But this wasn't a perfect world, and even though I fell for him deeply, I knew it couldn't last.

He was always on the offense about his sexuality.  I, on the other hand, was firmly stuck in my defensive stance.

He was insulted that I continued to insist on hiding our relationship.

I was resentful that he didn't understand or respect my need for privacy.

My pigheaded stubborn pride had doomed us from the start.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE SWEETEST MONTH

We were joined at the hip after that.  Every second of  our free time was spent together.

I was anxious at first about what Bianca would think of it all, but I shouldn't have worried.  She was ecstatic about it, so happy for me she was bursting with it.  She pushed me in his direction at every opportunity.

"Go," she'd say.  "I'll just be painting all day, anyway.  This works out perfectly."

It only lasted a month, but it was the sweetest month.

He was on-call, and good friends with the girl who ran scheduling, so he managed to snag the fifth position on nearly all of our flights.

I was on cloud nine.  I'd always been a romantic, but even so, I'd never been in love.  Not like this.  It was a brand new, heady, wonderful experience.

Of course, it all just made the quick plummet of our breakup that much harder to bear.  It didn't seem to matter that we'd had such a short time together, because that time had been spent earnestly making bittersweet memories that I would dwell on in all of my troubled, lonely reflections after.

But that was after.  During . . . during was another thing entirely.

The making of the sweet memories before they turned bitter.

We loved to go hiking.  There was this little private spot at Red Rock that we hit every chance we got.  We'd hold hands and talk for hours there.

It was maybe the fifth time we'd gone, and we had just reached the peak at the top of our hike when he shot me his best smile.  "Pinch me.  I feel like I'm dreaming here."

"Why's that?"

"You is why.  I never thought you'd ever even talk to me, let alone give me the time of day."

"Why?"

"You're out of my league, if you haven't noticed.  And you're so nice.  A fairytale prince that came to rescue a loser like me."

I melted.  Every hard thing inside of me went soft for this man.

If it'd just been us, we would have been fine, I figured.

It was the rest of the world that was the problem.

It wasn't the long walks that ended us, or any of the time in private.

It was the parties, the active social scene that went along with our line of work that sealed our fate.

Javier had been respectful about my ban on PDA from the first time I'd mentioned it, but there were times when I could tell it bothered him.  Many times.

One time in particular was the last straw for him.

We were at a house party for our friend Damien's birthday.

I was standing with Javier and a group of pilots and flight attendants, but I was watching Bianca across the room.  She'd been cornered by Damien, who everyone knew had had a thing for her since the first time he'd seen her.

A lot of people thought this was juicy gossip, since they assumed she was with me, and they knew we were all friends.

That wasn't why I was staring.  I was watching only to see if she needed me to run interference.

She liked Damien and was trying to be nice, but I could tell he was making her uncomfortable.

Damien was one of our closer friends, and one of the few that knew Bianca and me weren't together.  Sometimes I wished he'd never caught on.  Bianca was never going to care about him the way he wanted.  She just didn't feel that way about him, and if she could have used me as an excuse to keep him at bay, I knew she would have.

"I don't know why you put up with that shit, Stephan," one of the pilots said loudly.  His name was Allen, I was pretty sure.

I glanced at him with a raised brow.  He was an overweight guy, in his early thirties, I guessed.  A first officer, I recalled, and one that had a reputation for being difficult to work with.  I barely knew the guy, but he sounded like he had a very strong opinion about my life.  Of course, he wasn't exactly sober at the moment.

"Excuse me?" I asked, hoping to politely deflect him.

He was red in the face, his brown hair messy and falling in his eyes.  He waved a hand toward Bianca and Damien.  "He's after your girl.  Everyone knows it.  And he's supposed to be your friend?  It's none of my business, but I don't know why you put up with it."

I gave him a bland smile.  "You're right.  It is none of your business."

"You need to put a ring on that one," he said, tone snide, "before Captain Dimples snatches her on up."

He was getting on my nerves in a major way, but I still made a mental note to harass Damien about that nickname as soon as I could.

"I'm not worried about it, so I don't know why you are," I told him pointedly.  Though I did know.  I recalled there was some kind of beef between him and Damien, something involving a woman that preferred Damien more, though I didn't know all the details.

Apparently he thought that could be solved by egging me into fighting him.

"What kind of a guy isn't worried about someone else hitting on his girl?" Allen asked, tone snide.