Page 68 of Over & Out

It’s some kind of bewildered wrangler whose eyes go wide. “Um, sir, I don’t know how?—”

Thankfully the director herself pops her head out ofher trailer as I cut across set toward my bike. “Hopper! You can’t just leave. We have to finish this take!”

“Wrap it for tonight. And tomorrow. Put it on my tab.”

“That’s going to be a big fucking tab!”

She’s not wrong. I’m telling her I’m covering everyone’s pay and the gap in filming, but I don’t care in the least.

“Sounds good to me!” I say.

Toni’s response is drowned out by the roar of my Ducati as I bring it to life.

Chapter 22

Hopper

Exactly three hours later, I’m on a private plane, growling at the flight attendant’s insistence that I put my seat belt on.

“Federal safety regulations,” Chris reminds me from her seat on the opposite side of the aisle. She’s wearing this soft gray wool dress that makes me think obscene thoughts about how it would feel under my hands. Which only makes this shit situation worse, because fantasizing about my employee—who hates me—while also panicky-worried about Tru and her baby makes me seriously worried for my mental health.

I jam the seat belt into place, then stare out the window at the lights on the runway. We’re the only plane out here at this hour.

The flight attendant smiles. “Very good.” At least she’s a professional. No nervous giggles or requests for an autograph. “We’ll be on our way in a moment. The captain will dim the cabin for takeoff.”

“All I want to do is pace the fucking fuselage,”I say after she disappears into the galley where I guess her seat belt is. “We haven’t heard shit. How am I supposed to sit still?”

“You’re a grown-up, supposedly,” Chris says over the top of her laptop. “Figure it out.”

The glimmer of hope from our positive interactions has faded. It went that way the minute I kicked a trash can in the private hangar waiting room when the plane needed to be delayed thirty minutes for some kind of extra inspection.

“You’re being a child,” she snapped at me.

“And you’re being too fucking calm.”

“Panic never helped anyone, did it?”

Once again she was fucking right, and I was unfucking happy about it.

“You ever consider therapy?” Chris asks me a few minutes later, as I begrudgingly sit safely buckled. The plane is taxiing onto the runway.

“I’ve done therapy. My dad’s a fucking terror and my mom’s dead. Not much else to say.” In fact, I called my old therapist a few days ago. Left a message. It’s a start. But I don’t tell her that.

Chris rolls her eyes. She looks so fucking beautiful it hurts to keep my eyes on her too long. But that pain is better than my anxiety about Tru, so I keep looking whenever she’s not. When she looks my way, though, I ignore her. I’m reverting back to a serious asshole, which is the whole point, but I’ve been doing it from somewhere outside myself.

I’m sorry, I say to her. Not out loud.You deserve so much fucking better than this.

She looks so miserable, I finally let out a breath. “I’m fucking terrified,” I say quietly. “I never had any siblings. Tru’s the closest I’ve got. I didn’t want to acknowledge she was having a baby because it meant something like this could happen. Now that it has, it feels like it’s somehow my fault.”

I rub at my chest, at the sharp pain there. Maybe I’m dying. That would be just perfect.

“You didn’t cause this,” Chris says, her voice stiff. “She’s at one of the best facilities in the world right now, with the best doctors in the world. Chances are she’s going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t. But the odds are generally good.”

The plane begins to speed up, and I sigh, staring out the window.

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