Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
ELAINA
Elaina sat at the corner table in the teahab, staring at the steaming cup in front of her. The murmur of people around her—the clink of glasses, the low hum of conversation—felt distant. Her gaze flicked to the comm screen on the wall, cycling through local news feeds, but her mind wasn’t on current events. It was on him. Still .
It had been spans.
“Orbit check, Elaina.” A voice snapped her back to Mia, sitting across from her.
Elaina forced a smile, picking up her drink. “Sorry. Spaced out.”
“Obviously.” Mia rolled her eyes. “So what about Lance? He’s still orbiting, you know.”
Elaina sighed.
Whatever this thing had been with Cyan, it hadn’t even progressed to a relationship, and she was determined to move on—quickly. She had always been good at that.
Her fingernails clinked against the clay cup between her palms.
“He’s sweet. Charming even, but—” Elaina shook her head, feeling the knot tighten. “I don’t know. ”
She’d been trying to make more human connections, and Mia had been one of those attempts. A successful one, she thought. Elaina hadn’t given her all the details about the anomalies and what she and Cyan had found, but she gave her a rundown of the rest of it. The… well, the really painful stuff.
“You know you don’t need to jump back into things too fast. Takes time to recover from a narcissistic asshole,” Mia offered.
Elaina balked at the characterization, but kept her expression neutral.
She couldn’t blame Mia for coming to that conclusion after Elaina bared all in a heart to heart. Elaina even tried to believe it herself. It would’ve made things easier.
But the anger was impossible to hold on to. Somewhere inside, she recognized a part of Cyan a little too well.
“Maybe it’s just… me. Maybe I’m just better off on my own.” She shifted in her seat. She did like her space, after all. Maybe Elaina just wasn’t built for that kind of connection. She tried, and she failed, and maybe that was all the answer she needed for this little vulnerability experiment she’d been running.
“You’re healing. It’s only been two spans,” Mia said, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand.
Two spans was a long damn time for her to still be crying into her pillow at night. Especially considering this thing with Cyan never even got out of orbit. It was a shooting star. A nothing.
But Elaina didn’t feel like she was healing at all. If anything, she was falling apart, piece by piece. And a lot of it didn’t even have to do with the man who broke her heart.
No. Not that. He wasn’t that important.
She’d tried to go back to normal and get back to work. But every time Elaina touched a piece of tech since arriving back on the planet, something went wrong. Consoles would flicker and die, comm systems would short out, tools would malfunction the moment she laid her hands on them. As if the universe itself were rejecting her touch. Or maybe it was her own uncertainty, leaking into her work.
Just the day before, Elaina had tried to patch a minor electrical issue on one of the transport systems in Chevron’s solar controls and brought the entire electrical grid down for an hour.
And it wasn’t just the machines. Something deeper was broken. Inside her.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Elaina muttered, mostly to herself.
“ Nothing is wrong with you. You’re recovering from a connection you felt was special. Dude fucking blindsided you, Elaina. You just need a break. Go to Oasis for the spanend. That’ll get you back to normal in no time!”
Connection . That word was a knife. She’d felt so dialed in with Cyan when they were together, like their systems were tuned in to the same frequency. It had been such a huge difference from anything she’d ever experienced with anyone else. How was she supposed to get over that? The things that had once come so easily—her work, her instincts—were now slipping through her fingers like sand.
“El, you need to stop punishing yourself.”
“I’m not punishing myself. I can’t even work without breaking everything I touch,” Elaina muttered into her cup, willing her stupid eyeballs to hold in the angry tears that were threatening to come. “I tried to patch a dataslate this morning and the whole thing just… fell apart. Everything I do gets fucked.”
She was going into whining territory and she did not like it.
“You keep trying to pretend everything’s fine, but we both know you’re not fine. And faking it isn’t going to help you move on.”
“Yeah, well, maybe pushing myself is how I get fine, Mia,” Elaina snapped. She didn’t need any further advice from someone who didn’t really have any idea of what she was going through. Elaina stared into her tea. “I’m sorry.”
“Go to Oasis,” Mia said again. “Rest. Sleep. ”
“Right…” Elaina murmured. “Look, I’ve got to go. Thanks, Mia. I really… I really appreciate this. You. I’m trying, you know?”
“Of course,” Mia smiled and pulled her into a forceful hug that Elaina did her best to tolerate. She just needed to go.
“It’ll get better with time. I promise. And in the meantime, don’t let Lance off the hook too easily. He’s a good guy, even if he’s not…” Mia hesitated, “…him.”
Elaina forced a smile, but the truth was, she wasn’t sure Lance—or anyone—could fill the void that Cyan had left behind. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to ever let anybody get close enough to try. Not again.