Chapter 29
29
I woke slowly, fading in and out of consciousness as the muted golden light of sunrise sim trickled into Freddie’s pod. I was nestled against him, the small spoon, where I’d slept the entire night through. Trying not to wake him, I rolled over. A smile spread across my face while I watched him sleep, his lips slightly parted, his long lashes feathering out over his cheeks. Because it was there and firm and warm, I kissed his bare chest, and then I did it again, and again, until he began to stir. “Good morning,” I whispered against his skin once his arm tightened around me, his lips pressing a kiss into my hair.
“Good morning,” he said sleepily, his eyes still closed while he pulled me over on top of him.
I sat up to straddle him, then I urged him up with me until his chest met mine, until I was cradled in his lap. He opened his eyes and ran his hand up my back. I thought back to when we’d been this way before, this close. Podgate.
Even then, I thought, even when the flood of hormones had driven me out of my mind, a part of me knew that I loved him. I think I’d loved him when we’d stared at our reflection in his mirror. I’d loved him when I watched him bake cookies for Sai. I’d loved him in his bow tie pajamas, when he read poetry to me, when he supported me and waited for me and understood me in ways I didn’t understand myself. Maybe even when he walked into that bar on the CAK with mischief and promise dancing in his eyes. Maybe I’d loved him even then.
Running my fingertips along the line of his jaw, I asked, “Did you sleep well?”
He leaned in, kissing my neck, his body still so warm and soft from sleep. “Yes. You?”
“I did. Thank you. I love you.”
His laughter brushed over my shoulder. “I love you too.”
What was it about saying those words when I truly meant them? And hearing them when they were truly meant? It was addictive. I nearly said them again when his techPad alarm chirped.
“Ugh,” he groaned, his hands sliding down to cup my ass. “I forgot to turn it off.”
“I’ll get it.” Leaning over to open the drawer of his nightstand, I fished around for his techPad. But when I sat up again, I brought something else back with me. There was a shoe in his nightstand. My shoe. The black pump I’d lost in the hotel hallway during our first night together. The one he’d taken when I’d taken his tie.
“You,” I said, staring at the shoe like it was some glowing, priceless artifact, “keep this in your nightstand?”
“I do,” he replied, kissing my neck again, my shoulder. “But not all the time. Sometimes I sleep with it cradled in my arms. It’s my prized possession.”
Placing the shoe back on his nightstand, I laughed at him, and at myself. “I sleep with your tie under my pillow, sometimes wrapped around my hand. Or my neck. ”
“Sunny.” His head rose, his full, pink lips aligning with mine. “I would pay every single credit in my account to see that.” And then he kissed me, deep and slow, his fingers pressing into my hips, mine sliding into his hair. He broke the kiss, color tinting his cheeks when he said, “There’s something else in that drawer for you. I’ve, um, been saving it.”
“Really? Is it a present?”
“Kind of,” he said, his lips twisting adorably.
Grinning at him, I pushed him back down to the bed, leaning over to reach into his drawer again. “Where is it?”
With his hands running up and down my thighs, he said, “Under the techPad. It’s a?—”
“Digcard?” I sat back up, bringing the card with me. “This one?”
“I went to the hotel gift shop right after I left your room that night,” he said, “and I bought this card. I just never thought I’d get the chance to give it to you.”
“You’ve been saving this for all these months?”
He nodded, a corner of his mouth pressing into a shy smile.
“Is this something you do after all of your Squee hookups?” I asked, trying to play off the way the card trembled in my fingers, the lump rising in my throat, the pressure stinging my eyes.
“Believe it or not,” he said, “you were my first, only, and hopefully last one-night stand.”
“What?” Who only had a single one-night stand? And he’d been so good at it. “You must be joking.”
He laughed. “I mean, I’d opened Squee before, scrolled through suggested matches. But it wasn’t until I saw your profile that I changed my status to available . And even then,” he said, not laughing anymore, “I knew right away that one night with you would never be enough.”
My heart swelled, so full of love for him I thought it might burst. I wanted to tell him, make him understand how he’d made me feel. But the words wouldn’t come.
“It’s okay,” he said, squeezing my hand that still held the card. “Read it.”
Tearing my gaze from his, I swiped my finger through the digital photo of the CAK’s Central Park, through the hedge maze in the shape of Brock Karlovich’s face, and I read.
Dear Phoebe,
Have you ever had a chance encounter that changed you, that upturned your every notion of why we exist on these spinning rocks so irrevocably that you knew, after meeting this other being, you would never be the same?
I have.
I’m going to tell you a secret. I stood outside the restaurant last night and watched you before I went inside. You were smiling, talking to the bartender, laughing. Seeing you for the first time altered me, like a star forming. For the first time in years, I felt alive. I was also indescribably nervous. You were so beautiful, so stunning. And I didn’t want to do or say anything wrong, anything that might keep me from being able to kiss you, at least once.
I don’t know if I will ever see you again. If our paths will ever cross. But wherever you are, I want to thank you for mending a fracture in my heart I’d feared was beyond repair. And I want you to know that when I look up into whatever night sky might spread out above me, I will never find anything as spectacular as you .
Yours always,
Freddie (this is my real name, by the way)
Tears, fat and hot, seared twin paths down my cheeks. “You wrote this? For me?”
Sitting up again, taking the digcard from my hands and setting it back on his nightstand, he said, “It’s true, Sunny. Every single word. There was something missing from my life, and for a man who loves puzzles, it was a tough one to solve. But it was you. You were the missing piece. And now”—he pressed my palm flat over his chest, right over his heart—“I’m whole.”
While he blurred through my tears, his heart beating under my fingers, I said, “I don’t deserve you.”
Taking my face between his hands, wiping my tears away with a gentle swipe of his thumbs, he held still while I reached for him, while I slid down onto him, and said, “Yes, you do.”
“Sunny, you look”—the senator scanned me from head to toe, her head tilting, her eyes sparkling with amusement—“different. You look…”
“I believe well-served is the descriptor you’re searching for, honey,” Lena said from her spot on their couch—yes, that couch.
I coughed, beating my fist against my chest.
“Are you all right?” Lena asked, fighting a smile.
“Fine.” I coughed again. “Just…choking on your words.”
With an abrupt, barking laugh, Sonia waved me into their suite. “What brings you to see us this morning? ”
While attempting to compose myself, I said, “I have a question for you. If you aren’t too busy.”
“Is that Sunny?” Bursting from his room, Sai thundered down the hall, racing up to me and throwing his arms around my waist.
Although the instinct to pull back and run away still tugged at me, I pushed against it. Bending down, I picked him up, squeezing him as his feet dangled below my knees. “Good morning, Sai. Did you just wake up?”
He nodded while I set him back down. Then his head swayed to the side as his big brown eyes narrowed. “You look different today,” he said, sounding exactly like his mom. “You’re all…moist.”
“Moist?” I blurted out while Sonia snorted and Lena buried her laughing face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.
With a blush exploding over his cheeks, Sai shook his head. “No, not moist. Shiny, maybe? No, that’s not it either. It’s…glowing!” he crowed at last. “That’s it. You are glowing.” Leaning in close, he asked, “Were you and Freddie making out again?”
“Sai, mind your manners,” Sonia said, her voice low as she crooked a finger at him, summoning him to the counter for breakfast. After she served him a plate of crispy crepes folded into triangles and served with a jam that smelled like coconut, she kissed him on the head. Then she followed me out of their suite and into the hall.
“What is it you wanted to ask me?” she said over the whump-whump whirring of one of the security mechs stationed outside their door as it floated closer.
Side-eyeing the heavily armored orb, I said, “I think you know that Tig has been working tirelessly to find whoever might be hacking our system. Although she’s had little luck on that front, she has done some research on your Proposition 2126.”
Sonia’s jaw set like it was cast in stone. “And what information did she find?”
“Not much,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. I understand that this is a sensitive topic, and I’m sympathetic to your need to keep certain things private. But you mentioned the proposition briefly the night I watched Sai. We were interrupted then.” I lowered my voice as several Delphinian wizards wandered by, their customary flowing robes replaced by striped velour tracksuits, of all things. “But I need to know, is the proposition why you’re being targeted?”
Crossing her arms tightly over her chest, she said, “I’m sure Tig has informed you of the mundane nature of the proposition.”
“She said its aim is to increase funding for deep-space exploration—similar to a bill that passed a decade ago without issue.”
“That’s correct,” Sonia said. She sounded as calm as the atrium before sunrise sim, but her left eye twitched. “So, to answer your question. No. I don’t think the proposition is why we’re being targeted.”
I could spot a lie as well as a Vorpol could spot a mismatched-shoe sale. And the senator was clearly lying. I’d opened my mouth to press her on it when she derailed me completely by stepping in close and whispering, “Now, tell me what is going on between you and Freddie.”
“What?” I stumbled back a step, more shocked by the question than I would have been had the ship suddenly turned inside out. “N-nothing is going on. He’s…a friend. What?”
“You know,” Sonia said, keeping her voice low, “I know how to keep a secret.” She winked. “I’m a senator. It’s pretty much all we do.”
I opened my mouth, came up short, closed it again, and dropped my chin in defeat. “Is it that obvious?”
“Glaringly.”
Laughing at myself, I raised my head again. “I guess I’m caught.”
“I think what you are is in love,” Sonia stated, as if this fact was as certain as all the stars in the KU eventually burning out. “And thank the gods for it. We were so worried about you.”
I shouldn’t have stopped by their suite before heading to the sensory room yesterday. I must have looked terrible. An acute awareness of how many people aboard this ship have been worried about me for years, never asking me about it, never demanding I tell them what was wrong, crashed into me with the force of a collapsing star. I didn’t want to worry my friends anymore. I didn’t want to keep hiding. “Yesterday was a difficult day for me. My son,” I said, clearing the sudden thickness from my throat, wondering if the words I was about to say would get easier or harder the more I said them. “I lost him five years ago, and yesterday was the anniversary.”
“Sunny,” she gasped, her hand rising to her chest like she was trying to shield her own heart. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Thank you,” I managed, blinking back the sting in my eyes. I really didn’t want to cry in front of this serious, important, professional woman. “He would be about Sai’s age. If he were still here, that is.”
Without warning, her eyes filled with tears. She took me by my shoulders and pulled me close, crushing me in a tight embrace. “I’m sorry,” she said again with a tremor in her voice, and I couldn’t stop my own tears from falling no matter how hard I tried. “I didn’t know. I wish I’d known. I might have?—”
“It’s all right,” I said. “Nobody knew.” The way it felt to be wrapped inside her embrace, sharing tears with another mother, it was different from what I’d imagined. It wasn’t fear or pity or despair. It was love, only love. And as if the anchor that had been weighing my heart down tugged on the rope one final time before it snapped free, I realized there was something I needed to do.
Pulling away, wiping the tears from my eyes, I said, “If you’ll excuse me, Senator. I need to make a call.”
“Sunastara?” My mother’s voice was a rushed breath, her bright-blue eyes already glistening on my techPad screen. “Is that really you?”
“Hi, Mom,” I said, holding my pad close, wanting to hug it to my chest. “I’ve missed you. I’m sorry it’s been so long. How’s Dad?”