Hannah

60

“Just one day Hannah, we are doing this for Max, if there is a way to help his mother, she is going to need an alibi for a few days.” Holland explained to Hannah, again, as they approached the security checkpoint at the airport. Only carryon baggage with them.

Hannah was switching between pulling on her lower lip with her upper teeth, or picking and scratching at her nails and cuticles. “Max is so hurt over his mother…” Was all she could offer.

“I feel it too baby girl, that is why we are going to be efficient and clean out your place in a single day, I’ll hire cleaners to come in, and my sister’s kid is going to come down and do a final walk through and hand the key back to the building manager.” Holland took Hannah’s hand and slowly started to move her into the security zone. Several of the security agents recognised her, and looked almost shocked to see her in street clothes.

Holland kept talking, as the people who recognised Hannah were professional enough to just let her be a passenger today, just like anyone else. “We will pack up what you need to take back right away as our checked luggage tomorrow, and everything else we will pack up and ship in a moving pod back home.” Holland looked at Hannah, clear of the security check point and heading up to the gate area of the airport. “One day for Max, then we can stay together forever after that.” Holland reassured Hannah.

They grabbed a snack before the fight, a chocolate croissant with a berry, chia seed and hemp heart smoothie for Hannah, and a double meat and egg and cheese breakfast sandwich on an everything bagel for Holland with another large black coffee to wash it down.

Hannah was feeling anxious again, and not just because she was worried about Max. She hadn’t traveled on a plane as a passenger for so long. She knew so many crew that worked on different airlines. She was on edge that someone would recognise her. She had no idea what had been said since she lost her flight attendant job, scared to get a hint what her former colleagues might think of her now.

“Its a big wide world baby girl, we are just two travelers today.” Holland took Hannah’s hand in his, bringing her hand to his lips to brush his lips against the back of her hand. The plane had finally landed, the first passengers disembarking. Hannah hadn’t watched this part in so long. People getting off a plane always had such a wide variety of emotions on their faces.

The crush of disembarking passengers trickled to the last slower passengers, people who waited to the end, those who needed assistance. An elderly woman was being helped from the plane on the specially designed thin profiled wheelchair used for planes. Hannah’s face went pale with shock when she saw who was working on the flight. “Cassandra?” Hannah said quietly, not believing her eyes. This wasn’t the same airline they had worked together on. Cassandra shouldn't be here, not on this flight. This didn’t make sense. Not one bit.

Perfectly, always, unfalteringly poised Cassandra stumbled on her kitten heels as she wheeled the senior citizen towards the elevator and arrivals. Staring Hannah down like she was ghost brought back to life. ”I know her, she is working our flight.” Hannah managed to spit out the words even when she felt frozen in place. Cassandra was one of the closet things Hannah had to a friend lately. They had worked together regularly since Hannah’s very first flight.

It was too late to change anything. Hannah and Holland needed to go on that flight or they might not have finished everything they needed to do before their flight tomorrow. Hannah wasn’t risking causing a delay in her ability to return to Max, Aspen and Caspian. Cassandra was a professional, literally one of the best. This could be ok. Hannah was telling herself, as Cassandra returned from delivering her passenger to arrivials, mouthing so obviously to Hannah, ‘We Need To Talk’ that Hannah had been able to read her lips as she returned the custom plane sized wheelchair and to her regular duties. It wouldn’t be long until the new passengers boarded the plane.

Cassandra had for the first time in her professional life that Hannah knew of, been less than perfectly poised and controlled. Obviously Holland had noticed that the straight laced flight attendant was trying to connect with Hannah. “I know her, we used to work together, she was on the flights with me the weekend we met.” Hannah said. It didn’t make sense for her to be working on a new airline. Cassandra had seniority, why would she give that up to start at the bottom again when she had been happy with her position as far as Hannah knew.

“She shouldn’t be on this flight?” Hannah mostly rhetorically said to herself, trying to puzzle it out.

Holland coughed into his hand a few times. He only got a heads up from his sister this morning, he didn't want to bring it up when today was already a lot on Hannah. Holland stalled with one last cough before his voice grumbled out, “There might be a blooming class action lawsuit against your former employers and their uhh termination policies.” Hannah’s eyes were wide as saucers as she first heard Holland’s words, then absolute, white hot furry as she put together what that had to mean.

“Explain yourself or you are sleeping on the fucking floor until I am not mad anymore and I can hold a grudge when I want to Holland.” Hannah hissed as the overhead speakers relayed that the preboarding was going to start for their flight, and now was not the time to argue. There would be plenty of time while trapped in their seats during the several hours on the plane they had to look forward to.

Holland texted a volley of messages to Max and Caspian letting them know why Hannah was so mad. His sister Regina was a little too good at various forms of what were essentially cyber crimes. Once she had Hannah’s face, and knew when and where Holland and Hannah had met, it had been too easy for her to stalk Hannah through the airports she stopped at all over the country as she worked.

Regina was watching the archived security footage. Making her own copies as she watched before the server wiped the files. She had a bad feeling the moment Hannah disembarked and was met by two men in bad suits. Regina shifted the security camera feed she was watching as Hannah followed the two official men.

“Oh no.” She had breathed out. Watching as the men led Hannah to an area of the airport that was devoid of people. Regina’s stomach had dropped. She just wanted to creep on her brother’s mate, wanted to see what she was like when she thought no one was paying attention. Seeing the two officials clearly try and extort Hannah into something, before her mates had caught up to save her had been awful.  This was why Holland and Caspian had been so protective of their human mate at breakfast. Regina was going to punch the twins extra hard for being such dick heads at breakfast.

Regina had a new project. She had first snapped out texts to her siblings that needed to be told that Hannah was off limits for family jokes or they would have to deal with her wrath. That accomplished she moved on to her other focus.

Regina’s personal mission was to take down the kind of men who hurt women. It was a lot for Holland to try and convey to Hannah's other mates in quick text messages before the flight took off. No one in the wider world would know that Regina’s heavily edited to obscure Hannah’s features video with two men, trying to fire her and undress her was Hannah.

Unless someone knew Hannah personally and had more information than was included in the video. Regina hadn’t asked for permission, and didn’t care. She was already celebrating her own pending victory against another company that needed to clean house.

Holland sighed, deeply. Switching his phone to airplane mode. Hoping he had conveyed enough information for all Hannah’s other mates to not panic over her mood right now. Holland got ready to grovel for Hannah’s forgiveness. It wasn’t his fault directly, but this was another time his family upset her, which was his fault.

**Hello lovely readers, I am now writing Hannah on the fly, and it's the Christmas season, which means I might not have as much time to enjoy my happy writing hobby over the next few weeks. As I finish a chapter I will post it. But sometimes it does take a bit of time to get the words juuuuust right.**