“Wilder!” Amy calls.

Shit. I was hoping she hadn’t seen me, even though I knew she probably did. If I’d known she was gonna be at that desk I’d have gone into the airport through another door so I could avoid her.

The whole point of hooking up with a flight attendant is that they’re hot and never in town. I could have sworn that she told me she was gonna be in Vancouver or something this week, so I thought I was safe.

Guess I should have listened better. Or at all.

I turn, and I’m greeted by four over-white smiles, every flight attendant currently behind the WestJet desk staring at me. Amy waves, looking like a little kid.

“C’mere!” she calls.

I don’t really want to, but I head over. I’ve got shit to do, flight logs to turn in, maintenance to oversee, not to mention I’m supposed to be scouting a location for another hotel with my dad this afternoon, and if I’m not prepared for that I won’t hear the end of it.

I wave back, and she laughs, a bubbly laugh that’s perfectly suited to her.

“The flight to Vancouver got canceled and I’m trying to find this poor thing a way to get to Yellowknife as soon as I can,” she says. “I’ve never even heard of Yellowknife before, but it’s way up there!”

She gestures at the poor thing across the desk from her, and I give the girl a half-second glance. Brown hair up in a messy bun, boots, leggings, ten layers of giant coats and sweaters and a whole mess of luggage next to her.

But just as I look away, she moves, and it catches my eye. Shoves her glasses up with one finger, held perfectly straight as she touches the thick black frame and not the lenses.

“Yellowknife, huh,” I say, walking closer to Amy but not letting my eyes leave the girl in front of the desk.

You know how sometimes you see something, or you hear something and for exactly one second it’s like you’re back somewhere else, in the past, and you don’t even know how or why but there you are?

Amy says something but I’m not next to her. I’m not at the airport any more.

I’m at Solaris High School, watching a girl in a long skirt and combat boots sprint as fast as she can away from me, for the woods.

“There are really no flights to this place,” Amy’s saying. “You sure it’s real, hon?”

Finally, the poor thing in front of the desk looks up, and she’s exactly who I didn’t want her to be.

Someone I haven’t seen in ten years. Not since she bolted away from me that night.

Not since I watched her go, still furious and guilty and vindictive. Still aching for her, wishing all at once that she was staying, that I’d never met her in the first place, that I’d hurt her even worse than I did, that I could take everything back.

“Imogen Gustavo, no shit,” I say, forcing my voice casual.

Imogen doesn’t say anything. Big fucking surprise, but her face turns bright red and she looks away, toward a wall, like I’m not even there or something.

Like she can’t even be bothered to look at me. Like I’m not good enough.

It all comes roaring back. My hands in my pockets tighten into fists, even as I remind myself that this is going to be a thirty second conversation and then I’m free of this girl for the rest of my life.

“Wilder,” she says, her face like stone. “Hi.”

“Do you guys know each other?” Amy asks brightly, still clicking away on the computer, completely oblivious.

“Sure,” I say, suddenly feeling cruel, like I’m seventeen all over again and Imogen’s standing there in her eyeliner and combat boots, looking away from me. “We went to high school together.”

Imogen’s face flares. She pushes her glasses up again, the same gesture that I know so fucking well because I watched it every day for ages.

“Yep,” she says, and looks away again.

“Haven’t seen you in years,” I say, coming up next to Amy behind the counter, standing too close to her. “How’s it going? Still know the difference between elves and fairies?”

She shoves her glasses up yet again, and finally, she looks at me. Imogen laughs hollowly, like she’s just being polite, which she probably is.

“Doesn’t everyone know the difference?” she says, her voice pitched a little too high. “Lord of the Rings is one of the highest grossing franchises of all time.”

“Oh, I loved those movies!” Amy says, still tapping away brightly at the computer, oblivious to what’s going on in front of her. “Don’t tell Wilder here but if Legolas asked me out I totally wouldn’t say no.”

She glances up at Imogen and raises one eyebrow, like it’s some kind of girls-only secret that a movie star is attractive.

I sling one arm around her, my other fist still clenched in my pocket because this is purely for Imogen’s benefit. It took all of ten seconds for her to make me feel sixteen again, like I need to prove myself. Even though I was hoping not to see Amy again for a while, here I am practically claiming her in public.

Just so Imogen knows I can bang cute flight attendants if I want.

“Hey there,” Amy giggles. “I’m at work, you know.”

I give her my most charming smile, hoping it’s not a scowl.

“I don’t see your boss.”

“Come on,” she says, battling her eyelashes, murmuring at me like there’s no one else around. “Don’t get me in trouble. At least not here.”

Imogen’s just watching us, her face still beet red, totally impassive. Even though I haven’t seen her in ten years I still know that means she’s pissed underneath, that I’m finally getting some reaction out of her.

“How bout I get you in trouble later?” I ask Amy, letting my voice drop to the rough growl she liked so much a few nights ago.

“Wilder!” she whispers, but she’s clearly thrilled. Up until now I’ve barely even acknowledged her in public, and now I’m acting ready to hump her over this desk.

I might do it, too. If Imogen were here to watch.

If I could see the look on her face when I did.

Amy taps a few more keys, then sighs, prettily frustrated.

“Hon, I just don’t think there’s any possible way I can get you up there by tomorrow morning,” she says. “There’s only a handful of flights per day, and you sure can’t go direct from here. I can get you to Calgary or Edmonton, maybe, and then you can try your luck again?”

Why is Imogen Gustavo going to Yellowknife?

Yellowknife is way the hell up there, somewhere I’ve only flown private clients a handful of times, mostly our millionaire investors who had to leave their resort chain board meetings and get straight to their mining company board meetings.

Imogen sighs, tapping her nails on the counter in front of her, like she’s thinking. I take my arm from around Amy, watching Imogen tapping incessantly.

“Sure, that’s fine,” she says at last. “I mean, better than nothing, right?”

She adjusts a laptop bag over her shoulder and gives Amy a fake smile, not looking at me even once. Like I’m just a guy-shaped prop or something.

“I’m really sorry, hon,” Amy says. “If you really need to get there, you could charter a flight if you had the money, but it would probably be expensive, and not a whole lot of pilots are willing to make that flight, especially this time of year. Weather comes up pretty fast over the Canadian Rockies and anything much smaller than a jet can get messed up pretty bad.”

Imogen’s fingers twist together, still nervously tapping on the desk in front of her, eyes dropping to look at a speck of dust or something that no one else can see or cares about. The polish is chipped from her blue nails, the skin ragged around the edges of them, like she’s been chewing at herself again.

Guess that hasn’t changed, either. God knows I still remember sitting in study hall, age seventeen, watching her across the room as she flipped through a thick textbook, shoving up her glasses and biting her nails.

Wishing that I were thinking about literally any other girl in school.

“How much is a charter from here to Yellowknife?” she asks.

“Probably at least a couple thousand dollars, hon,” Amy starts. “But like I said, it’s gonna be hard—”

“Ten thousand at least,” I correct her without thinking.

The few times I’ve made that flight I’ve done it free, for bigwigs who sunk millions into my family’s resort business, but that’s the bottom end of the going rate.

Amy looks at me, head tilted prettily.

“You do that flight?”

I snort, shoving my hands back into my pockets.

“I don’t make a habit of it,” I say. “But I’ve done it a couple of times, yeah. Gets pretty hairy over the mountains sometimes.”

“You should give her an old friends discount,” Amy suggests brightly.

I almost correct her right there, almost laugh in her face that old friends isn’t really what Imogen and I are.

“I can’t do it,” I tell her, point-blank.

Amy laughs, shrugging her shoulders at Imogen.

“He takes rich people heli-skiing,” she says. “You know, when you fly some guy in your helicopter to the top of a mountain and then they—”

“I know what heli-skiing is,” Imogen says, her voice flat, cutting Amy off.

Amy frowns slightly.

“Sorry,” Imogen says, forcing a smile at the other girl. “I mean, I’m from a ski town, you know? I didn’t know you were lugging rich guys around now, Wilder. Makes sense, though. Perfect job for you.”

She smiles a too-bright smile. It’s fake, and I’m sure she’s got some cutting reason why flying a helicopter loaded up with rich skiers is the perfect job for me because that’s Imogen and she hasn’t changed in ten years: quiet until the claws come out.

“It’s actually really dangerous!” Amy cuts in, petting my forearm with one hand. “The last guy who did heli-skiing here crashed into the side of a mountain. It was awful, but there was a really big demand for it and Wilder here was just out of the Navy, so he stepped up.”

She beams at me, but I feel fucking useless. Imogen’s standing here and Amy’s trying to make me sound like a war hero for ferrying rich assholes to the top of a mountain.

“You sure you can’t do it?” Amy asks, blinking up at me. “She’s got a flight out of there tomorrow morning, to… where was it again?”

She has no idea. Amy thinks that she’s being nice, getting me to take some non-threatening nerd on a plane ride. Imogen, with her glasses and her brown hair and her fidgeting, doesn’t threaten her at all because Amy is pretty and confident and bubbly in that popular-girl way.

It’s not Amy’s fault that she doesn’t know. How could she?

“Inuvik, and then a research station,” Imogen says.

She presses her lips together. She adjusts her glasses. She drums her fingers.

“I’ll give you fifteen thousand when we get there if you take me,” she says softly.