“We’re going to sleep in the hangar? Where?” Paige asked as they crossed the lawn toward the metal building.

“You’ll see,” Harrison said without the humor that usually dusted his voice.

The hangar was much larger than it needed to be to house the helocarrier. Paige thought that he could have fit a couple more aircraft inside. Harrison also used the hangar to park his truck, but it seemed small in the huge airy building. On one side, stairs led to a loft. Paige had gone up there a time or two to look at the chocker from above. Harrison led her up there now.

Paige always felt a swell of pity as she passed the chocker. It didn’t have a name. It had a sleek black paint job, but the only thing written on the side was its number.

“Are you ever going to name it?” Paige asked quietly as she set her overnight bag by the railing.

“No,” Harrison answered. He was pulling boxes down from the shelves.

“Would you like some help with that stuff?” she asked as he freed a blowup mattress from its packing.

He sighed. “How could I ask you to help? You already prepared the guest rooms, made lunch for everyone, cleaned up, made dinner for everyone, cleaned up, made dessert for everyone, cleaned up, and then tomorrow you have to do it all over again.”

“You helped,” Paige scoffed.

“Well, how about if I get our beds ready as a thank you for doing what I told you to do about Zaphier?”

“Okay,” Paige said, turning around to look at the helocarrier. She had been trying to shut possible thoughts of Zaphier out of her brain. She didn’t want to think about him. She couldn’t understand it. She remembered liking him so much. It was almost an obsession. She remembered her heart almost rupturing when he walked past her in the old days. She remembered how glad she had felt when he made the offer to buy her.

Her first thought when she saw him was, Has it only been five years since I last saw him? He looked ten years older. She thought about it more as she watched him through the day. It wasn’t that he looked old exactly. It was more that he looked purple and green like a bruise. His skin looked thin like it was barely holding his insides in. Had he been doing drugs, or was it just that the hardness of life had taken away his bloom? Paige didn’t know. Besides, how could Zaphier’s life be hard?

Since she woke up in Sleeping Beauty Inc., she had been operating on the idea that he was still the same as when she had known him when she was twenty-two, but when he told his version of the story of Rose Red, something inside her twitched. It wasn’t like a memory in her head. It was like all the cells in her body knew the way he made her feel during the time she couldn’t remember—a nauseated stomach flip, a feeling of sudden thirst, and a sharp desire to run.

The long and short of it was that her body didn’t want Zaphier anywhere near her, even if her memory still said she did.

She also knew the point of his little story. It was practically like he had drawn her ear close to his mouth and whispered the words, “Find out where Harrison keeps his money. If you can steal enough of it, I’ll take you back. You want to come back, don’t you?”

Except that Paige didn’t want to go back. She didn’t know what life was like when she belonged to Zaphier, but if her current feelings were worth anything, crossing Harrison for Zaphier's benefit was lunacy. Harrison had been nothing but kind to her. Besides, she reassured herself like a fool, Harrison doesn’t have any money. Harrison is a troll with a cellar full of treasure? Ridiculous!

It was at that moment that Paige, looking down on the floor of the hangar, saw a square of metal that was out of place. She might be daft, but it looked like a trap door within a larger door.

“Harrison, what’s that?” she asked, pointing.

Harrison came up behind her and saw what she was pointing to. A huge grin broke out on his face. “Oh, that? Yeah, I have been meaning to show you, but the right time didn’t come. Just wait until I get these mattresses blown up and I’ll take you down.”

Paige took herself away from the railing and waited for Harrison to finish. She clenched and unclenched her fists and snapped her fingers. There was no way Harrison had anything valuable down there. What a joke!

Harrison finished up and led her down the stairs.

On the floor of the hangar, he moved a tiny piece of flat metal off the floor to reveal a keypad. He covered his hand and entered a ten-digit number. There was a clicking sound from under the floor and Harrison closed the keypad. He reached down, pulled a handle and the door opened.

Paige stared.

No stairs lead down into the basement of the hangar. There was no way to get down at all. It was just a hole in the ground that opened to a large space below. Harrison flicked on a light and Paige saw something amazing—another helocarrier. This one wasn’t black, but silver. It was missing its blades.

“What’s this?”

“Excalibur. My other chocker,” Harrison gloated.

“Why? How?” she stuttered. “How could you afford this?”

Harrison sighed. “I keep telling you that I make good money doing what I do. Why don’t you believe me already? That chocker,” Harrison said, indicating the black one, “has been in my family for years. My grandfather bought her for thirteen million dollars in 2173. Crazy, eh? This one down here is one that I’ve been working on myself.”

“How much does this one cost?”

Harrison crossed his arms and looked at it thoughtfully like he was doing a rack of calculations. “I’m not sure. I started buying parts for the beast when my father got sick. I’ve been working on it for eight years. There’s not a lot to do out here, so I’ve had a lot of time to work on it.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Paige was on the verge of having a panic attack. “How much?” she nearly shrieked.

Harrison laughed at her. “Excalibur is worth a whole lot more than the money I put into her. That was what I wanted to tell you,” he said, suddenly taking her shoulder. “You shouldn’t worry about that twenty thousand dollars. I can just sell off one of her less important parts and we’re in business!”

Paige thought she would faint.

“What?” Harrison asked, observing her not-so-happy expression. “No broken knees. I thought this would make you happy.” He jokingly kicked the back of her leg.

Paige’s knees did not buckle. She just stood there and stared into the gaping hole in front of her. Now she realized that Zaphier didn’t need to see anything other than the black chocker to understand that Harrison had assets.

“Cover this up,” she said quietly. She didn’t want anyone coming in and seeing it.

She knew Harrison was watching her as she crossed the floor and climbed the steps, but she had to get away from him. She didn’t want him to see her ashamed face.

***

Harrison had set out two double mattresses for them, but by the time he’d finished closing the hatch over Excalibur, Paige had already put sheets, pillows, and blankets on them. She was already lying on one mattress with her back to him and her eyes shut by the time he caught up.

Harrison didn’t know what he did wrong. Didn’t she like his handiwork? This was why he never showed it to anyone. He’d never even mentioned it to Narissa or Keziah. Besides, it wasn’t like he was his dad. He’d only got the thing running as it should two weeks ago. It would have taken his dad under a month. It took Harrison eight years.

Pulling his jacket over his head, he proceeded to change. There was no point in being nervous about putting on his pajamas. It wasn’t like Paige was going to turn around.

As he whipped off his shirt, he felt a chill across his shoulders. Maybe it was too early in the year to be sleeping in the hangar. He had a space heater on the main level, and it wasn’t anywhere near where they were planning to sleep.

There was one blanket left on the shelf. Harrison got it and spread it out over Paige.

She clasped it and tugged it up to her chin without looking at him. “Thank you,” she said stiffly.

“No trouble,” Harrison said easily, as he reached for his pajama bottoms. “Let me know if you’re cold during the night.” Even though he said that he had no idea what more he could do for her other than give her the blanket he’d already given her.

With that thought, he buttoned up his red and black plaid shirt and hopped into bed.

***

Paige shivered. Not only was she suffering from the sleeplessness most people sleeping in unfamiliar beds face, but it was only the beginning of June and it felt like the frost had just come off the ground. She missed her bed desperately. There was a wheezing little worm uncoiling in the pit of her stomach when she thought about Zaphier sleeping in her bed.

It was cold. She hated the cold since she was from a warmer climate, but that night, it went straight through her bones. She had no idea what time it was, except that it was still dark out. How many more hours was she going to have to endure this?

Then she heard Harrison sort of snort and roll onto his side, and her brain clicked. She should go over and crawl into bed with him, but her brain revolted against the idea. What was this? A blanket scenario in a cheesy romance? She scoffed at herself.

But pride had its place and she soon realized the hangar after nightfall was not the place for it. She picked up both her blankets and dragged them over to Harrison’s mattress. She laid both of them neatly on top of his blanket and slid her freezing toes into the bed beside him.

At first, she planned to stay as far away from him in the bed as possible, but within seconds she was repenting of her rash thinking and was snuggling into the warmth of Harrison’s back. He made the sweetest, warmest pocket in the blankets and it was everything she wanted to be a part of. Even his feet were warm. And when she tucked her face into the nook between his shoulder blades, she was so comfortable she didn’t even need a pillow.

For the first few minutes, she couldn’t stop glancing at him to see how he would react to her presence, but he didn’t seem to notice and soon she was too tired to check on his status. She fell blissfully asleep.

***

“How long are you planning to sleep?” A voice burst out of nowhere.

Harrison jumped.

To his astonishment, Zaphier was standing in the hangar and the only thing that Harrison could process about the situation was that the man was wearing orange plastic pants. “What happened?” Harrison mumbled. “Did you wet yourself?”

Zaphier tapped his top angrily. “These are one-of-a-kind Milwitch designer trousers sewn for me by Milwitch herself, but what would you know?”

“Ah, I see,” Harrison said, still half asleep. “Are they for fishing? Is that how you got your coat from yesterday? Fishing?”

Zaphier huffed in response to Harrison’s taunting. “It’s pointless even talking to you.”

“Well, why are you talking to me?” Harrison asked. “It’s six twenty-three. Paige and I aren’t supposed to have breakfast ready until eight o’clock. This is hardly sleeping in. What’s the problem?”

“I want my breakfast early,” Zaphier explained.

When Paige heard that, she stirred. It wasn’t until that moment that Harrison realized she was in bed with him. Harrison wanted to be surprised, but at the same time, he remembered sleeping, waking, and sleeping the night before—never comfortable—never resting—hoping that Paige wasn’t feeling the cold that he felt since she had the extra blanket. Then inexplicably, it was warm and he slept.

He grabbed Paige’s ever-obedient shoulder and pushed her back onto the mattress. “She will serve you breakfast at eight o’clock, Zaphier. If that’s not soon enough for you, then you should have brought your own food. And you should have called us on the intercom system. It’s extremely rude that you have appeared here.”

Zaphier smirked like he was amused. “Sorry, I just wanted to see how much of the fairy tale was real.” He pointed to the other mattress. It was obviously mussed. And with a flick of his hair, Zaphier strode out of the room.

“Does that bother you?” Paige asked, covering the lower half of her face with the blanket.

“The model or the mattress?” Harrison grimaced.

“Either one,” she answered, turning her back on him.

“Both.”

Harrison got out of the bed and paced around the room for a second to get his thoughts in line. “I’ll take the mattresses downstairs and put them in front of the space heater so that you won’t have to do something like this tomorrow night. I should have got you an electric blanket or something. I apologize.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Paige reassured him.

Harrison shrugged his shoulders like he was trying to crack his neck. “Even so, I wasn’t trying to manipulate the situation so that you would be forced to get in bed with me.”

“I wasn’t accusing you of that.”

Harrison wasn’t convinced, and he was sure it was written all over his face.

“Listen,” Paige said. “I don’t feel like you were taking advantage of me. If anything, I was taking advantage of you, and besides—nothing happened. I think we’re close enough friends that we can just take this kind of necessary contact in stride and not let it affect us. It's not just me that feels that way, is it?”

“No. I feel that way.” The next thing Harrison knew, he was back in bed with Paige. With her head tucked under his chin, he was breathing a bit of her short hair up his nose. He brushed it out and stroked her head at the same time. This was probably another example of the ‘necessary contact’ she had referred to.

It was true he had been ticked off that Zaphier had barged in and seen them, but now Harrison couldn’t remember why. He only knew that for some reason, the wanker’s appearance somehow made him closer to Paige… and he liked it.