Chapter 29
Banjo
Forever.
The word repeats in my head as my brain tries to process what it means.
Tavryn wants me to stay here with him. Forever.
Somehow, he’s figured out how I can stay here and provide for my family at the same time. It’s so easy. All we have to do is take Remington back to Earth. Mamaw and Viola get everything they need, and I can keep waking up every morning next to the being I love. It’s easy. So easy.
At least, until I remember my earlier talk with Remington. He’s fallen in love too. It doesn’t seem like he was on Dhamoirs long enough for that, but since I fell in love with Tavryn in about the same amount of time, who am I to judge?
I lean back enough to look at Tavryn. He’s gorgeous, even with no sleep and halfway toward a break down. He’s finally been honest to me, after two whole days. All I have to do now is be honest back.
“I want that,” I say, taking his hands in mine and tangling our fingers together. “Tav, baby, that’s all I want. To stay here with you forever.”
Tavryn’s expression is still sad. “There’s a but, isn’t there?
” he asks as he skims his thumb over the back of my hand.
The touch sends tingles up my arm. I’ve been miserable these last two days not touching him, but I had to get through to him somehow.
I couldn’t keep fighting with him. I had to know why taking Remington back to Earth was so important.
Now I wish I had minded my own business. Let Tavryn tie Remington up and stay ignorant about the whole thing like he wanted me to. But that wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.
“Yeah, there’s a but.” I take in a deep breath. “I can’t do that to Remington. He deserves to be happy just as much as we do.” Tavryn lets out a snort. I ignore him. “We can find another way, Tav. There’s gotta be another way.”
“Fine.” Tavryn isn’t looking at me anymore. “I’ll take him back to Dhamoirs.” His twitching tail gives away his anxiety. I catch it and gently stroking the tip, wanting to comfort him. “Stells?”
“Yes, Captain?” Stells replies.
“Set our route back to Dhamoirs.” There’s no emotion in Tavryn’s voice. It’s like he’s given in and is accepting our relationship is doomed. He moves back to his chair, slumping into it with a sigh. “Banjo, tell Remington my decision.”
I nod. It’s the right choice. Remington needs to live happily ever after. Tavryn and I still have plenty of time. Loads of time. If the two of us work together, we can figure something out. I’m positive it’s going to work. It has to work.
Tavryn already told me he’d do anything for me. Now I have to prove I’m willing to do anything for him.
Saying good-bye to Remington is harder than I thought.
Not because I’ll miss the guy—we’re friends, but we’re not that close—but because it means the option of turning him in for the bounty is gone. It’s not like we’re going to kidnap him again.
We probably couldn’t pull it off anyway. Based on the reunion between Remington and his beefy, bull-looking boyfriend, I have a feeling Remington isn’t going anywhere alone any time soon.
Hopefully that turns out alright.
Since we’ve been back en route to Earth, Tavryn has been even more of a grump than usual. I keep coming up with ideas on how I might be able to stay with him, and he keeps shooting them down.
We’ve argued about it so many times it’s hard to keep bringing it up. But I do. Because I desperately want to stay.
I hang my head off the side of the couch, staring at the blank TV.
“Oh, I got it!” I sit up so fast I nearly tumble right off.
Tavryn, who’s in the kitchen making two mugs of yurba, glances over at me.
“We’ll just hang out ‘til you get another job! Then when you bring that human back, you can send the money to Mamaw!”
Tavryn purses his lips in this way he does right before he shoots down one of my ideas.
He finishes steeping the yurba before pouring two cups and coming over to me.
He says his words slowly. “We could do that,” he says.
I immediately perk up. Finally! Finally, we’ve figured it out!
“But if we do that, you won’t have time to fulfill your contract. ”
I frown. “What do you mean?” I ask before taking a sip of yurba. Mm. It’s always so much better when Tavryn makes it. He’s shown me a hundred times how he does it, but I can still never make it taste like his. “I got a whole year.” Surely, I haven’t been gone that long.
“Banjo.” Tavryn is staring at me like I’ve said something completely ridiculous. It’s an expression I’m real familiar with. After glaring and smirking, it’s his most common expression. “You’ve been gone for eight months.”
I nearly spit yurba all over him. “What? You’re jokin’!” I think back through all the time I’ve spent in space. There’s no way it’s been that long! “It's been two months. Three max.”
Tavryn shakes his head, a bit of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “No, darling, you’ve been gone far longer than that,” he promises. I guess he would know. I stopped keeping track a long time ago. “When we get back, you’ll only have two months to record your album. Is that enough time?”
I honestly have no idea. I’ve never recorded an entire album. At least I already have some songs written. That alone should have told me I’d been in space longer than just a few months.
“Uh, I think so.” I can make two months work. It’s not like I’ll be doing it alone. Part of the prize included having a team help me. “Can we light jump back to Earth?”
“No,” Tavryn says with a sigh. “Earth isn’t close enough to light jump to from here. Plus, we only have enough fuel for one more light jump, and I’m saving it for an emergency. If there were a convenient place to refuel between here and Earth, sure.”
But there isn’t. Tavryn had already complained about how we couldn’t refuel at Dhamoirs. Apparently, they don’t do space travel, so they don’t have the fuel for spaceships. Neither did Eczok, though Mary promised us she’d have it done by the time we came back.
If we come back. The thought sinks like a stone in my stomach.
“Alright, so I’m guessin’ two months ain’t enough time for you to get and fill another job.” Tavryn shakes his head.
Back to the drawing board then.
We’re three days away from Earth, and I’ve thought about nothing except for how Tavryn and I can pull this off.
No matter how hard I think about it, there’s no solution. Even Tavryn has offered some ideas, but every time we talk through them, there’s always something that won’t work. His mood keeps getting worse, and frankly, so does mine.
Music doesn’t even cheer me up anymore, though it’s not like I can focus enough to play. Not when there’s a giant countdown in my head telling me how many more days I have left to spend with Tavryn.
Three. Three days and I’ll never see him again.
He’ll be millions of miles away while I’m stuck on Earth, pretending none of this ever happened.
Will anyone even believe me if I tell them the truth?
If I heard the story from someone else, I’m not sure I’d believe it.
Maybe Remington isn’t the only one with a fairytale romance.
At least his ends happily. Or at least, I assume it will.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Tavryn whispers, the words coming out warm against my lips.
We’ve been in bed all day, wrapped up tight in blankets and each other.
If I had my way, we’d never get out of bed again.
Getting up means acknowledging what’s going to happen, and right now, I’d much rather keep my head in the sand.
“I am?” I ask, smiling over at him. “That’s a first.”
Tavryn lets out a little laugh as he cuddles closer to me. We’re both naked, too lazy to get dressed when there’s really no point. The feel of his skin brushing against mine is electrifying. I’ve been hard on and off all day, but neither of us has been in a rush to do anything about it.
“You’ve been thinking a lot these past several weeks,” Tavryn reminds me. His fingers play down my spine to rest just above my backside.
I snort. It sounds so much like Tavryn that we both laugh. “Yeah. I’m just wishin’ somethin’ had worked out.”
Tavryn is quiet for a few moments. I slide my leg over his, and his tail tip trails up and down my calf.
“We should stop thinking about it,” he says simply.
I raise a brow, but let him continue even though I don’t want to give up.
This is too important to give up on now in the final moments.
“I want to enjoy the time we have left. Without distractions.”
I have to admit, if these are our last three days together, I’d much rather spend them actually together than worrying about the future. Maybe this was all we were meant to have.
And I suppose enjoying ourselves isn’t the same as giving up. Maybe if I stop thinking about everything so hard, something will finally click.
“Okay,” I agree with a smile. Tavryn wiggles his leg between mine, giving me a pretty good idea of what exactly he meant by “enjoying.” I still ask anyway just to hear him say it. “What exactly were you thinkin’ we’d do? Talk? Keep snugglin’?”
Tavryn slowly shakes his head, a wicked smile spreading across his face. “Not exactly,” he hums, his hand sliding down to squeeze my backside. I really hope he’s wanting to fool around, because my cock is already completely on board. There’s no way he can’t feel it.
“You’re going to kiss me like we can keep doing it for the rest of our lives.” He tangles his free hand into my hair, pulling me forward until our lips are only a hairsbreadth apart. “Kiss me until we both forget this has an end date.”