The theme park was Charlotte's victory lap, and she ran it like a generals' daughter.
Merry-go-round first — "the talking horses, Mommy, the TALKING ones" — where she selected the fattest white horse in the stable, informed me it was a stallion named Baron von Sugar, and permitted me to sit behind her like a hired guard.
From the top of the ride, wobbling in circles to calliope music, she went quiet. Charlotte going quiet is a weather event. I followed her gaze across the fence.
By the gate, a father had his daughter up on his shoulders, making her shriek with laughter; the mother stood beside them with two ice cream cones, laughing up at them both. A family. The ordinary kind. The kind that doesn't know it's rich.
Something under my ribs pulled taut and painful, like thread through a wound.
"Mommy." Charlotte's voice had gone small — a thing she does perhaps twice a year. "Why doesn't my papa come down from the sky? You said he flies. Other kids have papas who hold them."
The park noise went far away.
I crouched in front of her, princess-to-princess. "Charlotte. Do you want a papa?"
She nodded so hard her curl bounced. Then her small hands came up and patted my cheeks, and she smiled like a little conspirator: "But Mommy wants him too. I see it."
Out of the mouths of pups.
"Charlotte Winters," I said gravely, "is that an accusation?"
"It's an OBSERVATION," she said, and pointed at the ice cream cart with tactical precision, and the moment was gone in a shriek of sprinkles.
By seven-thirty she was asleep on my shoulder, one fist locked in my hair. My mother took delivery of her at the door like priceless cargo. "Don't you have a crew dinner?" she whispered. "Go. Be a person for four hours. I've got the little moon."
I changed into the white halter dress I never wear — silver heels, hair down, the works. Armor, but the pretty kind. If I was going to sit across a dinner table from Victor Ironclaw with three years of wreckage between us, I was going to do it looking like a woman who'd won.
Daisy was waiting outside the restaurant, and lost her mind on sight. "Luna-ji! You look like a wedding!" She circled me twice, hooked my arm, and slowed us to a crawl two steps from the door, her voice dropping to the register she saves for galley gossip.
"You need to hurry, honestly. If you'd come five minutes later, Captain Cold might've been poached."
"Poached."
"I only just got here myself, but the SECOND I walked in, a woman walked up to our table. Gorgeous. Fragrance like a duty-free counter. She put a card right in front of him — Luna-ji, I clocked it, it was the presidential suite key card from the Grand Meridian across the street." Daisy's giggle was criminal. "And when he didn't take it? She reached over — INTO his jacket pocket, Luna-ji — and slipped it in there herself. Smiled like she'd done him a favor. Walked off."
I was smiling before I could stop it. I strangled the smile immediately. Daisy saw anyway. Daisy sees everything.
"And THEN — no wait, it gets better — he pulled the card out with two fingers like it was a dead rat, snapped it in half, dropped it in the trash, and wiped his hand with a wet wipe. His FACE, Luna-ji. Glaciers have more warmth."
"And then?" The question jumped out of me before my dignity could vote.
Daisy's grin went incandescent. "And then a second one tried! This one just wanted his number, practically held her phone out like an offering — and he looked at her. That's all. One look. She fled, Luna-ji. Actual fleeing."
The relief that went through me was warm, shameful, and completely involuntary. I hated it. I hated that some ancient Omega circuit in my chest had stood up and taken a bow.
"Interesting," I said. "Anyway—"
"Your pupils dilated," Daisy said serenely. "That's all. Carry on."
Dinner was eight of us around a window table: four attendants, two pilots, too much pasta.
Daisy, agent of chaos, steered me into the chair directly across from Victor.
Up close, off the aircraft, he was worse. Charcoal suit, no tie, top button open — an Alpha at ease is a weapon with the safety off. He was mid-conversation with Keane when I sat, and he stopped. Fully. Mid-syllable. His gaze came up my white dress like a man reading something he'd burned.
"Miss Winters." Off-duty voice. Low. "You're late."
"Crew dinner starts when the crew arrives, Captain."
"You're crew." A beat. Something moved through his eyes — the ghost of a joke we used to have, back when we had jokes. "You were always late. I used to tell ground control you were a weather event."
Across the table, Daisy choked on her water. Keane studied the ceiling.
"I used to be a lot of things," I said, and opened my menu, and hid behind it, and pretended my heart wasn't hammering out an old callsign.
Under the table, unbeknownst to my dignity, my foot had migrated six inches toward his.
Three years divorced. One burned petition. One secret with a cowlick and a sweet tooth.
Seventy-two hours of leave, and the man had just found out he was a father.
New York, I thought, was about to get very small.