Chapter 7
KRISTI
Iwake up like the world’s been flipped on its side—like gravity’s decided to take a day off and I’m just free-floating in someone else’s skin.
It’s not the bed. Or the weak Novarian sunlight leaking through the blinds. It’s something in my chest. An ache, sure, but not the kind I know. Not grief. Not rage. This is newer, rawer—like something’s been cracked open inside me and left that way.
Kenron.
His name hammers through my skull like a heartbeat. I can still feel the ghost of his hand on my cheek. Still taste the heat of the kitchen, the way his laugh rolled through me like thunder in my ribs. I should be angry. Mortified. Something. But I’m just... spinning.
I try to drown it in routine.
Drag myself to the archives. Bury myself in dataclips and war logs and chemical decay reports so old they’ve probably outlived the people they describe. I click. I scan. I file. I highlight. I pretend.
But it doesn’t work.
His voice worms in between the lines of text. His grin shadows every flicker of the holo-display. I catch myself smiling at nothing. I catch myself wanting.
And that’s the worst part.
Because I’m not supposed to want anything from someone like him.
By midday, I’m snapping at coworkers and skipping half my work orders. I log out early. Tell myself it’s just stress. Maybe low blood sugar. Maybe the brandy in my cabinet needs dusting.
But instead of going home, my feet take me somewhere else.
To him.
To that damn restaurant.
The street’s still buzzing when I turn the corner, and I almost lose my nerve. But the bottle’s heavy in my hand—Earth-made, finely aged, smooth enough to knock out a diplomat—and I need a reason for carrying it, right?
So I walk in.
The scents hit me first—pepper smoke, glazed root, meat blistered just past tender. My stomach grumbles like it remembers him too. I hate that. I hate that everything in me’s tied up in this.
Kenron’s not out front. The staff bustle with the same chaos as before, but this time they nod when they see me. Familiar now. Not welcome, exactly. But not foreign either.
I move toward the kitchen.
He’s there—of course he’s there. Shirt rolled at the sleeves, fire licking up behind him, and that laugh again, deep and loud and alive. It lands on me like a body blow.
He sees me.
Stops.
Something flickers in his face. Not surprise. More like… recognition.
“Back so soon?” he says, wiping his hands on a towel. “I thought maybe you’d run for the hills.”
“I thought about it,” I admit, holding up the bottle. “But then I thought you might be the kind of man who appreciates a good bribe.”
He grins. It does dangerous things to my pulse.
“You brought me a peace offering?”
“I brought me a justification.”
“Ah,” he says, stepping closer. “That I understand.”
He takes the bottle from me, his fingers brushing mine again. This time I don’t flinch. Don’t pull away. I just watch his eyes as they trace over the label, then back to me.
“This is expensive.”
“I know.”
“Sentimental?”
“No,” I lie.
He uncorks it with the ease of a man who’s seen war and made stew in its ashes. Pours two glasses. Hands me one without ceremony.
“To confusion,” I say.
“To curiosity,” he counters.
We drink.
It burns like truth.
And for the first time in a long, long time, I let myself just be there. In that moment. In that heat. With him.
It’s safer to skim the surface—to talk about things that can’t cut you open. Trade tariffs. The price of Earth-grown peppers. How the local market’s been gouging on synth-oil again. Things that sound like conversation but aren’t really.
I sip my brandy slow. He ladles stew into a bowl, the scent curling up in a heady, rich swirl of roasted bone and coriander.
“You really think the tariffs will pass?” I ask, knowing it doesn’t matter.
“Not if the Fratvoyans get their way,” he says. “They’ll stall the bill until the dry moons crack. Politics tastes worse than sour bark.”
I smirk. “Sounds like someone’s been burned.”
“More than once,” he says, and the flicker in his eyes is all shadow. But he moves past it with grace—pulls two bowls, sets them down.
We eat.
We talk.
And slowly, inevitably, I unravel.
I don’t mean to. I never do. But something about the way he listens—open, still, like I’m the only frequency he’s tuned to—makes the walls inside me shudder.
“My mother had this scarf,” I say.
He looks up, not interrupting.
“It was stupid. Ugly thing. Yellow with little green leaves. I used to tease her about it.”
He waits.
“They found it two blocks away. After the blast. Just... there. Hanging off a streetlight like some kind of sick flag.”
Silence.
A different kind. Not absence. Presence.
I don’t know when the tears start. Don’t know when my voice breaks. All I know is that the breath shakes in my chest and my fingers curl into fists and I can’t look at him.
Not until his hand covers mine.
Warm. Gentle. Solid like stone warmed in the sun.
“I hate that I still miss her,” I whisper. “That I still think I see her in crowds.”
“That’s not weakness,” he says softly. “That’s love.”
And I lose it.
The sob rips out of me without warning, raw and aching, like something I’ve kept buried too long has finally clawed its way out.
Kenron doesn’t say anything else. He just shifts closer, lets our forearms press together, lets the silence hold everything I can’t.
When I finally look up, our faces are inches apart.
And he’s not smiling.
He’s not smirking or charming or any of the things I expect him to be. He’s just there. Honest. Real.
Our lips touch.
Soft. Slow. Tasting like salt and smoke and pain and something that might be the start of healing.
I don’t know who leans in first. Doesn’t matter.
It’s not hunger. Not lust. It’s need. And when we pull apart, I’m breathing like I ran a mile uphill, and he’s watching me like I’m the only damn thing left standing after a storm.
“I should go,” I murmur, voice ragged.
“I know,” he says.
But neither of us moves.
Eventually, I do.
I walk home with shaking legs and a chest so full I don’t know how it doesn’t crack.
I sleep alone that night.
But in my dreams, he’s there—laughing, cooking, holding me like I’m something precious.
And when I wake, I don’t want to let it go.