Chapter 2
GUNNAR
I didn't know what it was about Sebastian Paska, but every time I orbited his atmosphere, he set my teeth on edge. I fucking hated that guy, and I made it a priority not to hate anyone.
My easygoing attitude had been my saving grace in the foster care system. Why was it so hard to find my sense of balance around him?
Part of it was pure jealousy. He'd been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and I'd been born to a mom with self-medicated mental health issues.
The oldest of her three kids, I was a full-time foster kid before I turned nine.
I lost track of my siblings around the same time, since they split us up.
None of my foster parents were particularly great, but the system did their best to keep me in the same school system.
One teacher in particular, Ms. Robbins, had cared about me and a handful of other less fortunates, a mix of kids with brown and white skin all from the same social class, the poorest of the poor.
She'd taught us keyboarding starting at age ten, and then coding.
We spent our recesses in her little computer lab classroom, typing away on assignments.
As we advanced, she worked with the area community college to grant us credits.
I was one of the few who stuck with it until I graduated high school, sneaking back into that tiny elementary computer lab, but it paid off.
I graduated with an associate's degree in computer science and a strong enough portfolio for a full ride to Colorado State University.
From there, I advanced to aerospace coding during my senior-year apprenticeship.
After graduation, I spent five years working for start-ups in Seattle, but then I got my big break with Paskal Aerospace.
Ivan Paska, my hero, had purchased a failing budget airline when I was in college.
I'd read up on him then. He'd started out poor, like me, an immigrant from Ukraine, pushed from his home after the fallout from Chernobyl destroyed his family farm.
Mr. Paska's story was nothing like mine, but it resonated with me.
If an immigrant could turn nothing into a multi-billion dollar company, so could I.
Sure, I'd had poor beginnings, and I didn't know where the rest of my family had ended up, but I worked for a great company.
Paskal Industries saw my potential and moved me up from the aeronautical division to aerospace, working on the private lunar shuttle.
Despite all my wildest dreams, I never imagined I'd be on the second test shuttle flight.
I wrote code. I wasn't an astronaut. Now, here I was, going to the moon!
The freaking moon! Years ago, I wouldn't have been allowed in the space program due to my severe myopia, but so much had changed with privatized space travel.
Until a couple months ago, I hadn't gone near the aerospace department, thinking it too advanced for me. I was an excellent coder, but anything beyond the binary turned my brain to mush. I was good with languages, but ask me to do more than basic math? Donesies.
Now, they had promised me a promotion to Aeronautics Computing Manager if my flight with Sebastian was successful.
The offer came from Dr. Bunting, of all people.
It shocked the hell out of me when the medical doctor called to rave about my work on a code patch for the newest commercial jet.
He offered me an interview, and boom, the next thing I knew, I was in the space program. I still couldn't believe it.
Dr. Bunting worked closely with Mr. Paska himself!
My crush on the silver fox company founder deepened when I learned he'd funded my teacher's coding program.
He also supported free clinics for STI testing, near and dear to my heart as a gay kid living on the streets for part of my adolescent years.
Now, Mr. Paska wanted to set up a base on the moon for cancer research. His wife had died of cancer fifteen years ago, and my heart ached for him.
None of the studies I'd read had been particularly clear on the reason to explore cancer research in space, but I wasn't a scientist. If my code aided the shuttle in its approach and stayed within the Earth-moon Lagrange points, that was important enough.
To them, it was so essential, they wanted me aboard the shuttle on a quick trip around the moon. I still couldn't believe it!
Dr. Bunting said we would also be running some scientific experiments on our journey.
When I asked for specifics, he became vaguely dismissive.
I liked science as much as the next person, but it was probably best he didn't bore me with the details.
I wanted him to like me, and in my experience, my confused face wasn't very reassuring.
I needed that promotion, after all. The $10,000 pay bump per year would help me start a scholarship fund for kids like me.
Thankfully, training for the flight to the space station wasn't as intensive as the old NASA videos would have you believe.
I wasn't forced to hold my breath until I passed out or put through strenuous G-force training, again presumably until I passed out.
Total number of minutes spent unconscious during training: zero.
They treated me like a king on the cruise ship, too, at least, when Sebastian Paska wasn't around. It was impossible to outshine the golden boy, so I retreated to the shadows. If I stayed, the guy gravitated toward me, leading to yet another fight.
Sebastian was everything his father wasn't. Spoiled. Arrogant. Prideful. I assumed he poured his drink on me tonight because he never paid attention to his surroundings until it was too late. He sucked me in like a black hole, but then he acted like he didn't even know I was there.
It didn't help that he was just as hot as his dad.
Hotter, if I ignored his bored disinterest and focused on his light brown eyes, almost amber, and his scent.
We spent a lot of time in that flight simulator together, long hours baking in our own sweat inside our space suits.
When Sebastian didn't smell like a bottle of bourbon, he smelled like …
mine. I couldn't explain it. I'd never thought of another human being as mine before, but he brought out something primal within me, something that wanted to bite, claim, and mate.
Thankfully, I didn't have any close friends here, no one to confess my strange obsession with my boss's son.
I hated him, and I wanted to hate-fuck him into his giant plushy king-sized mattress on the ship's top deck.
We'd all seen the welcome video where Ivan, Sebastian, and Dr. Bunting welcomed us aboard and gave us a brief tour of their cabins.
It reminded me of the television show where celebrities pretended they would let a stranger off the street into their gorgeous mansions for a quick walk-through.
To add insult to injury, the fucker poured his fucking drink on me before I had a chance to order my own.
I was late to the party after catching a last-minute snafu with the final microchip installation.
Someone had set it to veer our orbit outside the Lagrange points despite their insistence we weren't supposed to leave them.
It took me a half-hour to fix it and another fifteen to make my way back to my cabin on the third deck.
My living conditions weren't as bad as steerage on the Titanic, but still …
Good ol' top deck Sebastian was already three sheets to the wind: drink-spilling territory.
When I got a little too close to him at the bar, he doused my chest with his honey-colored drink.
Thanks to my frustration at being late, and my constant state of irritated arousal around him, I'd said too much.
I did my best to smile and crack jokes with everyone I met, and in return, I received their micro-aggressions, snide comments, and whispers behind my back when they thought I couldn't hear them.
I didn't belong, and these rich geeky scientists took every opportunity to tell me, including suggesting I was nothing but a sex toy for Sebastian's pleasure.
Me. With Sebastian. While something deep inside me approved, I died a little each time they joked about us.
I'd worked so hard to encourage people to respect my achievements, and here I was out of my element again.
It felt like being back in school, the first day of fourth grade wearing old, ripped jeans, or college orientation when everyone else's parents went with them while I was alone, or now, when I had a bachelor's degree in computer science instead of a doctorate in astrophysics.
I skulked back to my room to change my shirt and add some stain remover.
This was my nicest white shirt, and I didn't want to ruin it.
Yes, I could afford another shirt now, but part of me would always be the hand-me-down kid who had to keep his threadbare clothes together as long as possible because there was no guarantee anyone would buy him more.
I made it to my cabin while the spot was still wet, at least. After blotting it with a wet paper towel, I tossed it in the bathroom sink under the cool faucet.
The stubborn outline of the brown stain remained.
I looked it up on my phone while I let it soak.
Though I didn't have dish soap in my cabin, the ship provided a small bottle of rubbing alcohol in the tiny medicine cabinet.
I cracked it open, poured some onto a white washcloth, and dabbed at the edges.
It looked better by the time I finished, but I couldn't tell if it was completely gone.
I would add the shirt to things Sebastian had ruined, including this cruise line when he took over.
The environmental impact of his cruise ships alone was a reason to hate the guy.
Paskal Entertainment had been one of the least polluting before Sebastian had taken over.
Now, they were one of the worst, with Sebastian paying large carbon offset companies to balance the damage.
It did me no good to sit around my cabin, where everything in the tiny room reminded me of the sorry state of the world. A walk would do me good.
Twenty minutes later, after a complete circuit of the third deck, where the sounds of the party drifted to me from above, I made my way up.
Too many people were still partying on the main deck, so I climbed to the top.
Sebastian's VIP cabin was dark. Before I could stop myself, I banged my fist on the door.
I heard someone muttering inside, and my brain finally kicked in. What if Sebastian wasn't alone? And if he was, what was I looking for, a sad explanation of his polluting cruise line's daily affairs?
Any conversation was more likely to give me a black eye to go with the stained shirt back in my cabin. He was out of my league in every way, including arm reach and muscle.
Pulling off my flip-flops, I turned and ran.
Thankfully, I was fast enough to make it to the walkway between the front-facing and rear-facing cabins.
I dashed down it, feet slapping against the reinforced glass.
I turned another corner before stopping to catch my breath.
After five minutes with no sound of pursuit, I stood up, shook out the wrinkles the humid night air had set into my t-shirt and shorts, and walked back to my cabin.
The adrenaline drop made me sleepy, at least. By the end of my usual nighttime routine, my eyelids drooped. I slept like a log on my cabin's firm mattress.
When the alarm went off at 4 a.m., another jolt of adrenaline reminded me this was no ordinary day. In just under two hours, we would be blasting off into space.