Can't Let You Go Read Free

the full-on quaking, jumping up and down like a Pentecostal at a Holy Ghost revival. My butt gained some air, and I turned my frightened gaze to Charlie. “What’s happening?”
    “Turbulence.” He lifted a shoulder in such a lazy fashion, you’d have thought he hadn’t noticed the way his hair bounced on his head from the aeronautical shenanigan. “You were asking me why we didn’t work out.”
    “I was?” Those overhead bins were vibrating loud enough to crack something. Like a wall.
    His smile was a slow lifting of the lips. “Why do you think we didn’t make it?”
    I tightened my seatbelt, trying not to wonder at the age and durability of it. “Because you had your eye on some blonde Barbie who I could never compete with.”
    “That’s not true.”
    “That you didn’t have your eye on Chelsea Blake?” My high school nemesis.
    He had the decency to look guilty. “That you couldn’t compare. You were prettier and smarter than her any day.”
    Men in shimmy-shaky planes will say anything. “But you dumped me to go after her.”
    “Geez, that was high school. And I believe it was a mutual break-up. What was that guy’s name you started dating that summer?”
    “Tate.” Sweet boy, but we had made better friends than a romantic duo. When he had dumped me he’d said, “ Katie, your heart’s just somewhere else. And it’s not with me .”
    “I got smart our senior year,” Charlie said. “Finally worked up the nerve to ask you to prom.” He squeezed the hand he was still holding and gave me a look that zinged right to my weary core. “And you and I spent most of the night camping on a blanket under the stars.”
    “At the lake.” I’d been in a wreck that week, missing school for five days. With my leg in a cast, prom had been too much for me, and Charlie had come to my rescue, taking me out to the lake. He’d built me a fire, made a pallet on the rocky ground, tucked me into the crook of his arm, and pointed out every constellation he could find in that April sky while I rested my head on his chest and listened to the crickets and the cadence of his heart.
    Then we graduated. And Charlie Benson, of the lingering kisses and spell-binding astronomy, had moved away.
    Rain and wind battled outside my window, and I uttered a quick litany of prayers. Prayers that begged for calm skies and fifty more years of life.
    “Guys don’t stick around though.” I watched bolt of lightning slash the sky. “Eventually they find someone else, something better.”
    He leaned close. “Is that what you really think? That you weren’t good enough?”
    “It’s hard to argue with history.” I held up a hand to stop him from interrupting. “I’m not trying to be pitiful. I just want to get to the bottom of it. I’m tired of making mistakes, wasting my time.” Being tossed out, left behind.
    The plane took a leap north then dipped back down. My breath caught in my throat. “I want off this thing,” I said. “I want off this thing right now.”
    “Please put your seats in the upright position,” announced the flight attendant. “Return your tray to its proper place.”
    The pilot took his turn next, giving instructions and saying God only knew what—probably Last Rites. But I couldn’t hear a thing for the rising noise around me. Somewhere up front a baby wailed. Nervous chatter swelled within the cabin.
    “What’s the pilot saying?” My heart beat a crazed staccato, and I wanted to both cry and laugh at the insanity of it all.
    “He said to stay calm, that we’d be out of this storm soon.” Charlie took quick stock of the situation around us, then turned his attention back to me. “You were telling me why you broke my heart when we saw each other last.”
    “I did not.”
    I expected him to smile, to follow up with a joke.
    But Charlie said nothing.
    He captured my other hand, prying my fingers off the armrest, then pulled me closer, laying his forehead against mine. “I don’t think you