Chapter 35
Sharing had never been my strong suit, emotions specifically.
I liked to treat mine like a rabid animal to be kept at bay.
Emotions were tedious, an all-consuming algorithm switching the moment we foolishly believed we had cracked the code.
Mine became too turbulent to control, and that was why I couldn’t sleep.
I stared at the top bunk where Arana slept. How lucky she was to sleep so peacefully while knowing hitmen were after her. I couldn’t sleep over a guy. That was fucked.
I told myself Arana’s predicament was at fault, too, but honestly, with all of us watching, I wasn’t as paranoid. The six of us could handle whatever came our way, especially with all the gear we had. Roys, on the other hand, was another situation entirely.
I should have kept my dick in my pants. None of this would have happened.
I wouldn’t have known the connection between him and moira.
Wouldn’t have seen him like that or learned about his family or given a damn or ended up losing sleep over a foolish bastard that had no right to fuck with me like this.
But maybe now it could all be over. He was too humiliated to speak to me. I would cease speaking to him. Our fun would end as if it had never begun. We’d be stuck together for a while until he or I got reassigned.
If I didn’t go do something, I would lie there all night worrying. The thought of knocking on Zavir’s door to request he twist me up like a pretzel crossed my mind, but I decided on booze instead. Roys even ruined my sex drive, that son of a bitch.
When I opened the bedroom door, my problem stood across the hall, more distressed than when we were in that dank cave.
Roys hadn’t slept or shaved. A beard crawled across his jaw and those blue eyes ruined any plans I had.
His shock was apparent. He must not have planned to knock, considering his back rested against the opposite wall.
The door shut behind me. I half wished someone would interrupt us; otherwise, I didn’t trust myself to leave.
“Lucky,” he whispered.
My stomach knotted, recalling the fierce look in his eyes, the sensation of his hands scrambling around me to get the vials. “Don’t call me that.”
His head tilted, brow furrowed in a type of pain that I wish he didn’t show. It made me feel like I was in the wrong. “Isn’t that your name?”
“I hate it when you call me Lucky.”
“Ethin.” That sounded right, like him. The darkness around his eyes worsened as he looked to the ground. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. He bit through his candy. The sound relieved me, a reminder that he didn’t have the synthetics to replace that sweetness.
“This is the part where you invite me to your room,” I said, leaving the door open for him to go, even if I didn’t want him to. Even if he should, this could end. We’d be done because, clearly, I couldn’t be the one to end it.
“Will you come if I ask?”
“Try it and find out.”
A faint smile graced his features, gone in a flash, as if he didn’t have the energy to maintain an ounce of joy. “Will you come to my room?”
I answered by walking away. Roys followed.
His bedroom door opened onto wreckage. Torn bedsheets draped over the edge of the mattress.
Drawers hung open, clothes strewn about.
The night I visited, he hid a handful of personal effects because a holo picture lay on the bed of him and his son, as well as some drawings.
They were the only objects that didn’t receive his wrath, tucked carefully away like little treasures.
“I thought we had to keep our bunk areas clean,” I said.
“I suppose I am slacking in that regard… and many others.”
Picking up the clothes, I folded them over my arm. “Do you remember what happened?”
“You don’t need to do that.” He helped clean the carnage, though maintained a distance.
I stashed the clothes in the dresser. “You didn’t answer my question.”
The quick look toward my nose answered.
“You used the cradle?” He gripped his arms, both of them bare where the veins darkened and skin reddened.
“I did. People would have noticed otherwise.”
“Why didn’t you let them notice? Why didn’t you tell anyone?
You should have. I should…” He shoved a shirt into the drawer, closing it too roughly, then dropping his head in his hands.
His shoulders shook in a way I never imagined they could, as if he were carved from the toughest stone.
Immovable. Unchangeable. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Ethin.
I didn’t mean to… to hit you. I fucked up. You shouldn’t have… I… I’m so sorry.”
His sobs made him short of breath, and I couldn’t stand the sound.
I took his hands. His eyes were red and cheeks wet.
The voice remained, telling me to run, to leave him to rise or fall on his own.
His problems weren’t mine to tend to. His secrets weren’t mine to hold.
He was dragging me from the pedestal I expected to stand upon until the end of my days.
But that pedestal had become lonely. Once my haven, a fortress that I constructed bit by bit. I coveted my sanctuary more than anything, for it was what kept me alive. But through all the hardships, that sanctuary became cold and desolate, no different from the Colony from which I crawled out of.
I didn’t really want to be on that pedestal anymore.
I kissed the tears on his cheeks. Roys whimpered as if he expected far worse.
His arms draped around my waist, hesitant, then crushing.
He cried, clinging with a fear that even the cave hadn’t put in him.
I hugged him, awkward as it was for me. Nothing outweighed intimacy, feeling his every strangled breath and hiccup.
My muscles ached, so stiff in this realm of unfamiliarity that had my mind running.
Tears wet my neck where he muttered apology after apology.
The apologies weren’t entirely for me; I sensed.
“It’s fine,” I said while patting his back, because what the fuck else was I meant to do?
Roys chuckled, the sound remaining somber and unsure. He retreated enough to meet my eyes, his having a semblance of hope in them. “All you have to say is it’s fine?”
“What else is there to say?”
He crushed me against him where I was left unsure whose heart was racing so rapidly. The tension in me eased enough that the embrace was more comfortable than uncomfortable.
“Get angry. Call me an asshole. Tell me I’m a fool, that I’m pathetic and weak. I thought I could handle it when I never could, so please give me your usual attitude and worse because I deserve it. I,” he swallowed hard. “I hit you.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Ethin,” he hissed, searching my eyes like he expected to find something. “You’re…you should care. You should yell, get angry—”
“But I’m not angry.”
That had been the problem. I should have been angry.
Weeks ago, I would have been. I’d have thrown Roys to the stars without a thought, would have let him take as much moira as he wanted, likely gotten him in trouble for it, too.
I would have watched him be shipped off, on his feet or in a body bag, and I wouldn’t have felt much.
Just cold and desolate and dragging myself to the next day.
Not now, though, I was upset and confused and a great deal of things, but not one of them involved anger or indifference.
Roys found that as strange as I did. Though he held me close, an apprehension consumed him, leaving him unsure of what to do next.
I didn’t know either. My new state of being seemed to be clueless. All I could think of saying was simple.
“If anything like this happens again, I’ll dispose of the synthetics.”
“That…” He licked his lips. “That isn’t your job to worry about.”
“This isn’t a debate.” My hands fell away from his back to cup his face, still red from tears continuing to fall. “This can’t happen again. I don’t want it to happen. Do you?”
He shook his head and pressed a kiss to my thumb when it brushed over his bottom lip.
“Okay, okay.” He buried his face in the crook of my neck. “Thank you.”
My arms wrapped around his shoulders. I laid my cheek against his temple, trying to ignore every feeling bursting within me. They were loud and frightening — explosions on the horizon, leaving me breathless. My lungs constricted and muscles tightened. Every nerve screamed to run before I couldn’t.
I already knew I couldn’t.
“Yeah, um, no problem,” I muttered. Another chuckle from him, that one more amused. “Comforting isn’t my strong suit,” I said.
“This is enough. I’m sorry— ”
“Stop apologizing. It’s done.”
He breathed in deep, and I shuddered against the heat of his breath on my nape. “You’re awfully forgiving this evening.”
Because it’s you, I clamped my mouth shut before the truth could spill out.
We stood in each other’s arms where Roys’ trembling lessened until they disappeared entirely.
His tears stopped. The scruff of his beard tickled from his lips admiring my neck.
I squirmed, making us both laugh before he kissed me.
I hadn’t realized I could miss the taste of him so much in such little time.
As much as I wanted nothing more than to rip off his clothes and throw him on the bed, my brain shoved all consideration toward horniness aside to remind me I had a lot of questions.
Which I would ask after my tongue relearned the shape of his mouth.
Breathless, and really wishing my dick did more of the talking, I stopped him from ruining my neck. If he hadn’t already.
“There is some explaining required,” I said.
He settled his mouth on my collarbone where the scruff of his beard made the goosebumps return full force. “I know.”