I wished it hadn’t happened. We’d lost so many, and this wasn’t exactly something you’d want your wedding to follow. From experience, I knew that the memory of a tragedy could be misplaced. Attaching this date to something we would celebrate year after year would keep it front and center in our minds. Damn, they were still bringing out bodies, and I was acting like this was an annoyance. There were parents out there who had no idea they’d never see their kids again.

That selfish thought led to guilt, and that guilt led to a lie. It was a sheer miracle that we were getting married right now, anyway. But I didn’t want Abby thinking I was anything but super fucking pumped about getting married. Knowing her, she’d misread it and then change her mind. So I focused on her, and what we were about to do. I wanted to be a normal, so-excited-I-might-puke groom-to-be, and she deserved nothing less. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d pretended not to care about something I couldn’t get out of my head. The living proof was snuggled up next to me.

On the television screen, the anchorwoman standing outside Keaton Hall held the microphone with both hands, a frown line between her eyebrows. “. . . what the families of the victims will be asking: who is to blame? Back to you, Kent.”

Suddenly the nausea became real. So many had died, of course they were going to hold someone accountable. Was it Adam’s fault? Would he go to prison? Would I? I hugged Abby to me and kissed her hair. A woman behind a desk picked up a mic and began to speak, and my knee started to bounce uncontrollably. If we weren’t going to board soon, I might pick up Abby and run to Vegas. I felt like I could have made it there before the plane. The airline agent instructed us about boarding the flight, her voice rising and falling with the scripted announcement she’d probably read a million times. She sounded like the teacher in those Peanuts cartoons: bored, monotone, and impossible to understand.

The only thing that made sense were the thoughts on repeat inside my head: I was about to become the husband of the second woman I’d ever loved.

It was almost time. Damn. Shit, yeah! Fuck, yes!

I was getting married!

CHAPTER TWO

The Way Back

Abby

I stared at the sparkling rock on my finger and sighed again. It wasn’t the airy sigh a young, newly engaged girl might make while staring at her rather large diamond. It was full of thought. A heavy, thoughtful thought that made me think heavier, thoughtful thoughts. But not second thoughts. We couldn’t stay away from each other. What we were about to do was inevitable, and Travis Maddox loved me in a way most people dreamed about. The sigh was filled with worry and hope for my stupid plan. I wanted Travis to be okay so much that it was nearly tangible.

“Stop that, Pidge,” Travis said. “You’re making me nervous.”

“It’s just . . . too big.”

“It fits just fine,” he said, sitting back. We were wedged between a businessman talking softly on his cell phone and an elderly couple. An airline employee was standing behind the gate desk, talking into what looked like a CB radio. I wondered why they didn’t just use a regular microphone. She announced a few names, and then hooked the device somewhere on the back of her desk.

“Must be a full flight,” Travis said. His left arm was settled on the back of my chair, his thumb gently rubbing my shoulder. He was trying to pretend to be relaxed, but his bobbing knee gave him away.

“The diamond is excessive. I feel like I’m going to get mugged at any moment,” I said.

Travis laughed. “First of all, no one is going to fucking touch you. Second, that ring was made to be on your finger. I knew when I saw it—”

“Attention passengers of American flight 2477 to Las Vegas, we are looking for three volunteers to take a later flight. We’re offering travel vouchers good for one year from your departure.”

Travis looked at me.

“No.”

“You in a hurry?” he asked, a smug smile on his face.

I leaned in and kissed him. “Actually, I am.” I reached up with my finger and wiped away the smudge of soot under his nose that he’d missed in the shower.

“Thanks, baby,” he said, squeezing me against his side. He looked around, his chin lifted, his eyes bright. He was in the best mood I’d seen him in since the night he’d won our bet. It made me smile. Sensible or not, it felt good to be loved so much, and I decided right then and there I would stop apologizing for it. There were worse things than finding your soul mate too early in life, and what was too early, anyway?

“I had a discussion about you with my mom, once,” Travis said, looking out the wall of windows to our left. It was still dark. Whatever he saw wasn’t on the other side.

“About me? Isn’t that kind of . . . impossible?”

“Not really. It was the day she died.”

Adrenaline burst from where adrenaline bursts from and sped through my body, pooling in my fingers and toes. Travis had never spoken about his mother to me. I often wanted to ask him about her, but then I thought about the sickening feeling that came over me when someone asked me about my mother, so I never did.

He continued, “She told me to find a girl worth fighting for. The one that doesn’t come easy.”

I felt a little embarrassed, wondering if that meant I was a huge pain in the ass. Truthfully, I was, but that wasn’t the point.

“She said to never stop fighting, and I didn’t. She was right.” He took a deep breath, seeming to let that thought settle into his bones.

The idea that Travis believed I was the woman who his mother was talking about, that she would approve of me, made me feel an acceptance I’d never felt before. Diane, who had passed away almost seventeen years before, now made me feel more loved than my own mother.

“I love your mom,” I said, leaning against Travis’s chest.

He looked down at me, and after a short pause, kissed my hair. I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear in his voice how much he was affected. “She would have loved you, too. No doubt in my mind.”

The woman spoke into her CB again. “Attention passengers of American flight 2477 to Las Vegas: We will begin boarding soon. We’ll start with anyone needing boarding assistance, and those with young children, and then we’ll begin boarding first class and business class.”

“How about exceptionally tired?” Travis said, standing. “I need a fuckin’ Red Bull. Maybe we should have kept our tickets for tomorrow like we’d planned?”

I raised an eyebrow. “You have a problem with me being in a hurry to be Mrs. Travis Maddox?”

He shook his head, helping me to my feet. “Hell no. I’m still in shock, if you wanna know the truth. I just don’t want you to be rushing because you’re afraid you’ll change your mind.”

“Maybe I’m afraid you’ll change your mind.”

Travis’s eyebrows pulled in, and he wrapped his arms around me. “You can’t really think that. You gotta know there’s nothing I want more.”

I rose up on the balls of my feet and pecked his lips. “I think we’re getting ready to board a plane for Vegas so we can get married, that’s what I think.”

Travis squeezed me against him, and then kissed me excitedly from cheek to collarbone. I giggled as he tickled my neck, and laughed even louder when he lifted me off the ground. He kissed me one last time before taking my bag off the floor, lowered me to the ground, and then led me by the hand to the line.

We showed our boarding passes and walked down the Jetway hand in hand. The flight attendants took one look at us and offered a knowing smile. Travis passed our seats to let me by, placed our carry-on bags in the overhead bin, and collapsed next to me. “We should probably try to sleep on the way, but I’m not sure I can. I’m too fucking amped.”

“You just said you needed a Red Bull.”

His dimple caved as he smiled. “Stop listening to everything I say. I’m probably not going to make sense for the next six months while I try to process the fact that I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever wanted.”

I leaned back to meet his eyes. “Trav, if you wonder why I’m in such a hurry to marry you . . . what you just said is one of the many reasons why.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He scooted down in his seat, and then laid his head on my shoulder, nuzzling my neck a few times before relaxing. I touched my lips to his forehead, and then looked out the window, waiting as the other passengers passed by and silently praying for the pilot to hurry the hell out of there. I’d never been so thankful for my unrivaled poker face. I wanted to stand up and scream for everyone to sit down and for the pilot to get us off the ground, but I forbid myself to even fidget, and willed my muscles to relax.

Travis’s fingers found their way to mine, and intertwined with them. His breath heated up the spot it touched on my shoulder, sending warmth throughout my body. Sometimes I just wanted to drown in him. I thought about what might happen if my plan didn’t work. Travis being arrested, tried in court, and the worst case scenario: being sent to prison. Knowing it was possible to be separated from him for a very long time, I felt that a promise to be with him forever didn’t seem like enough. My eyes filled with tears, and one escaped, falling down my cheek. I wiped it away quickly. Damn fatigue always made me more emotional.

The other passengers were stowing their bags and buckling their seat belts, going through the motions with no idea that our lives were about to change forever.

I turned to look out the window. Anything to get my mind off the urgency to get off the ground. “Hurry,” I whispered.