Paper Parachute | Celebrity Romance

35.

"Blake. Blake, calm down. What about Cash? What's happened?" Blair's words were rushed and panicked as she held her hysterical boyfriend—was he still her boyfriend? — in her arms.

She felt the lump rise in her throat and the tears spring to her eyes as she feared the worst.

"His plane went down. They can't find him." Her breath hitched as her heart began to ache for him, for his whole family. His mother. She must be devastated.

Blake used the back of his hand to wipe away his tears and took a deep breath trying to get himself together to tell her what had happened.

Blair let him grip her hand as she rubbed circles across the skin on his forearm.

"Um, mom called me like an hour ago. Said his officer, or general, whoever it is that's over his division, I'm terrible at remembering the hierarchy, called. He said they were doing a patrol, just checking the airspace and what not and they just fell off the radar. It was him and his copilot and they can't find either of them."

"Did they find the plane?"

He nodded and leaned his head against her.

"They said it's a complete wreck but they didn't find their bodies."

"Well that's good then, right? We will just have to cling to the hope that they made it out and they're safe waiting for help to find them."

"They declared them Missing In Action, B. It's literally only happened like once this whole war. They told us they may have been taken prisoner. My baby brother, B. They could be torturing him. I don't know where he is or if he's even alive. I'm his big brother I'm supposed to protect him." His voice fell into a mess of sobs.

Blair didn't know what to do. The English language didn't contain words appropriate for a time like this so she simply held onto him as he clutched at her shirt for dear life.

He'd held her together when her life fell apart with her parents law suit, now it was her turn to return the favor.

His breathing evened out after a while. The sound of his anguish replaced by his soft snores. Blair was at odds with herself. She wanted to hold her ground and be angry with him still for the comment he'd made regarding her parents but in light of the most recent events, what had transpired between them suddenly seemed so trivial.

She loved him. She loved him so much and so deeply. He was hurt and she wanted to be the one to comfort him. She wanted to be here for him and help
him in anyway that she possibly could.

His head rested in her lap and she ran her fingers through the wisps of his hair. It was getting so long, he kept saying he should get a hair cut but Blair secretly loved the curls and hoped he would let them grow a while longer. He smiled ever so slightly in his sleep and it brought a smile to her own face.

Blair held him as morning broke. She was unable to return to sleep after learning of his brother's missing status and she feared if she let herself doze she may wake the sleeping boy in her lap. He needed his rest for the road ahead and Blair didn't want to deprive him of any moment of peace he was getting.

She couldn't imagine what he was going through. As Blake slept, Blair's mind drifted back to her holiday with Blake's family. Cash's warm smile and constant jokes that had brought so much laughter to those days. He was so young, only twenty one, the same age as her, and he might already be gone?

The realization of her own mortality was a heavy side effect of the horrendous news and it had Blair contemplating her life and thinking about the future.

Blake finally stirred in her arms around nine. His eyes fluttered somewhere between open and closed for a moment before finally focusing in on her.