Chapter 20 Hallum
HALLUM
Ideposited the broken pieces of the sled among the hospital construction supplies and took Lualhati home on shulduback. I had her ride up before me on Bart, holding her closer than was perhaps strictly necessary for safety’s sake.
But it felt necessary in other ways. Necessary to me, and me alone.
I felt as if I would never be able to willingly let her go now.
My insides churned, like a sea battered by storms. There was that heart-fisting fear, when I thought that she’d be hurt – or worse – on the sled ride.
Then lust tangled with elation, remembering the feel of her beneath me, her scent, her sounds.
The way she’d rocked and moaned and taken her pleasure simply from the shape of my cock.
And then there was the blanketing fog of guilt. Guilt that I’d lost control so easily, so entirely. That the reins I’d kept on my desire had been severed with nothing but her pretty “Please.”
By the empire. But I could deny her nothing.
Lualhati didn’t chatter away on the ride home as she usually would have. She seemed pensive, gazing at the trail and forest ahead. The sunset made the trees into metal and rusted the snow.
Perhaps she was stewing in regret right now, as I was.
Though regret was not precisely the correct term for it. When I’d been with Lualhati that way, things had never felt more right in my life.
But I regretted the impropriety of it. I was her host in this world. Her professional partner. Her guardian and guide. I was not supposed to rut on top of her, outside in the blasted snow, like some kind of forest beast.
I would apologize to her.
You may not have to, a voice inside me said. She was practically begging you.
Her breathy pleases echoed in me even now, sending desire kindling to life again. I pressed my front to her back, keeping her close, breathing in her sweetness.
Whether I apologized or not, we would have to speak about what happened.
Determine how to move forward from here.
I wished to begin as soon as we reached the station and I’d stabled the shuldu, but the opportunity did not present itself.
Because when we arrived home, there was a small Zabrian supply shuttle waiting for us in the clearing.
“I am not expecting a delivery,” I said. “Have you ordered anything from off-world?”
“No!” Lualhati said. “I haven’t even tapped into the comms tower’s signal to access off-world communications at all. I’ve only been messaging the other women here. I’ve kind of been pretending the rest of the universe doesn’t exist.”
The rest of the universe that she would one day return to.
Shoving that reminder viciously aside, I dismounted, then helped her down as well. The supply delivery pilot – a Zabrian male in a silver uniform – exited the shuttle and approached us with a very small package.
“Is that all there is?” I asked him, surprised there would be a shuttle delivery for only one tiny item.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “This delivery is for Lu Ortiz.”
“Lu?” Lualhati’s nose wrinkled. “Huh. Yeah, I guess that’s for me.”
She took the package and thanked the pilot, though she did not smile at him as was her custom. She was staring at the package, her brow furrowed.
“Why don’t you take it inside,” I suggested. “I will deal with the shuldu.”
“Oh. Yeah,” she said absentmindedly. “Sure.”
She went into the house, and I got the shuldu taken care of while the delivery pilot departed with with his shuttle.
I expected that Lualhati would have opened her package by the time I got inside the house, but she had not.
The package remained intact on the kitchen table while Lualhati drank some of her foul coffee drink from her romantic heart mug.
Though she’d brought at least twenty different cups and glasses, this one from her grandmother was the only one I ever saw her use.
“Are you going to open your package?”
“Yes. Maybe.” She held the cup between her hands, as if warming them. She made no move to do it.
“I can give you privacy.”
“No. Please. Would you stay with me, Hallum?”
Stay with me. Just like she’d asked me to that night after the party.
She’d need never ask me. I would always be there for her. Always.
Even if she did not want to stay with me.
“Actually, would you open it for me?” She thinned her lips. “Weirdly, I don’t think I can do it on my own.”
Opening her delivery for her seemed a very intimate act. Though perhaps no more intimate than what we’d done beside the wrecked sled today. If she wanted me to do it, then I would.
I strode to the table, picking up the package and opening it.
Inside was another box, even smaller than the outer one, as well as a paper letter.
The letter I set aside. I would not be able to read it without the translation assistance of my data tab, and that felt a step too far.
The communication was probably meant to be a private one.
I removed the smaller box, polished and metal, and opened it.
“What is it?” she asked, rather dully, as if she did not actually care to know but knew she’d better inquire anyway.
I knew exactly what it was. I recognized the shape of it from the images I’d seen in Tasha’s document.
My entire body cooled. Like I’d been plunged into a winter-stricken lake.
“It is an engagement ring.”
The air seemed to shatter then.
But it was not the air. It was Lualhati’s mug. She’d dropped it as if from numb fingers.
“What?!”
I turned and displayed it briefly for her before setting it down and grasping the dish towel. I kneeled at her feet, sopping up the spilled coffee. It was only when I was on the floor that she seemed to register what had happened to her mug.
“Oh! Oh, no,” she said, her voice warbling slightly. “Oh, look what I’ve done!”
“I will clean it up for you,” I said hollowly. “I will fix it.”
“It can’t be fixed,” she stammered, angry now. “Look at it! It’s ruined!”
She stepped past me, slamming the engagement ring box shut with a loud snapping sound. Then she took it, and the letter, into her room.
“Just throw it all away,” she said.
She closed the door and left me with all the broken pieces.
Lualhati did not emerge from her room at her usual time the next morning. She was still in there when it was time to leave for the hospital construction site. She’d come with me every day so far. It did not occur to me that there would be a day that she would not wish to go.
But yesterday had been unusual. I’d lost control of myself and climaxed all over her.
And then she’d received that blasted ring from her fool of a former fiancé. I did not need to read the letter to know who had sent the thing.
I waited in the kitchen longer than I normally would have, hoping she might open her door. When she did not, I knew what it meant, and that I should simply go without her.
But I found myself calling to her anyway.
“Lualhati. It is time to go to the hospital.”
“OK!” she called from behind her closed door. “You go on ahead. I’ll see you when you get back.”
So she really would not come, then.
I did not like it. I spent far too long fantasizing about battering down her door – or simply opening it, I supposed, since I never did put a lock on it – and demanding that she come. Demanding that she go to the hospital.
With me.
I did not. Instead, I took the small bag of the broken mug pieces from its place on the counter and left.
I took only Bart with me today. This morning was just as mild – if not even more so – than yesterday. The snow was mostly slush now, opaque and white in places, but obviously nearly gone. Lualhati would not have been able to do the sledding today.
What if she had received that ring before we’d done what we’d done?
Would it even matter? She had it now, and seemed to only want distance from me despite what had happened between us.
Surely, she would not go back to him. Would she?
I could not believe she would. The man had shuldu shit for brains. He’d betrayed her. He did not deserve her. Frankly, I did not even think he really deserved to breathe after what he’d done. Let alone live on to send her letters and rings.
I ruminated on this question the entire day as I worked on the hospital.
Lualhati wanted a child, and soon. Perhaps returning to this male, though undeserving of her as he was, would be easier than attempting parenthood alone.
Lualhati had mentioned her age as a point of concern.
She felt as if she might be running out of time.
Perhaps this would seem a more efficient route.
To get pregnant with him instead of beginning a long, potentially draining round of medical procedures.
The mere suggestion that he would impregnate her – rut her, fill her – sent me seething.
“Warden Hallum?” Rivven’s voice cut through the blinding fog of my rage.
“Yes,” I grunted.
“I think you may need to replaced that board.”
I blinked, finally noticing that the nail I’d been hammering into the floorboard beneath my knees had been driven all the way through the wood. And the wood itself was now destroyed, splintered by the force of my blows.
I had not even noticed.
“Thank you, Rivven,” I said, frustrated with myself but grateful to him anyway. If he hadn’t been there to say something, I felt as if my anger could have carried me all the way down to the core of the planet before I’d stopped to notice.
I replaced that ruined board and continued working. Lualhati’s room in the hospital was nearly ready. The roof was not on yet, but the rest was finished. Including all her closets.
If space was what she wanted from me, she would get it. She’d be living here for the rest of her contract.
If she even finished out her contract.
Lualhati was not the sort of person to go back on her word.
I knew this about her. Knew her values, her deep-rooted sense of responsibility that mirrored my own.
And yet, doubts still stabbed at me. Doubts that told me she would leave as soon as she could.
Because this world, this contract, this warden, would not be enough to hold her now.
When the sun began its trek towards the horizon, I readied myself to return to the station and to her. But I didn’t leave quite yet. I had one more thing I wanted to accomplish today.
I took out all the jagged pieces of her mug and asked Rivven to pass me the glue.