CHAPTER 5 KAT #3
“Says the girl who keeps talking about eating in here.” Lee backed a couple of steps into the Canteen. “I promise it won’t eat you. Or will it?” He raised his brows.
Why was everyone so obsessed with feral creatures lately?
The sounds from the cadets inside seemed to swell, like they would indeed swallow her whole if she wasn’t careful. But she kept her eyes focused wholly on Lee. She had to bite sometime.
“Wait up. I’m coming. I’m coming!” Her legs still felt like they were weighted down by a gazillion knotted tree roots as she plodded after him, but she made herself take a step. And another. Until she, too, had crossed over that threshold.
There. She’d done it. Baby steps.
She walked with him over to the line to fill a tray, Lee grinning broadly over at her as if to say, See? No harm done.
Yeah, yeah. That remained to be seen.
But like Lee had promised, she wasn’t picking up on any weird looks or silences—or anything at all beyond the expected attention from the Laser Rounds.
They took up a spot at their usual table, and she was about to comment on the normality of it all when she tapped into the raised voices of a couple of cadets at the next table over.
“I heard it thrives off of stardust and can eat through spaceships…”
“…a vicious space alligator attack…”
She turned to eye Lee, deadpan. “Space alligators,” she ground out, her deadpanning turning to edged amusement.
Lee was working very hard to hide a grin.
“What did you do?” Kat demanded, piecing this together with Kiara’s earlier admonition.
“I swear I can’t take full credit.” Silent laughter coursed through him, making his shoulders shake, as she continued to stare at him until, at last, he caved.
“I may have run into a certain pair of fair-haired twins at breakfast the other morning. They were asking after you.” Lee shoved his hands into his pockets, “I merely suggested we do something to steer attention elsewhere for a while.”
She gaped, huffing a laugh. “And you failed to mention this earlier, because…?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t come up. And don’t worry, I told them to link it back to Sean.”
“Of course you did. Space alligator.” Kat snorted, shaking her head. “Word really does travel fast. They’ll believe anything, won’t they? You always do surprise me, Waters.”
“I do my best.” Lee waved off her compliment. But she continued to stare after him, amazed. Had he always been this way, and she’d just missed it?
“So the twins,” she said, once they’d begun to climb the stairways up to the showers at long last. “They looked okay when we ran into them just now, didn’t they? Kiara and Kamata are adjusting alright?”
“They seem to be. As well as any of us, anyway.”
She felt bad she hadn’t checked in since they’d been back. If she was this flushed, everyone else was probably equally shaken. She’d make it a point to poke around tomorrow.
They reached the showers. But instead of ducking in right away, Lee found a spot to lean up against the opposite wall, flicking into the messages on his hyperband.
She watched his fingers fly for several seconds before interrupting. “Something urgent?”
“Something we should have done days ago.”
Her hyperband buzzed at her wrist, and Kat glanced downward to see the message that appeared there. It was a group message to their former squadron, announcing Levy’s formal departure and resignation from the Raider Program.
Most had probably guessed by now, if they hadn’t already heard it from Levy herself. But as Lee claimed in his message, they deserved to know from a credible source. And personally, before the rest of the Academy started talking about it.
She pressed her lips together. He wasn’t wrong. And small and insignificant as it was, he had etched out a line in the sand.
She typed back a quick response, sending it out through the holo-thread.
For Argos.
Her words would look like nonsense to anyone outside of their circle if someone in command ever pulled their messages. But for each of the intended, they would know exactly what it meant.
When she glanced back up, she found Lee staring at her. The clarity in his green eyes glittering like tourmaline in the sun. The bright star she would follow through every galaxy.
She meant to come over and just hug him, to thank him for being him.
But as she threw her arms around his neck, the scent of pure him washed over her again, Lee’s stupid grin causing her to teeter on overdrive.
She had to physically push herself away from him as that static began to flutter in her stomach, pulling her in once more.
He was still grinning when she traced a finger over her lips, to the places where not too long ago they’d touched his. To the sparks and new feelings those lips had awakened in her body.
And then she wrinkled her nose, the morning’s Laser Rounds, and a couple hours of workouts to boot, all too evident from the stench coming through her single, remaining all-terrain suit. She really needed her replacement to arrive soon.
“See you on the flip side, Waters.” Saluting, and maybe adding an extra bounce to her step just for him, she bounded across the hall, claiming one of the showers.