Authork27
Isaac Greystone had learned to read instruments, weather patterns, silence. People were harder. They were noisy, unpredictable, always wanting something. That was why the cockpit suited him. Up there, everything had rules.
Amelia Hart broke those rules the first week she joined the crew.
She was brightness in motion, all easy smiles and quick laughter, the kind of person who filled the cabin without trying. Passengers relaxed around her. The other crew leaned toward her voice. Isaac noticed her the way he noticed turbulence, briefly, clinically, and then pushed the thought aside.
Weeks passed. Flights blurred together. And then one morning, somewhere between London and Rome, he saw it.
The smile was still there, but it didn't reach her eyes. Her laughter came a second too late. She moved through the aisle like someone performing a version of herself she no longer recognized.
Isaac watched from the cockpit doorway as passengers looked past her. Conversations fell quiet when she approached. Requests were made to anyone but her. No one was openly cruel. They didn't need to be. The absence was enough.
Amelia stopped leaving the hotel except for work. She stopped talking about the cities they landed in. She stopped shining.
It bothered him more than it should have.
So on a cool evening after landing, when the rest of the crew dispersed into the city without her, Isaac did something wildly out of character.
He asked if she wanted to come with him.
She looked surprised, then uncertain, like she had forgotten how to say yes to things. When she finally nodded, something loosened in his chest.
Neither of them knew it yet, but that night would be the first time Amelia Hart stepped back into the world.
And the first time Isaac Greystone let someone in.