Chapter 5
NOVA
Sleep doesn’t come.
It’s one of those nights where the silence in my quarters is so loud it starts to sound like a pulse—steady, mocking, endless.
I’ve tried reading. I’ve tried training sims. I even went so far as to start reorganizing my flight logs alphabetically by sortie class.
Nothing helps. My brain keeps looping the same three seconds on repeat: the way his mouth felt on mine, the heat that rolled through me, and the sting of my own voice when I told him to leave.
My compad chimes. I don’t have to check who it is. Kelsey’s the only one persistent enough to call this late.
I hesitate, then accept the holo link. Her face flickers to life—tousled hair, wide grin, the warm clutter of her Earth apartment behind her.
“Nova Starling, as I live and breathe! You look like death reheated.”
“Thanks,” I mutter. “Just what I needed.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I heard a rumor through the Alliance grapevine.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “If this is about the cafeteria inventory audit, it’s not my department.”
“Not that, genius. About the Vakutan pilot.”
I freeze. “There are twelve Vakutan pilots in my class.”
She leans closer, smirking. “Sure. But only one whose shirtless painting session went viral on CadetNet.”
My head drops into my hands. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I wish I was. The thumbnail alone is basically erotica.” She laughs when I groan. “Relax, they don’t know it’s your porch. Still, I’ve gotta ask—was the paint as smooth as he is?”
“Kelsey.”
“Okay, okay, fine. But, seriously, you’ve been on Barakkus three weeks and already found a reason to blush? That’s a record.”
“I’m not—” I start, then stop. The denial feels weak, even to me.
Kelsey softens, just a little. “Hey. You don’t have to tell me anything. But if you need to talk about it, I’m here. Just don’t tell me you’re doing that whole ‘stoic soldier’ thing again.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I say flatly. “It was a mistake. A lapse in judgment.”
“Uh-huh. How big of a lapse are we talking?”
I end the call before she can finish her grin.
The room plunges back into darkness. The only sound is the faint hum of the climate control system and the distant thrum of the hangar power core two decks below. I stare at the ceiling until my vision blurs.
Then there’s a knock.
A soft, hesitant thunk-thunk against metal.
I sit up too fast. My pulse spikes. Nobody knocks at this hour.
When I open the door, Kaz stands there, uniform half-zipped, datapad in hand, hair damp from the showers.
“Cadet,” I say, keeping my voice even. “It’s 2300. Explain yourself.”
“I need help,” he says simply.
My brow arches. “With what?”
He holds up the datapad. “Reviewing my tactical footage. My last run was sloppy. I thought you might walk me through the vector drift pattern—you said I was losing stability in the pitch roll, remember?”
I should tell him to schedule it for daylight hours. I should tell him to take it up with the assistant instructor. I should slam the door.
Instead, I step aside. “Five minutes.”
He smiles, small and careful. “Thank you, ma’am.”
He calls me ma’am when he wants to sound harmless. It almost works.
He sits at the edge of my couch, posture straight, eyes focused on the playback. For the first two minutes, it’s purely technical—he asks about drag ratios, about the new thrust algorithm in the sim core. His questions are sharp. Focused. He’s paying attention.
I find myself… impressed.
“Your thruster modulation’s good,” I say, leaning in slightly. “But you’re overcompensating on your mid-roll. That’s why you drift on the third vector.”
He frowns thoughtfully. “So if I adjust the yaw input—what, two percent?”
“Two and a half,” I correct. “You’re fighting the inertia instead of channeling it. Let the ship do some of the work.”
He glances at me, smiling faintly. “I didn’t think you believed in letting anything do the work for you.”
“Don’t mistake precision for control,” I say automatically, then realize how that sounds. His smirk grows.
We fall quiet again, the room humming softly around us. The footage plays in muted blues and silvers, reflecting off his face. He looks calmer like this, focused, almost serious.
When he leans closer to rewind the feed, our shoulders brush. My breath catches.
Focus, Nova.
But he laughs under his breath, the sound low and warm. “You really can’t stand losing, can you?”
“I don’t lose.”
“Then what do you call that porch?”
“A tactical misdirection.”
He grins. “Worked on me.”
I shake my head, but the corners of my mouth betray me. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Accurate.”
I laugh. A real one. It sneaks out of me before I can stop it, light and genuine. It feels dangerous, like the floor might give way beneath me.
Kaz watches me like he’s never seen something so fascinating. Like the sound of me laughing might be rarer than any starfield he’s flown through.
“See?” he murmurs. “You can relax.”
“Don’t push it.”
But my tone’s lost its edge, and he knows it.
He shifts closer, and this time I don’t move away. The air thickens, charged. He reaches up, slow, giving me time to stop him. His fingers brush a stray strand of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. The gesture is gentle, reverent. My heart thuds so loud I swear he can hear it.
His hand lingers. My breath shivers out.
“Nova,” he whispers, and I’m undone.
I shouldn’t. I can’t.
But when he kisses me, I don’t stop him.
It’s softer this time, deliberate. Like he’s afraid to scare me off. His lips are warm, patient, tasting faintly of the mess hall coffee that’s perpetually terrible. My fingers curl against his chest, and I melt, for one impossible heartbeat, into the gravity of him.
Then his hand slips under the hem of my uniform.
The spell shatters.
I jerk back, breathless. “Stop.”
He freezes. The look on his face—confusion, then realization, then guilt—hits harder than any reprimand.
“I’m sorry,” he starts, voice rough. “I wasn’t—”
I stand, backing away. “You can’t be here. This is crossing every line in the book.”
“I know,” he says quietly. “But—”
“No.” My voice cracks like a whip. “You think this is a game, Kaz? You think this is about you winning? Because it’s not. This—whatever this is—it’s unprofessional.”
He rises slowly, hands open, eyes searching mine. “It doesn’t feel like nothing.”
“It has to be,” I whisper. “For both of us.”
Silence stretches. The hum of the ventilation system fills the void where my heartbeat should be.
He nods finally. “Then I’ll go.”
He turns toward the door, pauses. “For what it’s worth… I didn’t come here to win. I came here because you make me want to try.”
Then he’s gone.
The door slides shut behind him, the sound too final, too sharp.
I sink onto the couch, every nerve still buzzing. My lips sting, my hands shake. I can still feel the warmth of his body in the air, fading like engine heat after a long flight.
I drop my face into my hands and exhale.
“Unprofessional,” I mutter to the empty room. “Completely, utterly unprofessional.”
But the worst part isn’t that he kissed me again.
It’s that I wanted him to.
And I still do.