Three A.M.
Chapter 11 - Three A.M.
Kayla woke at three in the morning three nights later, heart pounding for no reason she could immediately name, and lay in the dark of her small apartment listening to rain against the window that wasn't actually falling. Just her mind, replaying it.
She got up. Made tea she didn't drink. Sat at her kitchen table with her father's pen in front of her, turning it over and over.
*What if this ruins the company he built.*
*What if Dale loses everything trying to do the right thing.*
*What if I'm the reason fifteen planes sit grounded and a hundred people lose their jobs because I couldn't leave well enough alone.*
The doubts came in a wave she hadn't let herself feel in front of anyone, not Priya, not Marcus, not even herself in daylight hours when there was always something more urgent to do than sit with fear.
She thought about calling Priya. Didn't. It felt unfair to wake someone else with a fear that wasn't really about facts anymore, just about the exhausting weight of being the person who started something she couldn't stop now even if she wanted to.
She thought about her father instead. The way he used to sit at this same kind of hour, back when she was small, working through some invoice dispute or supplier problem at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee gone cold. She used to think adults didn't feel scared. She knew better now.
*Measure twice. Sign once.*
She'd measured for eleven months before buying Denny's shares. She'd measured for three weeks before opening that drawer to anyone else. She'd measured every step since.
Maybe the fear at three in the morning wasn't a sign she'd measured wrong. Maybe it was just what it felt like to actually sign.
She allowed herself exactly one more thing that night, something she hadn't done since the funeral. She cried, quietly, at her kitchen table, for her father who wasn't there to tell her she was doing this right, for Dale whose fear she understood now in a way she hadn't fully let herself before, for the version of herself six months ago who thought owning half a hangar would feel like winning instead of just the start of a much longer fight.
Then she wiped her face, put the pen back in her pocket, and went back to bed.
In the morning she called Marcus before her shift.
"I need a day," she said. "Just one. I'm not backing out. I just need to not be strong today."
There was a pause on the line, warmer than she expected.
"Take two," Marcus said. "Your father used to disappear for exactly one day every time a big decision went through. Called it recalibrating. I always assumed he was fishing. Took me twenty years to realize he was probably doing exactly what you're doing right now."
Kayla laughed, wet and surprised.
"Thank you," she said.
"Don't thank me," Marcus said. "Just come back Thursday ready to finish this. Because Grant's not taking a day off, and neither is whoever's really behind Halsted Aero."
May you like
She spent her one day exactly the way she needed to, walking a lakefront trail alone with her phone off, letting herself feel small against the water the way she used to as a kid, before any of this, before shares and forgeries and fifteen grounded aircraft, when the only thing she had to measure was how far she could throw a rock.
By Thursday morning she was back at the hangar before sunrise, pen in her pocket, ready.
