Against All Odds

Chapter 37

I swung my backpack off my shoulder and onto the basket in front of me so that I could dig around in the front pockets, locating my passport and travel itinerary, and that's when I caught sight of an achingly familiar head- dark hair cut short at the sides, longer at the top and mussed with little care. The broad shoulders covered in a dark blue t-shirt, the easy swagger as he moved towards the empty queue besides the winding economy class check-in line was all reminiscent of Killian Beckett.

And I couldn't believe my eyes when he sauntered very casually towards the business class check-in counter.

No waiting for him, no long lines of agitated and impatient people all trying to get to the front of the line faster.

What the damn hell was he doing on my flight?

My heart must be about ready to leap from my chest in an explosion of gore at this rate. Panic, sure and hot, flooded my nervous system and I broke out into a sweat. But then, I rationalised with heady breathlessness, this was a layover flight to Qatar. He must be going to catch a connecting flight to Dublin from Doha. It was a popular flight route, connecting people to all major destinations around the world.

Christ, I sounded like one of the adverts they played on repeat on the little monitors at the back of the chairs while you waited for take-off.

Well, that had to be it. Killian was connecting in Doha. I evened out my breathing, calming myself, and pretended I didn't see him while he finished his check-in process in record time and left the area, heading towards security. There was no conceivable way that he was heading to the Maldives. Sure, he was on the same flight as me but he was in an entirely different cabin. The chances of me running into him? Slim to none. I was overreacting. I didn't have to make a big deal out of this.

Already, I had lost track of him as he found the security gates towards the back end of the hall.

And what the damn hell was I doing, ogling his movements anyway? I was pretending not to see him.

Behind me, somebody bumped into my heels with their trolley, obviously impatient that I hadn't moved forward with the sluggish pace of the queue fast enough- because God forbid I don't cover that half metre of free space in front of me the moment it is formed. I gave the man behind me a scathing look and obliged him by a quarter of an inch.

Within the next hour, I managed to check in, crawl through security and passport control, and find a restaurant while I waited for boarding to be announced, ordering myself a nice cold drink to tide me over.

Thoughts of Killian intruded in every corner of my mind. It made me stumble over my words while I addressed the bored-looking official at the passport counter, made me bump into people as I moved through the airport because I wasn't looking at where I was going. Just knowing that he was on the same flight as me was sending me into a frenzy, as much as I would have liked to be cool and collected at the prospect. And it was ludicrous of me to even think that I'd run into him- this was just one of those weird coincidences you heard about sometimes on the radio or in movies.

What were the odds that Killian was going to the Maldives and staying in the exact same resort as me? I snorted disparagingly at myself, at those thoughts in particular. There must be thousands of islands in the Maldives, with thousands of high-end resorts. So even if he was heading that way, and somehow I doubted it considering everything I knew about Killian, the odds of him landing up at the exact same resort as me? Nil.

But anxiety was nipping at my heels. I dug out my phone from my backpack and sent off a quick text to Sadie, and double checked that I hadn't received anything more from Killian since I had responded to his Merry Christmas text a few days ago.

Killian is on my flight.

She responded almost instantly, bless her heart. I knew that she was keeping an eye on her phone to make sure all of her wedding guests got back to their countries, cities, and homes of origin in one piece since we'd all made the various journeys out to attend.

What?! That's crazy! To Dubai?

I corrected her quickly and then added a question, too desperate to know where exactly Killian was headed to concentrate on anything else. No, I'm doing a piece in the Maldives for the next week. Did Killian say anything to you or Sipho about where he was going after SA?

I'll check with Sips, but he didn't say anything to me. I thought he was going back to Dublin.

I wracked my brain, thinking back to the last few days we had spent together but I couldn't remember if the topic had ever come up between us about where we were headed after the wedding. I think we all assumed that we'd all just continue with our real lives. When Sadie got back to me that Sipho wasn't sure either, I abandoned my phone on the table and clutched the cool, damp glass of the beer I had ordered.

Why was I fretting over this? It was out of my control. I never let things get to me that were beyond my capabilities of sorting it out- missed connections, delayed flights, lost passports and luggage. These were problems I had a handle on fixing. They were easy to control.

Killian on the same flight with me, heading in the same direction? My stomach twisted into petrified knots.

I needed space away from him, time to lick my wounds and get over my inner misery at losing him again. The last time I had managed only because he had been continents away from me, separated by a literal ocean. I needed that again- distractions, goals, direction.

If I was a religious person, I may very well have gotten onto my knees and prayed that the man who made my world spin off centre was going in an entirely opposite direction to me.

I spent two fucking hours at that table worrying about it.

By the time I made my way to the boarding gates, I was automatically searching the crowds hoping to catch a glimpse of him, but Killian had obviously already been boarded having priority as a business-class passenger.

Ugh.

That meant I probably wouldn't see him. At this point, I'd like to confront the guy and put myself out of my misery because even if I was one hundred percent certain he wasn't going to the Maldives, my poor little brain needed the verbal confirmation so it could stop its damn worrying. At this rate I was going to spend the eight hour flight to Doha in mental agony because normally us low-class folk were kept painfully separated from the people spending exorbitant amounts just to have a seat turn into a narrow little bed.

Once again, my assumptions were proven dismally wrong as today we were herded through the front of the plane, through all the finery and space of first class with their individual, luxurious little pods of privacy and then business class. A stream of economy class passengers shuffling with awkward, painfully slow movements through the entire length of the plane, forced to come to an abrupt halt whenever someone needed to stow away their cabin luggage in an overhead compartment because they didn't listen to the boarding announcements and didn't adhere to boarding according to their section demarcated on their airline ticket. Making things unbearably awkward when you had your butt cheek so close to another human's face that in any other situation it would be considered a profanity crime. My seat was towards the back of the plane so I had a while to go, which is why I was about two seconds from a full blown panic attack when the line of people I was following happened to stagger to a stop right in the middle of the business class cabin.

Situating me directly in front of Killian Beckett's seat.