The real Gabriel had never been in the clouds waiting to fall.

He had always been exactly where he still was, in the part of her that knew how to fly and the part that knew why it mattered, and neither of those had ever been in any danger of falling at all.

Chapter 25 — Can You Teach Me?

Leo had taken the bus out to the airfield that afternoon, as he did on the days she had lessons late, and he came across the grass to stand beside her at the fence while the training jet dwindled into the blue.

He slipped his hand into hers without being asked, the way he still did and would not do for very many more years, and the two of them watched the airplane together in the comfortable silence of people who do not need to fill it.