The Secret (Winslow Brothers 3)

My feet are moving before I even tell them to, back to the agent, to ask her more questions that she’s probably going to try not to answer. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

She sighs. “Sir, I already told you, since you don’t have a ticket, I can’t give you any info about this flight.”

I tried to get a fucking ticket for this flight—it would have made all of this a lot easier—but the damn thing was booked solid. So, I ended up buying a ticket to Des Moines fucking Iowa, because it was the closest flight leaving out of the same terminal as this LA flight.

“I’m fine!” A familiar voice fills my ears, and I look toward the door that’s now closed, the one the security guard just ran through moments ago. “You can let me go! I wanted off that flight anyway!”

In a rush, the door bursts open just as Rachel yanks her arm away from the security guard. “Like I said, it’s fine! I just had to get off the plane!”

He looks at the gate agent, his face morphing into an exhausted expression.

“I promise, I’m leaving,” Rachel reassures them, and it’s then that I realize her face is red with fresh tears. “I’m not trying to cause trouble. I just have an emergency.”

“Rachel?” I call for her, and the gate agent’s attention comes back to me.

“Well, that makes sense,” she mutters before turning to me with a small smile and a shrug. “I guess you got lucky.” She chats briefly with the security guard holding Rachel, jerking her chin toward me, and the guy rolls his eyes heavenward. Still, I’m pretty sure that at this stage in the chaotic game, that security agent is supposed to take Rachel to some back room where they’ll interrogate her with questions and search her bag for bombs. But instead, the man lets her go and walks away, leaving Rachel and me standing there.

Evidently, the gate agent with all the rules was looking out for me after all.

“Ty?” Rachel questions, her whole face nearly dissolving into the scrunched result of overwhelming emotion.

I close the distance between us hesitantly, trying not to scare her.

“I’ve… Well, I’ve been looking for you a lot today. Seems as though I finally found you.”

“You came here? For me?”

All I can do is nod. The truth is, I would have gone anywhere. JFK, LA, the moon. Whatever it took.

I stop about a foot away from her, and her big green eyes search mine.

“Rachel, I have been scouring the city looking for you,” I admit and run a hand through my hair. “You wouldn’t answer my calls. You wouldn’t text me back. I was so worried. I had no idea where you went. I…I…” I shrug, unable to put it in any other words than the ones at the tip of my tongue. “I don’t want you to run.”

“I know,” she whispers and digs her teeth into her bottom lip. “I shouldn’t have. I should have stayed. I should have faced you directly. You deserve that, Ty, and I’m really sorry.”

“I love you,” I tell her candidly, knowing this is the way I should have told her the first time. Face-to-face, heart-to-heart, without the audience of her father. “I’m sorry for the way you heard it the first time, but I’m not sorry for the way I feel.” I shrug. “It’s your fault, really, picking me as the guy to make me remember you forever,” I tease. “It really fucking worked.”

Her face melts into a soft, sad, emotional smile. “I have feelings for you too, Ty,” she says, reaching out to take my hands in hers and rubbing at the backs of them with her thumbs. “Big, at times overwhelming, feelings. But…I also have a lot of shit I need to figure out. And I have to do that for myself before I can do anything for anyone else.”

My throat feels clogged and my stomach leaden, but I can tell by the earnestness in her eyes that there’s not going to be any changing her mind.

I nod then, licking my lips to keep the tears in my eyes from escaping. “What does that mean? What do you want from me?”

“It means…I don’t know?” Her eyes meet mine, but her shoulders sag forward. “I don’t know, Ty. I just need some space. To figure things out—to make the decisions I need to and to mend the things that are broken inside me. You deserve a woman who’s whole. Who’s ready to go all in with you.”

“All of that’s great, Rach. But I just want you.”

“I want you too, Ty. But this…this is what I need.”

My ears ring, and my chest feels like it could crack in half. “So…that’s it?” I whisper. “Space?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and her voice shakes with emotion. “I just need time, Ty.”