31. Never Tear Us Apart #3
The emergency lights had dropped to a low, warm amber that caught the gold of Reyna's markings so they seemed lit from the inside. Charlie suddenly understood something very real, about how she had never once let herself look at Reyna like this.
And now, she couldn't stop.
Reyna's hair was wet, the lilac gone deeper with the damp. There were strands loose across her forehead, with one plastered along her temple. Charlie's whole attention narrowed to that single strand.
Her hand moved before she could stop it, her fingers finding the wet strand and pushing it back.
Her fingertips traced the edge of Reyna's hairline, past her temple and down, along the curve of her ear to the line of her jaw where the skin was impossibly warm.
Even when wet and cold-soaked, the skin was warm in the way Charlie was learning only Kaelari skin could be.
Reyna's breath hitched, and then Charlie saw a sight to behold. She watched Reyna's markings pulse.
It wasn't a change, or flashing a different color. But for one beat it brightened in a single, solitary flare that ran the length of the markings on her throat to her jaw and settled. It made Charlie think of a heart giving one hard knock against a ribcage before going quiet again. There and gone.
But Charlie felt it more than she saw it. She felt it under her fingertips against Reyna's jaw, one beat of something Reyna's whole body was holding in check, that one pulse having escaped, what seemed, against Reyna's intentions.
Charlie completely stopped breathing. Because aside from the stillness, or Reyna's markings, or the warmth of Kaelari skin under her fingertips, there was one part Charlie couldn't ignore.
Reyna had yet to move away.
Charlie watched Reyna's eyes go dark and fixed as that realization washed over her. Charlie felt Reyna's hands tighten ever so slightly on Charlie's sides.
But it was those three inches between Charlie's mouth and Reyna's that felt like the entire universe.
Until Charlie realized they were getting smaller, neither of them stopping it.
The gap was closing on its own, both of them leaning into something that had taken the decision right out of their hands, and—
Maren was back before Charlie heard her coming.
"The secondary systems are stabilizing; the tertiary array is—"
She was already up against the door, datapad up, reading the report she'd been ordered to complete in a room she had catastrophically not finished scanning.
She stopped, her datapad lowering by an inch.
“I—” Maren’s voice trailed off.
The less than three inches became three feet so fast Charlie felt the air physically move as Reyna moved outside the shaft, leaving Charlie against the console.
Professional distance snapped back into place like a bulkhead sealing, instant and total, and the bay that had been the warmest place in the universe half a second ago went cold to the inside of its walls.
"Sorry," Maren said, with the stricken precision of a woman whose perfect memory had just witnessed something she could never forget, even if she had the ability to do so. "The report. It... uh... it can wait. I'll—" She was already backing away. "It can wait."
And then she was gone.
Charlie and Reyna stood in the flooded bay, three feet apart, still soaked to the skin, purposefully not looking at each other. Somewhere overhead a line dripped coolant still, and it glowed on, indifferent around their boots.
"I should—" Reyna started.
"Yeah," Charlie said quickly.
Neither of them said a damn thing, most especially not what they should. Instead, Reyna turned and moved toward the bay doors, the captain's composure back in place. She didn't look back.
Charlie let her go because the only other option was to follow her. And no matter what way she looked at it, Charlie had just found out exactly how much she truly wanted to.
And that was the most dangerous thing she'd learned since crash-landing aboard the Emberkind.
Charlie stood alone in the glowing water. She stood there for however many minutes, pressing both hands flat against the console, bowing her head before taking a deep breath.
She could still feel the one hard pulse of Reyna's gold markings under her fingertips. And those three inches, the way they closed in and had almost stopped existing between them, alongside the exact temperature of the air around them.
She didn't remember reaching for her datapad.
It was just in her hand one moment, the way it always was after nights like this.
The music library was open, her thumb was already moving toward the button to add it to her playlist the way it had a hundred times before on tons of songs, without her once ever stopping to ask why she kept—
She stopped.
The song was already cued. She could see the title sitting there, plain as day, one tap from the playlist like every song before it.
Never Tear Us Apart.
And for one second, standing in glowing water with her hand still remembering the shape of Reyna's jaw, Charlie looked at the title, knowing it was a perfect fit. The words were INXS's, but the feelings were hers.
She added it to the playlist because that was the only thing she knew to do.
She had much bigger things on her mind.