He Sent the Helicopter for Her Dog, So I Took Back My Wings novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Drive

I did not scream, and I did not hit him.

I turned around and walked back across the apron toward the hangar.

"Gianna," Bruce said behind me.

"Don't."

"Please, let me..."

"Don't follow me."

I went in through the side door.

The crew had stopped eating, and the check still floated in the syrup.

Nobody asked me anything.

The medic stood up and put a hand out, and I stepped around it.

I climbed the ladder to the loft and found my go-bag by the bunk.

My hands shook so hard that I could not work the zipper.

I sat down on the plywood where I had held his face the night before.

I thought: he lay under me and let me say the rule.

He let me say it twice.

Boots hit the rungs of the ladder, heavy and slow.

Hank's gray head came up through the hatch.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Anywhere that isn't here."

"You want the truck keys?"

"I want to know if you knew."

He said nothing for a moment.

"He told me the second night," Hank said. "He sat on that crate and told me all of it, and I almost threw him off the roof."

"You knew for ten days."

"Nine. And I'm sorry, kid, I am. But I'll tell you what I told him. A man who comes here and says it out loud is a different animal from one who hides."

"He did hide."

"For eleven days he put tea on a floor outside your door," Hank said. "He sat in a parking lot every dawn and never once went in. That's not hiding. That's a man who can't walk through the door."

"He flew over me, Hank."

"He did."

"He didn't land."

"He didn't know," Hank said. "He lifted off on a lie, and he fixed what he could, and he's been trying to fix the rest."

I stared at the mattress.

My eyes burned and I did not let them spill.

"Raven," Hank said, softly. "Whatever you decide, nobody in this hangar will think less of you."

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