Chapter 99: Kade

I rarely gave much thought to the fact that Madison was a billionaire by birth.

I’d known her as a regular college student. We drank beer and pizza like all the other college students.

She lived in a college apartment with a roommate just like everyone else.

Sure, her part-time weekend job’s commute involved an airplane, but since I stayed in the air as much as possible and aviation was my world, I didn’t pay much heed to any of it.

Most students outside of aviation thought all pilots, even those still in school, were automatically wealthy.

The truth was my family came from a normal professional class world. Upper class, but not wealthy to that extent.

My mother didn’t work, and my father was an engineer.

After he passed, my mother was well taken care of. And I had a college fund to take care of all my tuition. Even the extra fees required for flying.

So for the most part we lived in the same world.

But tonight was one of those nights when I was reminded that there were parts of her world I didn’t even know existed.

My mother lived in a nice house in a nice Houston neighborhood. Madison lived with her sister in a high-rise condo with a private elevator.

My idea of a dinner date was an Italian restaurant and a bottle of wine.

I’d made reservations at this place through a recommendation by Quinn.

The servers wore tuxes. The tables were covered with white tablecloths and fresh flowers in the center of each.

Madison didn’t need a menu because she already knew what she liked from here.

The servers were so good at what they did, that they brought appetizers without even asking.

By the time the customer was seated and had ordered their drinks they pretty much knew what the customers were going to like.

I wondered if the menus were merely window dressing. Something familiar to customers like me who were used to having to scour through descriptions on a menu to pick out something that I might like.

Most ordinary people—and I considered myself ordinary—didn’t eat at places like this.

Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d stored information like this. The knowledge that my world and Madison’s world didn’t completely overlap.

There were fringes of the Venn diagram that were so far out on the edges, it was hard to imagine.

But when she looked at me like she was looking at me right now and smiled, I reminded myself that all couples were like this.

No two people ever completely shared the same experiences. It wasn’t possible or even normal if it did happen.

But still… sometimes I wondered if it was a problem for her.

She certainly knew wealthy men.

Filthy rich men who could give her anything and everything.

But I knew that love was something that didn’t come with dollar signs.

“What’s troubling you?” she asked, putting a hand over mine.

And there was the disadvantage to dating a psychologist. There could be no secret insecurities. Everything had to be laid out and dealt with.

Unless, like me, a man was really good at keeping himself private.

“I’m just glad we’re together tonight,” I said.

She looked at me sideways.

“No…” she said. “that wasn’t your happy to be here look. Something’s troubling you.”

I blew out a breath and took a long sip of wine.

Decided to go with the real issue at hand. Not my rambling thoughts that when it came right down to it had nothing to do with us.

“I just regret that we only have a few more weeks before things get more… complicated.”

She smiled. “Kade. You know that things will work out.”

I shook my head. “We’ve been down this road.”

“Like you said, we were young.”

“I don’t like the fact that history repeats itself.”

She looked at me with that look that said she was trying to look deeper into my psyche.

There really wasn’t much to find if she did analyze me.

I loved airplanes. My family. Dogs. Hot dogs and apple pie.

And Madison Worthington.