Penalty Kill

Harper

"Good afternoon, passengers of flight 323 to Milwaukee..."

The headache splitting my skull in two hasn't left me for a second ever since the night I got the call about my mom. And as the PA blares overhead at what feels like is a decibel high enough to shatter my eardrums, I grit my teeth together and attempt to narrow in my focus on the shitty rom-com I haven't managed to read a single word of in the 30 minutes I've been sitting here.

All I can manage to do is stare blankly at the words on the page, seeing nothing but a fuzzy blur of what should be paragraphs of text. I'm exhausted. I haven't slept, and I haven't eaten nearly enough to sustain myself appropriately in the past week. I'm sitting at a relatively crowded airport gate, my carryon at my feet as my stomach growls and churns for the thousandth time since I've been awake today.

But I can't bring myself to stand up and have my two feet drag myself to any one of the dozen food options in the airport. I can't even get up to find water. All I can do is sit, motionless, staring at the pages of a book I'm not reading. Because I'm afraid that if I get up, if I take care of myself, I'll start to feel better only to feel bad again. I'm afraid that I'll see something or someone, or hear something that will remind me of her—or of the two people I've done nothing but entirely ignore the past week.

As the thoughts in my mind start to spiral into places that make raw, hot emotion churn up in the center of my chest, I blink hard and do my damndest to turn my mind back into a blank, vast void of nothingness. I find success after a few short minutes, letting my eyes stare on at the page wholly unfocused, but a commotion of laughter from the desk at the gate draws me begrudgingly back out of my hollow, internal shell.

The person working behind the desk keeps on giggling sporadically, right along with whoever's approached them to strike up what is turning out to be a very raucous, rip-roaring good time of a conversation for the both of them. Gritting my teeth harder, my fingers grip the book in my hands as hard as they can as I try to drown out this new distraction with my own internal soundtrack of deafening silence.

But I just can't fucking do it.

So as I hear what I think is this loud, disruptive human being finally departing from the desk, I can't help but look up over the top edge of my book to shoot a leveling glare at the perpetrator. My annoyed eyes fall on broad shoulders covered in a fitted gray long-sleeve shirt with a black duffle bag slung over one arm. And as my eyes take in a backwards black hat with long strands of dark brown hair poking out from underneath it ...

I nearly drop the book I'm clutching between my fingers as I realize that the back I'm glaring at with unyielding hatred is fucking Jake's. My mind is reeling as I try and parse out why the hell he's here, and how he's here, and what the fuck I'm going to do when he—

As he turns around, it takes all of a second before his bright green eyes scan the seats and find mine. And I swear to god at the sight of his crooked smile, surrounded by a freshly trimmed beard and a nasty looking black eye, my heart melts and breaks all at the same time. He's got his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, revealing the tattoos on his one forearm that also has his favorite silver watch at his wrist.

The flood of emotion that swells in my chest as I watch the last thing I know to feel like home walk right towards me is overwhelming in all the best and worst ways.

Keeping my gaze locked with his, I do my damnedest to keep my face schooled into absolute nonchalance. I nearly lose the fight with the smile that's trying to take over my lips as he walks right to me, grinning like the handsome, charming son of a bitch that he is. I hate how much I love seeing him after doing everything in my power to keep him as far away from me as possible.