Episode 2

...Val...

The worst part about being an air traffic controller isn't the pressure. It isn't the twelve-hour shifts or the fact that three hundred people depend on your voice so they don't kill themselves in the air.

The worst part is that you can't show up hungover.

And today I had a hangover the size of a Boeing 747.

I put on my sunglasses, swallowed the bitterest coffee the airport cafe had to offer, and walked toward the control tower praying no one would talk to me. Especially Paty, who had a radar for detecting romantic drama more accurate than any navigation system.

Then I saw him.

At first I thought the tequila was still doing things to my brain. Because it couldn't be. It couldn't be the same man I'd run from that morning walking down the airport hallway in a pilot's uniform that fit him as if it had been sewn directly onto his body.

A captain's uniform.

Four gold stripes on the epaulets. White shirt stretching across his shoulders. Perfect tie. Aviator cap in his hand. I looked him up and down, and my body reacted before my brain did, a hot pull low in my stomach, the same sensation from last night when he'd touched me. I had to clench my teeth so it wouldn't show.

He stopped. I stopped.

Three seconds. We stared at each other in the middle of the hallway while people moved around us, unaware they were witnessing the worst moment of my life.

"No." I said it as a general rejection. To the universe. To everything. "No, no, no."

The corner of his mouth lifted.

"Good morning to you too, Mendoza."

"You're a pilot?" I pointed at him as if accusing him of a crime. "A pilot?"

"Captain, technically." He settled the cap under his arm. "Vuelo Cielo. And you? What are you doing here at seven in the morning looking like you want to kill someone?"

"I work here," I said through my teeth.

"Seriously?" The surprise was genuine. "Doing what?"

"Air traffic controller."

Silence. I saw the realization hit him. She works in the tower. I fly for Vuelo Cielo. Our jobs are glued together.

And he laughed.

Not a discreet laugh. He laughed with his whole body, tipped his head back, and showed his teeth. The same teeth that had bitten my lower lip last night and pulled a sound out of me I was still embarrassed to remember.

"Let me get this straight," he said, wiping away a tear. "The woman I slept with last night is the same one who's going to give me flight instructions?"

"Keep your voice down!" I looked everywhere at once. "Listen, last night was a mistake. An accident. I was drunk, you were there, it happened. It won't happen again."

"Never is a long time, Mendoza."

"I have something for you." I pulled an envelope from my bag. I'd prepared it in the car with money from the ATM, because I was a woman who solved her problems quickly. "It's one hundred thousand pesos. For last night."

The laughter vanished from his face. He looked at me. Looked at the envelope. Looked back at me.

"Are you paying me?" His voice dropped two tones. "Are you trying to pay me for sleeping with you?"

"Don't put it like that."

"How do you want me to put it, Valentina?" My full name. It sounded different in his mouth. Deeper. I remembered how it had sounded last night against my neck, rough and low. "You're giving me money as if I were a..."

"It's so there aren't any debts," I interrupted, pushing the envelope toward him. "Take the money, forget what happened, and that's it."

He stared at me for a long moment. I felt his gaze go straight through me. Seb had that way of looking at you that made you feel as if he could see everything you hid, and last night he'd seen all of me, no clothes and no masks, and that scared me more than anything else.

He took the envelope.

My body relaxed. Good. This was going to work. He was going to take the money and he was going to--

He tore it in half.

Then he tore the halves into quarters. The quarters into pieces. He let them fall between us.

"What the hell are you doing?" My mouth fell open. "That was money, you idiot!"

"Do you know what I remember about you in high school, Mendoza?" He stepped closer. His voice was low, controlled. "You always wanted to control everything. Every test, every grade, every situation. Because you were terrified of what happened when you couldn't."

He was right, and I hated him for it.

"Last night," he continued, close enough that I caught his cologne mixed with his own scent, the same scent that had clung to the hotel pillow and was still on my skin, "wasn't a mistake. And it wasn't an accident. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen. And I'm not going to take your money to forget it."

"Then what do you want?" My voice came out weaker than I wanted.

"Nothing." He stepped back, and the distance landed on me like a blow. "I don't want anything from you, Valentina. But I won't let you turn what happened into a transaction. Neither of us is that cheap."

He put on his cap, straightened his uniform, and walked away.

"Hey!" I called after him. "The money!"

"Keep your money," he said without turning around. "And the next time you want to pay someone for sleeping with you, make sure it isn't a man who did it for free because he wanted to."

I watched him disappear down the hallway. Long, sure steps. The kind of man who walked as if everything belonged to him.

"Damn..." I hissed, crouching to pick up the torn bills from the floor.

"Uhhh... are you okay?"

I startled. Three yards away stood a man in a first officer's uniform, with messy hair and a face caught somewhere between amusement and concern. He looked at me, looked at the torn bills on the floor, then looked at me again.

"I'm Rodrigo," he said, holding out a hand. "Rodrigo Zamora. Captain del Fuego's copilot. But everyone calls me Rodri."

"Good for you, Rodri." I stood with my fists full of shredded bills. "Do you need something?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"No... I just wanted to confirm something." His smile went huge. "You're the girl from last night, aren't you?"

I must have turned a shade of red that doesn't exist, because Rodri lifted both hands.

"Whoa, easy, don't kill me. It's just that the captain came in today with a face I've never seen on him, and now I see you picking money off the floor after talking to him, and well... it's pretty obvious."

"There was no girl. There was no night. And if you say anything to anyone, I swear every one of your landings is going to become a nightmare from the control tower."

Rodri blinked. Then he laughed.

"Oh my God, you're perfect for him."

"Rodri!"

"I'm leaving!" He practically ran off, laughing himself breathless. "But let the record show I don't know anything!"

I stayed alone in the hallway. Surrounded by torn bills. My pride on the floor and my pulse racing.

Sebastián del Fuego was a pilot. A captain. For Vuelo Cielo.

I was going to have to hear his voice over the radio. Guide him professionally. Act as if I didn't know what he sounded like when he came, how his weight felt over me, how he grabbed my hair when--

No. Enough.

I picked up the last pieces of money, shoved them into my bag, and walked toward the tower with my jaw clenched.

I just had to ignore him. Be professional. Do my job.

How hard could that be?

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