Page 100 of Mistletoe and Mayday
Bailey draws a sharp breath beside me. “Are you sure?”
“Never been more certain.”
The night air hits us like freedom as we step outside. Stars glitter across the Chicago sky, visible even through city lights.
God, I love this woman.
“Ready to crash and burn with me?” I ask.
Her laugh emerges watery but genuine. “Always preferred turbulent flights.”
Twenty-Nine
BAILEY
The cream cardstock invitation arrived eight weeks after Sebastian and I walked out of his family’s house. Two months of silence from his mother. Two months of her pretending her only child hadn’t chosen...me. She finally cracked, unwilling to lose him over what she’d called a “passing fancy.”
Now here I stand backstage at the annual Lockhart Foundation Charity Gala, clutching a snow globe like a talisman while my heart pounds hard enough to register on the Richter scale.
“Five minutes, Ms. Monroe.” A stagehand materializes, then vanishes just as quickly.
Five minutes until I step into the spotlight before Chicago’s elite. Five minutes until I stand where Sebastian asked me to—representing the Lockhart Children’s Neurodiversity Center, a charity close to my heart for reasons I’ve only recently begun to understand about myself.
I tug at the neckline of this gown for the forty-seventh time. The stranger in the mirror wears something that costs over three months of my salary. Her hair’s been sculpted by someone who charges by the strand, and her makeup required actual brushes instead of fingers and desperate hope.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Lockhart Foundation...” My voice catches on “Lockhart.” I clear my throat and try again. “Ladies and gentlemen...”
My reflection stares back, eyes too wide, shoulders rigid with tension. Who am I kidding? These people devour women like me for appetizers. They must have special forks reserved for skewering uppity pilots who don’t know their place.
Two weeks I’ve practiced this speech. Two weeks of trying to iron out the edges, to sound smooth and proper and perfect. Everything I am not.
The irony doesn’t escape me. Sebastian didn’t fall in love with some polished, proper woman who knows which fork to use at Michelin-starred restaurants. He fell in love with me—the pilot who named her aircraft Amelia, who collects snow globes, who talks too much and too fast about all the wrong things.
And I didn’t fall for the Lockhart name, or the zeroes in his bank account, or his perfect manners. I fell for the man who faced down wolves with a single ax and a broken branch, who built a Christmas tree from pinecones in the middle of nowhere, who listens to me babble about cloud formations like I’m revealing the secrets of theuniverse.
I set my favorite snow globe down with a gentle click.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Lockhart Foundation,” I say. “I’m Bailey Monroe. I fly planes, collect tacky souvenirs, and have a regrettable tendency to say inappropriate things at dinner parties.”
I straighten my shoulders and stare my reflection in the eye.
The woman in the mirror grins back. It’s me. Finally.Despite the designer packaging. I pick up the snow globe one more time, giving it a final shake, watching the miniature cabin disappear in swirling white—our beginning preserved forever in glass.
“Be yourself,” I whisper. “It worked with him. Maybe it’ll work with them.”
The glittering chandelier light from the Lockhart Grand Ballroom filters through the curtain gap. I peek out and immediately regret it.
So. Many. People.
More designer clothes and jewelry than I’ve seen outside magazine spreads. And they’re all waiting to hear me speak about something deeply personal.
“I’m going to hurl,” I mutter.
I should run. There’s a service exit fifteen steps to my left. I could be in a cab in two minutes, at the airport in thirty, flying cargo to anywhere-but-here by morning.
The microphone screeches, a high-pitched whine. Then her voice. Perfect diction, perfect projection, perfect, icy condescension.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us at the annual Lockhart Foundation Charity Gala.” Sebastian’s mother pauses for the polite ripple of applause.
