Page 83 of Mistletoe and Mayday
“I’m Sebastian Lockhart,” I agree, my voice steady with certainty. “And I’ve never wanted anything more than waiting for my cargo pilot.”
Twenty-Four
BAILEY
The Chicago snow globe weighs a thousand pounds in my palm. Heavier than the diamond that he almost gave to another woman. Heavier than the words lodged in my throat like shards of ice.
He stands before me saying all the right things, his blue eyes earnest and pleading, and damn it all to hell, something inside me aches to believe him.
“This isn’t a Hallmark movie, Sebastian. Real life doesn’t work like this.” My fingers clench around the glass dome.
He shakes his head, those perfect features rearranging into disappointment, but I thrust my hand up between us. I can’t let him speak, can’t let that voice—the one that whispered my name in the darkness of our cabin—make me forget the reality of who we are.
“You’ll regret this.” My voice stays steady. “Maybe not today, but soon.”
“Bailey—”
“No. Let me finish.”
The terminal pulsates around us. Baggage carts shriek electronic warnings. I grip my flight clipboard until the plastic edge cuts into my palm.
“Your family? They’re forever. I’m just...a moment. A crisis response. Trauma bonding at its finest.”
His face shifts. A microscopic crack in those sculpted features I wouldn’t have noticed a few weeks ago. Before Alaska. Before I learned to read the secret language of Sebastian Lockhart’s expressions.
Good. Perfect. Better he hates me now than resents me later when the novelty wears thin. When the quirky pilot with no filter transforms from charming to exhausting. When his mother’s disapproving stare follows us through every room. When his business associates exchange glances behind my back.
My throat constricts as if someone’s hands are squeezing it, but I push through. Rip the band-aid. Clean break.
“Go home, Sebastian. Go back to your world. This?” I gesture between us, the motion sharp and disjointed. “This was just survival instinct. Nothing more.”
“That’s not true. You know that’s not?—”
“What I know is that you’re running from one failed relationship into another. And I won’t be your rebound.”
His face crumples for a breathtaking second before he rebuilds that perfect mask. The one I watched crack piece by piece in our little cabin. The one I hate seeing back in place.
“Is that what you think this is?” he asks, his voice too controlled. Too calm. Too much like the man who first boarded my plane. “A rebound?”
I shrug, aiming for casual even as my heart slams against my ribs like it’s trying to escape my chest and throw itself at his feet. Because that’s the truth—every part of me wants to crossthis impossible chasm between us. To believe fairy tales exist outside snow globes.
“What else could it be? You were about to propose to someone else two weeks ago.”
He runs a hand through his hair, messing up that perfect style in a way that tightens something low in my belly. A simple gesture I’d give anything to witness every morning across a breakfast table.
“I was proposing to a perfect image that wasn’t real. I realize that now.”
“I need to go.” I take a step back, clutching my clipboard like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
“You’re afraid,” he says, and the simple truth of it stops me cold. “Of this being real.”
I want to scream the truth. I love you so much, it terrifies me. I love you beyond reason, beyond sense, beyond self-preservation. And that’s why I can’t do this.
“I’m not afraid. I’m practical. People like you don’t end up with people like me. That’s just basic math. Look at us.” My laugh sounds hollow, foreign, like it’s coming from someone else’s body. “You in your perfect suit, me in my cargo uniform. This isn’t a romance. It’s a cautionary tale.”
I want to tell him I see everything that could be. Every moment of happiness, every lazy Sunday morning, every argument over my snow globe collection taking over his minimalist apartment. I see it all so clearly, it burns.
And I see what comes after—the slow realization in his eyes that I don’t fit in his world. The growing distance. The inevitable end that would destroy me so completely I’d never recover.
