when she’s due in less than eight weeks? There’s more of a chance that all the profit made from every oil reserve in the world will be donated to charity than there is of Shira agreeing to that.”
“She’s been making you watch documentaries about the importance of conserving nature and marine life again, hasn’t she?”
He nodded, a heavy sigh parting his lips. “It’s the baby animals, man. They get to her.”
I hummed a sympathetic noise at the back of my throat. “You have less than eight weeks to go. You’ll make it. Just hang in there. It’ll all be worth it in the end.”
“I think so.” He smiled and gave himself a visible shake. “Worrying isn’t going to help anyway. So, Fiji? You going?”
“I think so,” I said, echoing him. “Fuck it. Why not, right?”
“You only live once. Or whatever it is the cool kids are saying these days.” We walked out of the break room and to our respective workstations.
When I got to mine, I took my phone out of my pocket and pulled up the airline’s website. There was no harm in knowing when the next flights out were.
As if fate itself was giving me the nod on this plan, there was a crew seat available on a plane leaving in just a few hours. I hovered with my thumb above the reserve button for all of thirty seconds before I made my final decision.
Kavan and the cool kids were right. We only lived once. If even fate wanted me to go to Fiji, I sure as fuck wasn’t saying no.
Chapter 5
LINDSAY
A wall of thick humidity hit me as soon as we disembarked from the plane. From my quick view of my surroundings before I got whisked away in the crowd, it was green there. Green and lush and lively.
Not that any of the liveliness extended to me.
I felt like I’d been hit by a water balloon filled with vapor and my lungs were mildly protesting with every breath I drew in. As my fellow travelers swept me up in their wake, everyone seemed to know where they wanted to go.
I followed willingly, feeling like a fish out of water and as uncomfortable as a cat with tape stuck beneath my paws. Rock anthems blared in my earbuds, and I was tempted to scream out the lyrics as I tried to find the carousel with my bag on it.
I couldn’t hear the announcements in the airport, but when I lifted the earbuds out and heard that none of what the airport management was saying was in English, I realized they wouldn’t help me much anyway.
Hoisting the strap of my backpack on my shoulder, I looked around and hoped to find out where to go. A flickering screen on a pillar to my left displayed flight information coupled with the number of the belt where passengers’ luggage had to be collected, but Houston wasn’t on it yet.
My fellow travelers were nowhere to be seen—none that I recognized anyway. People swarmed past me like ants on a mission to get to a fallen cube of sugar, but no one stopped when I tried to speak to them.
It didn’t help that there was a whole contingent of honeymooners arriving, acting as a constant reminder that I should’ve been there with my husband as well. Will might not have knocked my feet out from under me, but I really had been looking forward to being married to him. We’d been friends for years before he finally asked me out on our first date. Transitioning from friendship to a romantic relationship had been as easy as breathing, even if it wouldn’t have qualified as the most epic of love stories. Without him being there with me, I felt empty and lost in more ways than one. I’d lost my friend and my fiancé in one fell swoop, and now I couldn’t even find my luggage.
Houston finally snuck onto the board with the collection information, but when I got to the carousal corresponding with the number displayed on it, there was nothing and no one there. I shut my eyes and sucked in a breath in an attempt to keep the tears threatening to fall at bay.
“Excuse me, miss?” a chirpy voice behind me said. “Have you arrived on the flight from Houston?”
Opening my eyes, I spun around to see a young woman dressed in an official-looking uniform smiling at me. “I have. Do you know where I can collect my luggage?”
“This carousel is