CHAPTER FIFTEEN #4
She gestured around the galley. “While you were talking to your friend, I washed the dishes, wiped everything down, and put it all away.”
Snow looked around. Sure enough, there wasn’t a single trace left that they had cooked and eaten dinner.
He frowned, suddenly feeling guilty. She had cooked and cleaned. “So, I guess I was completely useless tonight.”
She laughed. “I didn’t say that.”
“Alright, then,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “I’ll handle dinner tomorrow. Come on, let’s head back to the room.”
Nova pushed her chair in, and Snow gave the galley one last glance, more out of habit than necessity. Satisfied everything was secured, he flipped off the lights.
The hallway was quiet as they walked.
After a few steps, Nova bumped his shoulder with hers. “You know that you’re not getting off that easy.”
He sighed dramatically. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
She laughed. “I’m still curious.”
Snow chuckled. “I swear, it’s not what it sounds like.”
“Sure,” she said, her one eyebrow quirked.
“Well...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, it sort of is what it sounds like.”
“I knew it!”
“But that’s how a six-year-old sees the world,” he said quickly. “To Amira, if a boy and a girl have dinner together more than once, they’re basically planning the wedding.”
Nova laughed. “Why on earth would she think that?”
He grinned. “We all blame Nails. You see, this whole thing actually started when he—”
Before he could finish, Nova’s phone rang.
She pulled the phone from her pocket, glanced at the screen, and immediately rolled her eyes before pressing the button to silence it.
Curious, he nodded toward the phone. “Everything okay?”
She slipped it back into her pocket and shrugged. “It’s nothing that can’t wait.”
He recognized her answer for what it was—she wasn’t going to talk about it. Just like she never talked about the other silenced phone calls. So he just nodded.
“You know, I think I’m going to take a walk outside,” she said, surprising him and then heading out the door to the main deck.
Snow watched her disappear as the phone call lingered in his mind.
He was almost certain he had seen the word Dad flash across the screen before she had silenced it.
He had seen her smile fade, and a hurt look in her eyes.
It was a subtle change, and most people probably wouldn’t have noticed, but he had spent years reading people for a living.
A fraction of a second was all it took to recognize when someone had built walls around themselves.
Her answer to his question had come too easily, as though she had rehearsed it a hundred times before. They were vague enough to satisfy curiosity without inviting more questions, and somehow that bothered him more than if she had just told him she didn’t want to talk about it.
What struck him most wasn’t that she had kept whatever was bothering her to herself. It was that her first instinct had been to walk away and deal with it alone. That realization settled heavily in his chest.
Over the past week, he had learned plenty about Nova Hart.
She was brilliant, organized to a fault, and possessed a sense of humor that caught him off guard more often than he’d admit.
She could hold her own in a room full of people, had somehow won over his entire team in less than a week, and had no problem calling him out when he deserved it.
Yet the one thing she seemed completely uncomfortable doing was leaning on someone else.
He couldn’t decide if that came from pride or experience.
Maybe she had learned somewhere along the way that relying on people only led to disappointment. Maybe the call from her father was just another reminder of that. Whatever the reason, he hated the thought of her carrying burdens she didn’t have to carry by herself.
Not that he had earned the right to help. Not yet, at least.
Trust wasn’t something you asked for. It was built one conversation, one shared experience, and one kept promise at a time. If that meant giving her the space she needed until she was ready to let someone in, then that was exactly what he would do.
A small smile found its way onto his face as his thoughts drifted back to dinner.
It wasn’t the food he kept replaying. It was the way she had looked at him just before her phone shattered the moment.
He had come within inches of kissing her.
Now that he knew she wanted it too, it was becoming harder and harder to convince himself that waiting until the mission was over was the right call.
He wasn’t naive enough to believe they were headed toward some happily-ever-after. They were still trapped on a rig where something was very wrong, and every instinct he possessed told him the most dangerous part of their assignment was still ahead of them.
But for the first time in longer than he cared to admit, he found himself hoping there might actually be a future waiting on the other side of this mission. And if he was lucky enough to get one, maybe Nova Hart really could become his plus one.