Free Ticket Home by Serena Bell

secret world of the two of them.
    She couldn’t talk. He seemed to understand, because he took her hands and held them tight in his. Then he let go with one and reached into his pocket, and she knew, absolutely knew what was going to be in his hand when he pulled it out—
    Only instead of a ring box, it was his cell phone.
    He held it out. Put it in her palm. “Would you do the honors?”
    She looked from the phone to him, puzzled.
    “Come with me,” he said, rising. She tottered down the aisle after him. He pulled the door open, and they walked into the swaying vestibule between cars.
    “You could get in trouble for this,” she warned him.
    “The MTA already thinks I’m a terrorist. This can hardly lower their opinion of me.”
    “You want me to throw your phone out there? I can’t do that.”
    “Sure you can.”
    She took a deep breath. All this time, she’d been afraid that if she asked anything of him, demanded anything of him, she might turn out not to have been worth his sacrifice. That she’d wake to find he’d left and taken breakfast with him.
    I want to be with you. Really be with you.
    She clutched his arm with the hand that didn’t hold the phone. Looked up into his smiling face, his eyes filled with love and conviction. There was no doubt, no hesitation there. Nor was there any in her voice or her heart when she spoke. “I love the idea of a cross-country train ride.”
    “I know you love your job.”
    She shrugged. “I like my job. I love you. And I want to be with you too. Really be with you. I should have been clearer about that. I never said it. I thought I said it, and maybe I did once or twice, but I never told you to hang up the phone or come home or pay more attention. I was afraid. That you’d—” Her voice broke. “I was afraid you’d say no.”
    “I wouldn’t have.” His voice was ragged.
    “I know. I know now. I should have had the courage to tell you I needed you. More of you.” She shook the phone for emphasis. “I need more of you.” She made herself meet his gaze. “All of you.”
    His eyes shone. “You have me. All of me.” He reached for her with both arms, but she held back a moment.
    She reached out and touched his cheek, rough from a day and a half’s neglect. She drew her thumb across his cheekbone, and he leaned his head into her touch. He closed his eyes, his lashes casting long shadows, darker than the shadows under his eyes. Then he opened them and looked at her, but he seemed to be looking through her, at something in his own head. “I don’t know when I decided that I was the only thing standing between Streamline and disaster,” he said quietly. “But when I told Porter I wanted to bring in a management team, it felt like the weight of the world got lifted off me. I didn’t realize what I’d been carrying around.”
    She let her hand touch his shoulder before resting it on the hard muscle of his arm. “I did. I just didn’t realize I could ask you to put it down.”
    He leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. “Amy.” That was it, just her name. And he rested there for a moment, his breath brushing her face, mint and Jeff. She wrapped her arms around him and dragged him closer, bringing the hard wall of his torso against hers with a jolt that she felt to her toes. They stood there for a long time, swaying with the motion of the train.
    Then he straightened and pulled away. He drew the exterior door of the train open and they looked out together at the embankment, flying past, a blur of dirt and scrub and litter. He reached out his hand, and she laid the phone in his palm. With one smooth motion, an abbreviated baseball windup, he hurled it out the door. It bounced out of their vision immediately, gone, just like that.
    “The leave of absence has officially begun,” he said.
    “All your data, though? What if someone finds it?”
    “I can wipe it remotely,” he confessed. “Does that ruin the gesture?”
    She was laughing