CHAPTER 16 LEE
NEW TERM. New trainings.
He stayed after a few minutes with them listening to Kiara recount her and her twin’s term break with their dads.
And he thought the Academy was drama… By the time Lee looked down at his hyperband, he had a half-dozen messages from Kat, the last of them claiming she was hungry enough to “devour a zapping space alligator.” That one made him chuckle.
Lee: save some for me?
“You coming, Teach?” Kiara asked, leaning up against the door post.
“I’ll be over later. I’ve got something I want to take care of first. Keep Kat busy for me?”
“You got it.” Kiara saluted him, looping her arm with an unprepared Nikola.
Ilan had already approved his request down in the greenhouses. So all Lee really had to do was swing by and collect his haul. And with Kiara distracting Kat, it was easy for him to slip up to his dorm unnoticed.
He was heading back down to the Canteen to catch up with Kat and the others, when he had another idea. On a whim, he took a detour, crossing over to the training levels once more.
As expected, parked inside one of the matted rooms, a single, broad form benched along the far end—Zane.
Without a spotter, the Gamma cadet played it safe, sticking to low-weight, low-risk, high-reps. But safe wasn’t always what one needed.
“Need someone to spot you?” Lee didn’t wait for a response, and he didn’t allow time for Zane to reject his offer as he set his things down on the floor before taking up a spot behind him.
Lee rolled his shoulders back, pulling an arm across his chest and holding the stretch before switching to the other. He waited for Zane to finish his reps before extending a couple hands.
Zane grunted his thanks, passing the bar to Lee.
“I’m taking off the emergency grav-inhibitor. You’re gonna feel this next set.” Lee racked it into the J-hooks, gesturing with his head to the weights at his feet, as he switched off the setting. “Increase or hold?”
“Increase.” Zane jerked his chin upwards, and Lee replaced the weights on either end, loading it into place.
The strain of the bench led the small talk, Zane’s carefully measured breaths the pretenses, letting the whirring of the vents overhead fill the gaps in-between.
“You didn’t go home for break,” Lee said in between sets.
“I didn’t,” Zane ground out, confirming Whistler’s suspicions. He finished another couple sets of reps, breathing heavy, before he sat up again, resting his palms on his legs. “You wanna...?” He motioned for Lee to take a turn.
“Yeah, I’ll…” Lee rolled his shoulders a couple more times before settling against the warmed bench. “Let’s go eighty.” He motioned for Zane to reset the kilo weights for a warmup.
Lee had started in on his reps before Zane spoke again, quietly.
“Dad and I got into an argument, weekend before.” His voice took on a darker undertone.
“He just got a promotion and wants to make it very clear where the esteemed ‘Accetta loyalty’ lies. As if the General gave two shits about our family name while we were standing out there onboard Segura.” Zane straightened his shoulders, adjusting his posture as if shaking off the memory of that conversation.
Lee finished that first round of reps, taking a few breaths while his lungs caught up to his head, again remembering Zane’s father had a direct line to the AMG.
But even so, wasn’t that what they’d been doing this last month?
Putting their heads down to prove themselves to the Commander and the rest of the Academy?
If their present rankings were anything to speak of, they’d done well applying themselves.
“How much did he know?” Lee asked, mentally gearing up for another go.
“Enough,” Zane said tightly. And with the way he gripped the weight stand, it had been more than Zane had banked on.
But he shook his head. “It wouldn’t matter if I had been holding General Narron’s damn hand, he’d still find something.
Good old Dad, looking to find fault in his son.
” He shot Lee a sharp look. And Lee understood.
This wasn’t a conversation to be shared around with anyone.
He was telling Lee as a confidant—maybe even a friend.
And one of few who might understand his circumstances.
This wasn’t a burden Lee had ever personally had to carry.
Tonya was easy to please. And with his dad, as long as Lee worked hard and had plans to eventually pay the bills and support himself, he was satisfied.
But Lee was intimately acquainted with another cadet who’d never received the support she deserved from a loved one, and the accompanying desperation to do anything he could to help lessen that burden.
They’d washed their hands of everything to do with that raid. And still it haunted them.
Zane’s latest haircut with the Academy’s prismatic presence made more sense now.
“Thank the void it’s behind us,” Lee said, offering the bar up to Zane to increase. It was the only thing he could offer. Solidarity and a friendly hand.
“Thank the void for that.”
Kat was waiting for him in the Hideaway when he and Zane finally emerged from the training levels later that afternoon.
“Hey there, stranger. I was looking for you.” She set her green drink down on a table as he approached with Zane.
“Zane.” She nodded at him.
“Kat,” he replied. The stilted silence that curried between them was awkward at best.
“You look like you’ve been busy,” she said, nodding to the backpack he carried over his arm.
“Some of us don’t just lay out for a week,” Zane muttered. Lee narrowed his eyes at Zane. He seemed to catch his mistake, too. Zane sighed. “It’s been a long day. I’ll catch up to you guys again later.”
Kat studied her hands and wrists where they peeked out from her all-terrain suit. “I’m not even that tan.” But she tucked them under her arms and left them there until the Hideaway’s doors had slid open and closed again behind Zane.
“So, I take it that went well?” she asked, still tugging at the cuffs of her sleeves.
Lee spared her the trouble, threading her fingers through his. “He just needed to let off some steam.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” she pressed, squeezing his hands. “Let me guess, Daddy Accetta is not pleased about something?”
He shot her a look, amusement and wariness warring inside of him. She’d just guessed that? “It’s probably best that Zane doesn’t hear you speak of his dad in that way.”
Kat rolled her eyes, shooting him her own look, one that said only too clearly, I knew Zane well before you did.
Lee held her pale grey gaze pointedly. Don’t remind me.
Except, really, they didn’t need to go back there. Ever. “Is this going to become an issue?” he said aloud, half teasing, half dead serious.
But Kat just laughed, merriment replacing the worry lines in her face. “Not at all. I just find it entertaining how similar you two can be. It’s like I was telling Tonya. Best buddies, remember?” Her eyes positively gleamed with the mischief.
Lee could feel his eyes rolling to the back of his head.
There was no alligator on the menu for dinner tonight. But both he and Kat ate enough food to fill the stomachs of a couple of those creatures before slipping up to Lee’s dorm. He was exhausted. Maybe Zane had been right; maybe he and Kat had taken things a little too easily over the past week.
But the night wasn’t quite over yet. He still had one little surprise up his sleeve.
“You’re going to have to close your eyes,” Lee said, stopping when they reached his dorm. He turned fully around to face Kat.
“What? Come on,” she whined. He could see the sleepiness on her as well, with the droop of her shoulders and the lazy smile on her face. They’d definitely spent too much time away. But he refused to open the door until she agreed.
“Fine,” Kat relented, crossing her arms over her chest. Even her will tonight seemed to be nodding off. “But if you are trying something silly…”
“Just close your eyes, Kat.”
When he was sure she was doing as she was told, he scanned his hyperband at the door and let the portal slide open. He’d been careful to clean under his fingernails a couple times after visiting the greenhouses to ensure there wouldn’t be a trace left to tip her off.
“After you… starflower,” he whispered, his voice trailing off, down through the grated floor, that last word quiet enough she may not have even heard it leave his lips.
“Easy does it,” he said as he guided her over the threshold.
“I unearthed this during that Kafron raid all those months ago. I just had to record one final diagnostic before I was able to take her out this afternoon.” He tugged gently on Kat’s fingers until she stood hesitantly facing his desk.
“Kafron—with that rotting creature?” She wrinkled her nose, but she kept her eyes closed as she swiveled her face upwards, as if hoping the light could tip her off on the nature of her surprise.
“You can open your eyes,” he said.
He’d removed his holoblock from his desk. Removed everything from its surface so only the flower could claim this sliver of space. Her flower.
Kat was still. So still that he had to take a physical step around her to confirm she’d actually opened her eyes. He didn’t know what to make of her silence.
And then he saw their glassy expression. The water pooling along her eyelids.
A smile tugged at his lips as he cleared his throat. “Think of it as a little start-of-term present.”
“Lee,” she said, softly. She turned to him, and there were those beautiful, pale greys. “But I didn’t get you anything.”
He huffed a breathy laugh into her hair as he folded her into his arms. “Trust me, here,” he said, resting his chin on her head while the warm flutter of her heart beat against his. “You standing here in this dorm with me… That’s more than enough.”
She let him hold her as a stray tear escaped down her cheek. And as he chased that trail reverently with his lips. She was salty and sweet. He pulled her in tighter as her ear brushed his cheek.
“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said finally. Lee chuckled, releasing her so that she could go inspect the star flower. A second bloom had since budded against the leaf’s axils.
“She’s so beautiful,” Kat cooed, tracing a fingertip around the flower’s shadow. She ran the pad of her thumb across the delicate leafing, hovering just above its fiery-red pollen center and its transparent moon-dust petals.
“She is,” Lee agreed. But he wasn’t looking at the flower as he traced the pink bow of her cheeks and her curious smile and the tangle of vanilla-blonde hair tumbling across the edge of his desk.
“What’s its name?” she asked suddenly, angling just her face towards him.
“I’ve been calling it Chlidanthus Aster, flower of the stars. Or—”
“Starflower,” she breathed. A knowing look graced those grey irises as she peered up at him. The teasing nicknames… They’d all been leading up to this moment.
Eyes still wide and bright, she shook her head. “I can’t believe you saved it.”
“As if I could’ve let it suffer out there with the dark rays and those poor, malnourished beasties.”
He meant it nonchalantly, meant to turn away and give her some space to enjoy her present. But as she flicked her eyes back to the star flower, he could only watch her again in awe.
Out of all the cadets he could have met here, all the cadets who could have crashed into his life, he’d found her. Perhaps the one soul who truly understood him.
As the day finally caught up to him, a yawn slipping from his lips, Lee pulled her in for a quick kiss. Flipping on some music, he lay back on his bed with his hands behind his head, watching her watch her flower.
Kat slipped over before long to join him, burrowing into his side.
He grinned into her hair when she angled her body so that she faced the desk, and he slid an arm around her.
With Kat tucked in here beside him, safe and sound, he had everything he’d ever need.
Now to make peace with the rest of his life.