Chapter 372

[ 1,102 words ]

Katia’s POV

The jet climbed above the clouds a little after nine in the morning, the cabin filled with the low hum of engines and the sound of Aiden’s excited chatter as he pressed his face against the window, watching the ground disappear beneath us.

Julian sat in the pilot’s seat, headset resting easily around his neck, his hands moving over the controls with an ease that made something in my chest go still. I remembered the afternoon six months earlier when he had asked me to teach him how to fly, the two of us standing in his private hangar looking up at the same Gulfstream G650 we were sitting in now, one of several aircraft Julian kept there, the twin of the one I owned myself parked only a few bays down.

We had spent three hours in the cockpit that day, going over instruments and radio calls and the basic mechanics of everything a jet this size required, and I remembered how carefully he had listened, how many questions he had asked, and how pleased I had felt watching him absorb something I loved enough to have built an entire second life around.

Watching him now, guiding this jet through the open sky with the same confidence he carried into every boardroom he had ever walked into, I understood, for the first time, that Julian had already known how to fly long before that afternoon. He had learned years ago, quietly, the way he seemed to learn most things, without announcement or fanfare.

He had never needed my lessons at all.

He had simply wanted three uninterrupted hours alone with me, sitting close together in a small cockpit with nowhere else either of us needed to be, and I had spent six months believing I had taught him something, when the entire afternoon had only ever been his way of asking for my time without asking for it directly.

“Come sit up front,” he said.

I unbuckled and moved forward, settling into the co-pilot’s seat beside him, and Aiden scrambled after me, climbing into the small jump seat behind us with his own set of oversized headphones that Julian had bought for this trip.

I looked at Julian, still turning the realization over in my mind, and could not help myself.

“Julian Windsor,” I said, “you have always known how to fly. You cheated me p>

He glanced over, the corner of his mouth lifting.

“I will do anything,” he said, “just to spend time with my wife. Including lying about the London extension. Including making up excuses about a business meeting that supposedly required the two of us so that I could spend an evening across a table from you without either of us having to admit what it actually was p>

I stared at him.

“How long?” I said. “How long have you been doing that p>

“Long enough that I stopped being able to remember which meetings were real and which ones I invented,” he said. “I told myself it did not matter. I told myself I was simply being efficient, finding excuses to be near you that did not require either of us to say anything true out loud p>

“You could have just asked me to dinner,” I said.

“I did not think you would say yes,” he said, “if I asked you plainly. So I built a version of asking that let both of us pretend it was something else p>

I sat with that for a moment, watching him check the instruments in front of him with the easy competence of a man who had never once needed my lessons.

“Give me our heading,” Julian said, glancing at me.

I checked the display in front of me, running the numbers the way I had learned to years ago, back when flying had been one of the only places in my life that felt entirely mine.

“Zero four five,” I said. “Climbing to flight level three seven zero p>

“Copy that,” Julian said, adjusting our course slightly, his hands moving over the controls with the same calm confidence he carried into every room he ever walked into.

“My turn,” Aiden announced from the back, leaning forward as far as his seatbelt allowed. “Dad, what is our altitude p>

Julian checked the instrument panel and told him, and Aiden repeated the number back with obvious pride, as though he had calculated it himself rather than simply relaying what his father had said a moment earlier.

“You are doing great, copilot,” Julian said.

“I am the assistant,” Aiden corrected. “Mom is the copilot. I am the pilot assistant p>

“My apologies,” Julian said, glancing at me with something warm passing between us that had nothing to do with altitude or heading.

We spent the next hour trading small tasks back and forth, Aiden calling out cloud formations he wanted named, Julian explaining what each dial and gauge in front of him actually measured, and me leaning back in my seat watching the two of them, struck by how easily they had folded into each other, father and son, as though the last two years of secrets and silence had never happened at all.

At one point Aiden fell asleep in the jump seat, his headphones slipping slightly off one ear, and Julian reached back without a word and adjusted them gently before returning his hand to the controls.

“He loves this,” I said quietly.

“So do I,” Julian said, glancing at me. “I did not expect to enjoy it this much. Sharing it with both of you p>

I did not have an answer for that, so I let the quiet between us stretch instead, comfortable in a way it had not been in weeks, and watched the horizon curve gently below the wing as we crossed into airspace that would eventually carry us all the way to Seoul.

We touched down late that evening, the lights of the city stretching out beneath us in patterns that reminded me faintly of Manhattan, though softer somehow, less insistent about announcing themselves. Aiden was awake again by then, pressing his face to the window the same way he had at takeoff, narrating everything he saw with the breathless enthusiasm only a child seemed capable of sustaining after an entire day of travel.

Once we had cleared customs and were walking through the terminal toward the car waiting for us, I turned to Julian, unable to resist the moment any longer.

“Oh, and Mr. Windsor,” I said, keeping my voice light. “When I am here, I am single. Because trust me, I have to find an Oppa p>

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