Saying nothing, I let his words float in the air. Now that comment from Callum is something else entirely. Is that a last-hurrah type of comment since our truce is set to expire the moment we touch land? Or is it an invitation to see if our current something else can turn into something more?

A full minute of turbulence has us bouncing up and down. As we begin our descent, I contemplate staying silent, holding back. Only ten more minutes of our time-out. When the seat belt sign dings, everyone will file off the plane and we’ll be back to our hostile status quo.

He peers over at me, pointed look on his face. “How was it for you?”

“I liked a lot of things about this flight actually,” I say. It doesn’t come off as desperate as I thought it would while mulling over the words in my head. In my growly early-morning rasp, I almost sound smooth.

“So maybe we could—”

The wheels hitting the ground cut Callum off. The two of us bump around in our seats until the plane comes to an abrupt stop.

I wonder if he’ll finish his sentence while we taxi. I bite my lip to keep from saying anything. But minutes pass and he says nothing.

My heart falls to my stomach. He’s lost his nerve. Or maybe I misheard what he said in the first place, and he wasn’t going to say anything at all.

The seat belt sign dings. Almost everyone around us stands up and cracks open the overhead bins.

I stand up to that awkward hunched-over position I assume at the end of long-haul flights so I can stretch my arms and legs without hitting my head on the ceiling.

Be cool, my inner monologue commands. Aloof. Carefree. It was just a time-out, a way to avoid killing each other during this flight. Don’t push your luck. It means less than nothing.

I flash what I hope is an easy, relaxed smile while typing the passcode into my phone and fumbling with a random app. “I think this marks the end of our time-out. It was fun.”

Fun? Birthday parties are fun. Pub trivia is fun. Falling asleep on Callum’s muscled shoulder during a transatlantic flight? That’s a new form of bliss I didn’t know existed until last night.

Callum’s frown returns. “Is that all you want, Nikki? One time-out and nothing else?”

His forward question ties my tongue in a knot. What I really want is to fall asleep spooned against him, this time on a king-size bed, without our pesky clothes in the way. But I can’t say that out loud. He’ll think I’m a sex-crazed deviant, and that would be bad.

Or maybe . . .