered us.

Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but this is exactly what happened four months ago. There was a storm. Errors made on landing. And they were gone. Sixty-eight souls.

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