Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The soft hum of the life support systems filled the cabin, a steady rhythm that should have lulled Doren to sleep hours ago. Instead, he lay on the converted bed with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, watching the faint play of light from the hyperspace display bleeding through from the cockpit.
He hadn’t meant to be here. He’d had every intention of sleeping in the pilot’s chair. But Emma had reached for him in the dim light, her fingers catching his sleeve as he’d started to turn away, and whispered “stay.”
Now she was pressed against his side, her warmth seeping through the thin fabric of his shirt, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. Ari slept quietly in her drawer-bed, her breathing was slow and even, peaceful in a way that seemed almost miraculous given everything they’d been through.
He shifted slightly, trying to find a position that didn’t make him acutely aware of every point where Emma’s body touched his but it was a futile effort.
He could feel the curve of her hip against his thigh, the soft press of her breasts against his arm, and the tickle of her hair against his neck.
His body responded predictably, and he clenched his jaw, willing himself toward calm.
This is a terrible idea, he thought for what must have been the hundredth time.
He should extricate himself. He should slip out of the bed while she slept and retreat to the pilot’s chair where he belonged.
Whatever strange connection had formed between them over the past few days, it didn’t change the fundamental reality of their situation.
She was a human female who’d been ripped from her home and thrown into a universe she didn’t understand.
He was a smuggler. A treasure hunter. A male who’d learned long ago that attachment was just another word for vulnerability.
He didn’t move.
Emma stirred against him, and he felt her breathing change—the subtle shift from sleep to waking.
“You’re awake,” she murmured.
“So are you.”
“I can’t seem to turn my brain off.” She tilted her head back to look at him, and even in the dim light he could see the shadows under her eyes. “Too much to process, I guess.”
“That’s understandable.”
Silence stretched between them, comfortable despite the circumstances.
He could hear the soft whisper of her breath and smell the faint sweetness of her skin beneath the generic scent of the ship’s soap.
She’d taken a shower earlier, using the cramped sanitation facility while he’d pretended to be deeply occupied with navigation calculations.
The memory of her emerging in the oversized shirt he’d found among the supplies with the hem brushing her thighs and the fabric clinging to curves she hadn’t quite dried made his body tighten again.
Control yourself, he ordered silently. She deserves better than some half-breed smuggler who can’t keep his hands to himself.
“Earlier,” she said softly, “you mentioned a refugee transport. Families fleeing a civil war.”
“I did.”
“You said most of them made it to safety.” She paused, her fingers gently stroking his chest. “What happened to the ones who didn’t?”
He flinched before he could control it. He’d opened that door himself, and given her a glimpse of something he rarely discussed. Now she wanted to see what was on the other side.
“Sickness, mostly,” he said roughly. “The ship was overcrowded and supplies were limited. When disease spread, there wasn’t enough medicine to go around.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was a long time ago, like I said.”
But she didn’t let it go, this stubborn human female who’d somehow become his responsibility. “How old were you? When you were on that ship?”
He considered lying or deflecting with a joke, doing any of the dozen things he normally did when conversations veered too close to truth. But something in the quiet sincerity in her voice and the genuine desire to know made the usual deflections feel hollow.
“Twelve,” he said. “I was twelve.”
Her breath caught. “That’s so young. What were you doing on a refugee transport at twelve?”
“My mother was sick.” The memory of his mother’s face growing thinner by the day, and her hand growing weaker in his, filled his head.
“She’d contracted some kind of wasting disease.
There was a hospital on Ferros that might have been able to treat her, but we couldn’t afford passage on a proper ship. ”
“So you took the refugee transport.”
“It was the only option.” He stared at the ceiling, watching the lights pulse. “She thought if she could just hold on until we reached Ferros, everything would be all right.”
Her hand stilled against his chest. “What happened?”
“We didn’t make it to Ferros. The disease progressed faster than she’d expected. Or maybe she’d known all along and just didn’t want to tell me.” His jaw tightened. “She died three days before we reached the planet.”
“Oh, Doren.”
The sympathy in her voice should have made him flinch away. Instead, he found himself leaning into her, as if her warmth could chase away the old cold.
“Where was your father during all this?”
The question landed like a blade between his ribs. “My father was on Yangu, living in his comfortable mansion with his legitimate family, counting his credits and pretending I didn’t exist.”
She pushed herself up onto her elbow, looking down at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. “He abandoned you?”
“He never really acknowledged me to begin with.” The anger he usually kept buried rose to the surface, bitter and familiar. “My mother was his mistress. She was just a temporary amusement for a wealthy merchant, but he was charming enough.” To her. “And she loved him.”
“A mistress? But then... how did you end up on a refugee transport?”
He laughed, and the sound held no humor.
“Because I was a mistake. An inconvenience. My mother was supposed to take care of the ‘problem’ when she discovered she was pregnant, but she refused. He threatened to cut her off if she went through with it, but she was still beautiful and in the end he couldn’t do it. ”
“And after she had you?”
“He ignored me, unless he was telling me how unworthy I was.” And he’d spent most of his childhood trying to prove the old bastard wrong. “But then my mother got sick and she was no longer beautiful and he cut us loose without a second thought.”
And broke his mother’s heart in the process.
“That’s...”
“Practical. Cold. Entirely in keeping with Tajiri values.” He turned his head to look at her, and something in her expression made his chest ache. “Don’t pity me, Emma. I survived. I made something of myself. And I did it without any help from him.”
“I don’t pity you,” she said firmly. “I’m just... I’m angry on your behalf. And sad for the twelve-year-old boy who lost his mother and had no one to turn to.”
“I turned to myself. It was enough.”
“Was it?”
The question hung in the air between them.
He wanted to say yes. He wanted to believe that he’d moved past the lonely child who’d watched his mother die in a cramped refugee hold, who’d stood in his father’s gleaming office and been told he was worth nothing, and who’d learned that the only person he could count on was himself.
But lying to her felt impossible in this quiet darkness, with her eyes searching his face and her hand resting warm against his heart.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Some days I think I’ve built a good life. Other days I wonder if I’m just... running. Moving from place to place, treasure to treasure, never staying long enough for anything to matter.”
“The Vault matters to you.”
“The Vault is different. The Vault is...” He struggled for words. “It’s proof that I’m more than what my father said I was. That I can accomplish something no one else has ever done.”
“And when you find it? What then?”
He didn’t have an answer for that. He’d spent so long focused on the search that he’d never really considered what came after.
She seemed to sense his uncertainty, and she settled back against his shoulder, her body fitting against his with an ease that should have alarmed him.
“My father was charming too,” she said quietly. “In his own way.”
The shift in conversation caught him off guard. “Your father?”
“Mm. The most unreliable man I’ve ever known, and somehow also the most lovable.” Her laugh was soft, but he could hear the hurt beneath it. “He raised me after my mother left. Or rather, he let me accompany him while I raised myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was always chasing something. The next big opportunity, the next get-rich-quick scheme, the next rainbow with a pot of gold at the end.” She started stroking his chest again.
“We moved constantly. New cities, new apartments, new schools. He’d get a job, keep it for a few months, then quit because he’d heard about something better somewhere else. ”
“That must have been difficult for a child.”
“It was. But it was also... he made it an adventure, you know? Every move was a new beginning, a fresh start. He’d sweep me up in his enthusiasm, convince me that this time would be different and everything would work out.”
“Did it ever?”
“No,” she said quietly. “But he never stopped believing it would. That was his gift—unshakeable optimism in the face of all evidence. And his curse, because it meant he never had to deal with the consequences of his choices.”
He thought of his own father, cold and calculating. Two very different kinds of failure, perhaps, but failure nonetheless.
“Is he still alive? Your father?”
“Yes.” Her voice wavered slightly. “But I haven’t seen him for a while. He calls me occasionally and promises to come visit but somehow there’s always something more... important.”
“I’m sorry.”