Page 49 of Aviatrix

What does he know about Project Aviatrix? How long has he known Gina, Lark’s secretary, was in bed with Rourke? Was she a plant? Why aren’t we counterattacking? What’s this secret mission he won’t talk about? Why is he always there, then gone?

But none of those come out.

Instead, I ask something painfully human. “Why did you call my mom?”

He shifts beside me, visibly uncomfortable. “I knew she’d be worried.”

I stare ahead. “I don’t understand.”

He clears his throat. “You once told me… if anything ever happened, I needed to call your mom. Let her know if you were dead or alive.”

The memory punches through, clean and sudden.

Right before graduation. We were tangled up in bed, my head on his chest, his hand warm on my hip, thumb tracing soft circles the way he always did after sex. The best conversations of my life happened in that bed. In his arms. In the quiet afterward.

“Promise me something,” I’d said.

“Anything,” he’d replied, the word thick with sleep.

“If something happens in the field… you’ll call my mom. Tell her if I’m dead.”

He’d gone quiet for a moment. My hand was resting flat against his stomach.

“What if you’re not dead?” he murmured.

“Call her anyway,” I whispered. “Tell her I’m dead or alive. Just… don’t let her wait. I don’t want her sitting around wondering. I don’t want her waiting for me like she’s still waiting for my dad.”

I blink back to the present. To the man who kept his promise.

“Thank you,” I say softly.

There’s something flickering in Eli’s green eyes. It’s familiar, haunting, almost tender, but I can’t quite grasp it.

“You’re welcome.”

We lock gazes, and for a moment, the world slips away.

I miss him. God, I’ve been missing him for years. But he never stayed. He was always leaving, always running off to some mission, some sky, some duty.

I understood. Of course, I did. Eli’s one of the best. The Force needs him. But I needed him, too.

And when it came down to it, Eli always chose duty over love.

I wonder what I would choose.

“I—”

But Eli’s gaze shifts to the TV. My pulse stutters as I follow his line of sight.

Rourke sits behind a desk, flanked by thick taupe drapes.

“It is with a heavy heart,” he begins, “that I announce President Wingard C. Jones was sitting in the Oval Office when an alien invasion took his life.”

My breath catches. The room dims. Sound vanishes behind a high-pitched ring in my ears.

Wingard is gone.

But what if his secrets didn’t die with him?