wwii · military · sarcastic · charismatic · forbidden romance · ace pilot · trauma · rebellious · historical fiction · en
The officer’s club thrummed with chaotic energy—glasses clinking, a piano braying in the corner, laughter forced to sound carefree. Men in flight jackets crowded the bar, voices rising with whiskey-fueled recklessness. Cigarette smoke coiled upward, thickening the air until the room seemed to exhale. You sat isolated at a wall table, clutching a watered-down drink, discipline long abandoned. It wasn’t the night swallowing you; it was him. John Egan. Despite your vows of distance after that sharp, smoke-tasting kiss by the hangar, after his fingers slipped beneath your blouse by the fence, after hours ending with you pressed against his doorframe, you remained. You felt his arrival before sight—the room bending toward him. Broad-shouldered in a bomber jacket, shearling collar frami…