50 Shades of Drake 3 and 4

Chapter Eighty-Two

    Destiny hated airports. They were loud, crowded, and chaotic. They were, however, a necessary evil when traveling from one country to another on borrowed time. As soon as they boarded the plane, she collapsed into her assigned seat, exhaling with relief.

    Brian settled in next to her and didn't hesitate in securing his seat belt. "Did you find anything on Palmer?"

    "Nothing super recent," she said, buckling her own seat belt. "No sightings of him, no sightings of Aubrey."

    "That's all right. He's probably just staying low key."

    "Or maybe he's staying in so much because he's hiding Aubrey in his house," Destiny said, turning to look out of the small rectangular window at her left.

    "We'll find out what he's up to," Brian promised. "Don't worry."

    She turned and locked eyes with him. "I wanted to apologize to you."

    The expression on his face was guarded. "About?"

    "Last night. The...running scared to your room. Again. And asking for you to hold me when-"

    He held up a hand, silencing her. "You don't have to do that. I keep telling you, we're fine."

    "I have to say this, though."

    His brow creased. "Okay."

    "It was selfish of me to go running to you and beyond selfish of me to ask you to hold me, knowing...how you felt about the need for us to disengage."

    "You were scared as shit, and for good reason," he pointed out.

    "It was still selfish of me. A lot of what I've done recently has been selfish." She broke eye contact with him and stared down at her lap. "Throughout everything, I've thought of no one but myself. I focused so much on what I wanted and what I felt...I completely disregarded the feelings of anyone else, my own morals." She could still feel his eyes on her, but she didn't look back up.

    "No harm, no foul, Destiny."

    "You can't...keep being overly nice to me," she told him. "All of my behavior for the past month has been wrong."

    He laughed. "So, what is it you want me to do, if you don't want me to be nice about it? Do you want me to punish you?"

    She raised her gaze and looked him in the eye.

    The playful glint in his eyes faded at the unexpected intensity sparking between them. "I mean...is that what you want?"

    I can't tell if he's joking or not, she thought, searching his eyes.

    He reached for his seat belt. "If you want, I can put you over my lap right here. Who cares that we're on a plane full of people, right?" A playful grin stretched across his lips.

    She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm not saying that you should punish me. I'm just saying that when I do something wrong, or when I behave badly..."

    "When you behave badly?" he repeated, laughing.

    "I've been a bitch to you!" she exclaimed, not knowing how else to express what she was thinking.

    He pursed his lips shut.

    She looked past him, across the aisle to see if her outburst had attracted any unwanted attention.

    A middle-aged woman with light brown hair was too preoccupied with her young toddler to have noticed.

    Lowering her voice, Destiny went on, "You told me that you didn't want me to touch you or flirt with you, and...I didn't even remember that you said that, much less respect that's how you felt. I've been that self-involved. And I wish I could use what happened with Jeremiah and Palmer, and all of this craziness as some sort of excuse, but I can't. I was extremely selfish, and...you shouldn't be so quick to forgive me for that."

    "Well, I do," he told her plainly. "Because I know your intent wasn't to hurt me, or anyone else. You weren't being a bitch. You were hurt. You could have been kidnapped or worse. We've been running from our own shadows for weeks, reminded of our own mortality. I understand that you want to take accountability for your actions. But I am telling you that in this case, your actions are justified."

    "Sleeping with you in such a short period of time after Aubrey left...that's not justified by any traumatic event."

    "Yes, it is," he argued. "And I need you to resolve this in your mind so we don't have to keep talking about this, because every time we talk about this..."

    "I'm sorry."

    He smiled at her. "See? You respected my request to stop talking about it. Progress."

    She laughed and punched him lightly in the arm.

    "Can I tell you what I think?"

    "Since when have you asked my permission for that?" she asked him.

    "I personally think that talking about you and me and how guilty you feel is a distraction tactic," he told her. "We've literally had the same conversation multiple times. I think it's your way of distracting yourself from focusing on what Aubrey is going through right now."

    She looked away from him.

    "I think that you feel so guilty for sleeping with me, that you have a hard time thinking about him. Tell me I'm wrong."

    The moment he said the words, there was a certain truth that rang to them.

    "If you can't even think about him, how are you going to face him?" Brian asked her.

    She shrugged and clasped her hands together in her lap. "It's not just the fact that you and I...did what we did," she said, realizing just how inappropriate this conversation was for their current location. "I mean...it's partly that, but...to think that while we were doing what we did, he was lying somewhere needing our help. Or hurt. Thinking about that makes my heart hurt. It makes me feel like a complete monster. And yes...with the information we had, I know I can easily try to escape blame, but...on some level, I will always blame myself."

    "You'll work through that, though," he predicted. "Just give it time."

    "I'm trying. Right now, he is the priority. I want him home and I want to make sure he's safe. I just...I had to apologize to you for last night."

    "To be honest, it felt nice to hold you," he told her. He turned and shifted in his seat after a passenger bumped into his arm.

    "That guy didn't even apologize."

     "It's my fault for not looking harder for first class seats," Brian muttered, running a hand through his hair. "Where was I? Oh. Last night, yeah. I mean...it felt nice to hold you. It was one last time, you know?"

    "You have a very optimistic way of viewing things," she commented.

    "New development." He reached down and grabbed his black carry-on bag, just as the pilot's voice came over the speakers announcing that the plane would soon be taking off. He unzipped his carry-on bag and pulled out a pair of matte gold headphones. "I'm not even going to bother telling you when I started getting a more optimistic view on things," he added, glancing at her before connecting the headphones to the port on his cell phone.

    With a wistful smile, she said, "And for once, I'm not going to ask."

    He returned her smile and told her, "Get some rest. Once we hit the ground, we're going to hit the ground running."

    He doesn't have to tell me twice, she thought, settling into her seat and closing her eyes. Last night, she hadn't gotten a full eight hours of sleep and as a result, she felt sluggish. While he clapped the earphones over his head, she laid her head back and tried to imagine what it would be like to see Aubrey again.