Chapter Nine
FOR THREE DAYS, LUCIANA DID nothing.
She took care of any business that must be dealt with, and everything else she put off. She canceled and rescheduled appointments. She didn’t do her daily rounds of the market. She didn’t stop by Brion’s stall for coffee, either. She ignored messages, and avoided the Forum.
She sat in her house, and watched mindless entertainment…
or tried to. Her mind slipped away from the plot and she would come to minutes later and realize that even though she had been staring at the screen, she had processed nothing of the story.
Instead, her mind was back to Brice and that damn kiss.
Had she misinterpreted?
Their heads together. The way the red head had leaned against Brice. How close together their heads had been…..
Had he been parading the woman around the ship for days or weeks? Was Luciana a laughingstock now? The silly woman from the Capitol, with pretentions of becoming a great businessman, who had no clue that she had been….
…what, exactly?
And so her mind would circle, over and over again.
After three days, she had to at least engage with the real world. She rose stiffly from the lumpy sofa, a leftover from Devar’s childhood, and went through the motions of preparing for the day.
It was Endurance day. The entire ship took the day off and headed to the Palatine for a picnic by the river. There would be free food and drinks, music and other performances, speeches, and miniature fireworks.
She had agreed to go to the picnic with Brice over a week ago. While she dressed, she seriously considered just not showing up.
Only that would bring him to the house to find out what was wrong.
She was surprised he hadn’t shown up at the door on any of the last two nights, wondering why she hadn’t come to the house after work, which had become her habit.
Work, then dinner—often one that Brice cooked—then the evening together.
Sometimes out, often just sitting on the sofas and being together. They would talk, or not talk.
She would return home in the morning, ready for another day just like it.
Luciana hadn’t stepped out of her house for nearly three days, so why hadn’t he asked her what had happened? Or was he too wrapped up in his latest…acquisition, to notice that she wasn’t there?
Stop that, Luciana! She railed at herself as she stepped out of the house and shut the door.
She wasn’t the only Capitolino wending their way to the Artery, bags and blankets and sun hats in hand, heading for the Palatine.
She joined the small flow of people, while lecturing herself.
You still don’t know what this is all about.
In her gut, she knew. And the evidence confirming it was mounting.
Brice was waiting by the flat rock beside the river when she reached the picnic area. The river ran behind the elevated stage, so he was easy to find.
He smiled at her. “I have a blanket staked out.” He held out his hand. “I’ll show you where. Then we can get some food.”
The long row of food printers sat to one side of the stage, looking oddly out of place, for they sat on the grass, instead of being mounted into a wall. Lines of people waited to use the printers already.
“It could take a while to get food,” Luciana judged, eyeing the lines.
“I brought food,” he told her over his shoulder. He was leading her through the maze of blankets and chairs that were blooming like flowers across the open area in front of the stage.
“How far away from the stage did you get?” Luciana asked, as he walked on.
“Just a bit farther,” he said, his tone encouraging.
Luciana didn’t feel any of the intrigue he clearly wanted her to feel over their final destination, even though he was leading her to the far back of the picnic area, almost to the line of trees there.
When he stopped in front of a whole sofa, sitting on the grass with a floor rug in front of it, she blinked.
“A sofa?” she asked woodenly. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around why the sofa was here.
“There is a whole catalogue of files in the archives. You print off a block about this big,” and he spread his hands a half-meter apart. “Then you break the seal and up pops tables and chairs…and sofas,” Brice said. His smile faded. “I can’t sit for long on the ground.” He sounded apologetic.
Luciana found her gaze was roving over his face, taking in details that she hadn’t consciously noticed for a while.
He was a good-looking man. Too good looking.
She had seen images of him when he was playing tankball, when he was feted and fawned over, and had his photo or videos of him appear on the Forum daily.
In the near twenty years since, he had not changed greatly.
He’d lost some of the muscle mass, but not all of it.
And his face was still a mass of sharp lines and angles, with the curly black hair hanging heavily over his forehead.
She knew all those lines well, now.
Her heart squeezed hard, and her breath hitched. Get control of yourself! She shouted in her mind. “How are you planning on getting it back to the house?” she asked him.
He frowned. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing. Isn’t the sofa the wrong color for the house? It’ll clash with the square ones you already have.”
“I’ll recycle it for the credits. Luciana, look at me.”
She laughed a little. “I’m not sure I should sit on it, anyway.”
“Why not?” His voice was low. Wary.
“The color of the cushions…they would better suit a red head.” It was out before she could censor it and clamp her jaws shut. It launched from her, full of heat and fury.
He grew still.
Luciana shifted on her feet. She felt sick. Exhausted. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be anywhere but here.
“You’re talking about Jenny. You saw her.” Brice’s expression was more than wary now. Caution was there, too.
Luciana pressed her hand to her breastbone as her heart physically hurt. He wasn’t denying it.
“I hoped you would see it,” he added.
Luciana moaned and turned away. “You know what? It’s none of my business. I’m going to find Devar and sit with him and Caelen.”
“Wait, Luciana.”
“No.”
He gripped her arm. “Wait a damn moment.”
“I said no!” Her voice rose to a near shriek and people on nearby blankets turned their heads to watch the drama.
She didn’t care. She just wanted to be gone from here. She wanted to lick her wounds in private, and figure out how she was supposed to survive this misery. “Let go of me,” she told him.
Brice released her arm and raised his hands. “I want to tell you about Jenny.”
Luciana felt sick. “I don’t want to hear it.” She looked around, hoping she could find Devar. There were so many people….
“I want you to hear it. It’s important, Luciana!”
She spun back to face him. “Not to me! In the whole time I’ve known you, Brice, I’ve never once thought you were cruel.
Until now.” She would go home. She couldn’t possibly stay here now.
She set off, intending to make a big loop around the back of the picnic area, back to where the taxiboats were dropping people.
She shouldn’t have any trouble at all finding an empty one to take her back up to the hub… .
“I wanted you to see it, Luciana!” Brice called, behind her. “I needed to know that this was more than just the damn market stalls!”
Luciana halted. She couldn’t have taken another step. Shock had locked her knees. She could feel it slide over her, a cold wave, from her head to her feet. Slowly, she turned back to him.
Brice had followed her. Of course he had. He leaned on the cane, looking ruffled and anxious…when had she learned to read him so well?
“What?” she breathed, her heart thundering. Perhaps she had misheard.
Brice raised his hand. “How could I know, any other way?” He dropped his hand. “How could you know?”
“You kissed her.”
He scrubbed at his hair. “I’ve known Jenny since she was a baby. She’s Bronson’s daughter and she used to come to me to get her out of scrapes, to negotiate with her father, and two years ago, she wheedled me into introducing her spouse to Bronson. Her spouse, Marianne.”
While Luciana stared at him, speechless, he shrugged. It was a tiny shift of his shoulders. “You weren’t going to know what was in your own mind any other way, Luciana. You’ve never had to, before.”
Her heart was still racing. This time it was for a different reason. “You decided an objective lesson was in order?”
“No, dammit. I needed to know, too. Since the arena, I’ve been out of my mind wondering what the hell I was going to do. I couldn’t take it any longer, Luciana. I’m sorry.”
She took a step toward him. Another. Her amazement was building. “You couldn’t have asked me?” she cried.
He threw out his hand. “There was no point asking you. Until this moment now, you wouldn’t have known.
You’re so ruthlessly focused. Your mind is brilliant, when it comes to business.
And your drive is unending. They both stop you from noticing anything around you.
Including what your heart is doing. You wouldn’t see it because you don’t think you deserve happiness. ”
Luciana pressed her fingers to her temples. How well he knew her! She didn’t know whether to scream at him, or kiss him. He was right on every count.
She loved him.
“If I come closer, will you scream at me?” he asked, his voice lower.
Luciana laughed. It wasn’t a healthy sound. She wasn’t amused. She slapped her hand over her mouth.
Brice moved closer. Slowly, he put his arm around her, and drew her up against him.
Luciana wound her arms around his neck and kissed him right there in front of all five thousand occupants of the Endurance.
·
Luciana was drunk on emotions, not champagne, which Brice had in a basket beside the sofa. She barely touched it. She felt as though she was floating.
And when the picnic was over, and the last of the dancing had stopped, Brice took her hand and walked across the bridge and into the trees, to his house.
It was more than sex. It had been more than sex for a long time, only she had failed to notice.
Afterward, they lay in the dark, listening to the fireworks and the people still drinking in the clearing.
“How did you know?” she whispered in the dark, her head on his shoulder. “How did you know how I felt?”
For a long moment he didn’t answer. That was just like Brice. He slowed down and formulated careful answers when the topic was important to him. Luciana waited.
“I knew because I’ve been there before,” he said at last. Then, “I destroyed my relationship with Susanne.”
“After the accident? Weren’t you…recovering?”
“In all ways,” he said. “I was so angry about not being able to play anymore. And there was pain. Constant pain. The trauma therapy wasn’t doing a bit of good.
I would dream about the accident and relive it all day long.
I stopped paying attention to anything but my own pile of misery.
I didn’t break up with Susanne. I barely noticed she was gone, until much later, when it was too late. ”
He shifted under her. Stroked her back, a soft single touch. “Since the arena, I’ve worried about screwing this up, too. That’s when I knew I needed answers.”
She sighed.
“The stalls, Luciana—”
She put her fingertips against his lips, silencing him. “I don’t care.”
He picked up her hand. Held it. “You’ve never dug into my history, have you?”
Luciana pressed her lips together. “I didn’t think I had the right to do that. It was supposed to be just a passing fever, you said…” She sighed. “And you’re worried about messing this up? I did exactly the opposite of what we agreed to.”
“We both did,” he said. In the dark, she saw a hint of his smile. “I’m a Capitolino, Luciana. I was raised there. Those stalls? They were my father’s. They’re the last of an old life I don’t want to forget. It keeps me stable, knowing they’re there.”
Luciana let out a long breath as understanding touched her. She lifted herself up on her elbows. “Keep them,” she said. “And let me manage them. They’re losing money, Brice. They’re mis-managed, truly. I could make you at least double what they’re bringing in now…why are you laughing?”
He smothered another guffaw and pulled her over him, so she was lying farther over him. “You never give up, do you?”
And he kissed her.