Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
The night before the festival, Holly stood in the square at two in the morning and watched the rain fall. She was awake. Wildly, vibrantly awake. Nerves had woken her up and hope kept her that way.
The rain system ran its weekly cycle, and the gentle shower came down in soft, even sheets across the entire station.
It caught the lamppost light and turned the air silver.
The stone paths darkened. The plants in the square, which had struggled and drooped for years under inadequate water, now glistened and stretched out from the moisture.
In the gardens beyond, she knew the flowers were doing the same.
By morning, everything would be in bloom.
The timing was either very lucky or very deliberate; she had asked Sam to adjust the rain cycle to fall the night before the festival, and Sam had done it without comment.
Holly stood in the middle of the square and tilted her face up. The rain was warm. It smelled of minerals and clean stone and the faintest trace of green.
Arms wrapped around her from behind.
She didn’t startle. She knew the weight of him by now, the particular way he held his breath for half a second before contact, as if giving her time to step away.
She didn’t step away. She leaned back against his chest and felt the rain on her face and his warmth at her back and the quiet, absurd perfection of standing in a broken square on a failing moon at two in the morning, soaking wet, and feeling like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Rasker pressed his lips to the side of her neck, just below her ear.
The rain had changed the color of his skin from a light blue to a darker hue, and she could hear the faint movement of his gills adjusting to the moisture.
He was more himself in the rain, just as he had been more himself in the pools.
“You’re shivering,” he murmured against her neck. “Are you cold?”
Her lips curved. “No.”
“Ah.” His arms tightened around her.
She smiled and settled deeper against him. The square was quiet except for the tap of rain on stone and the drip of water from the roofs. The Emporium’s window display glowed softly. Harry’s shop was dark.
“Cody cornered me today,” Holly said, after a while.
She felt Rasker’s chest shift behind her. “About the music?”
“Yes. He wants to perform at the festival. Play his… I’m not even sure what the instrument is. Some kind of stringed thing he apparently built himself.”
“I heard.” Rasker’s voice was carefully neutral. “Harry mentioned it. He also mentioned that he and Alyce both told Cody not to.”
“And Mish,” Holly added. “And Sam, in his way, which was to look at Cody and walk away.”
“That tracks.”
“Cody ignored all of them. He told me the festival needs ‘live energy’ and that recordings are ‘dead sound.’” Holly sighed. “I said I’d think about it.”
“And?”
“And I don’t want to fight with him about it the night before the event. He can play for a little while. If it’s terrible, Harry’s recordings will be standing by.”
Rasker was quiet for a moment. The rain shifted direction slightly, pushed by the dome’s air circulation, and Holly felt droplets run down the side of her neck.
“I still don’t trust him,” Rasker said.
“I know.” Holly watched the water collect in the grooves of the stonework, tiny rivers running toward the fountain.
“I kept hoping he’ll just leave, like he said he would.
Find somewhere else to go. But he’s still here, and he’s still eating my food and sleeping who knows where, and contributing nothing. ”
“You’ll have to give him a deadline.”
“I know that, too.” She exhaled. “After the festival. One more thing to deal with after the festival.”
She felt him nod against her hair.
Her gaze settled on the fountain. It sat in the center of the square, rain streaming down its curved stone sides, pooling in its basin.
Still broken. Still silent. She had traced the water lines through the underground system and couldn’t find the fountain’s connection to the main supply.
The mechanics of it were hidden somewhere inside the structure itself, and she’d need to take the thing apart to find them.
She’d been itching to do it for weeks, but there had always been a task that claimed higher priority.
After the festival, she told herself. She would take the fountain apart, piece by piece, and figure out what was keeping it from working.
She would fix it, because she was an engineer and that was what she did, and because a working fountain in the center of the square would be the kind of detail that made people want to stay.
And after the festival, she would sit down with Rasker and have the conversation they had been circling for weeks.
About what this was. About what happened when his client expected an answer and she couldn’t give him one that served them both.
Was there a version of reality where he didn’t leave and she didn’t sell, and they figured out the rest together?
She hoped the fountain would be easier to figure out.
“We should go in,” she said. “Big day tomorrow.”
“It is.” He didn’t let go.
“Rasker.”
“One more minute.”
She gave him the minute. She gave him several, actually, because standing in the warm rain with his arms around her and the square shining in the lamplight was not a moment she was in any hurry to end.
Eventually, they walked back to the hotel.
The lobby was dim and quiet, Luv having powered down for the night.
They dripped water across the floor, which Luv would have opinions about in the morning.
Holly carried her shoes in one hand and pushed her wet hair back with the other, marveling at how much she’d changed in these few short months.
Standing in the rain at two in the morning for romantic reasons was not an activity she’d ever dreamed of doing when she lived in Nova.
Not only because there was no rain in Nova. There was no…well, none of this.
They stopped outside her door. The hallway was lit by the soft light of the after-hours lighting setting. Rasker’s hair fell in messy damp strands and the rain had turned his shirt translucent. Holly took it all in.
He kissed her. Slow and warm and tasting of rain. His hand found the small of her back and hers found the front of his shirt. Rain-soaked fabric bunched in her fist, and they stood there in the hallway, unhurried, as if time were a thing that could be convinced to wait.
She wanted to invite him inside. The thought was right there, vivid and certain, and she could feel that he knew it, and he was leaving the decision to her in a way that made her want him more, not less.
“Goodnight,” she said, against his mouth.
“Goodnight, Holly.”
Neither of them moved. His fingers found hers and their hands laced together. They stayed like that for a long, suspended moment before she pulled away, slowly, their fingers sliding apart.
She let herself in and closed the door.
The living unit was dark except for the soft glow of the dome’s nighttime light through the windows.
Luv was silent and still in her corner, attached to her charging port.
Bean was on the bed, curled in a tight circle.
His eyes popped open at her arrival. He regarded her wet hair and clothes and closed his eyes again.
Holly stripped off her wet things, toweled her hair, and pulled on dry clothes. She climbed into bed, and Bean shifted to press his warm back against her hip. She lay in the dark and listened to the rain, still falling outside, muffled by the walls and the windows she had uncovered weeks ago.
The festival was tomorrow. The square was clean and well-lit.
Harry’s teas and her baked goods were stored and ready.
Rasker’s NuProd was on stand-by. Mish’s garden and the forest trail had signage in four different languages, and Alyce had planted flowers around Sam’s bench at the overlook.
Holly couldn’t recall being so proud of the wonderful, stubborn team of people who’d come together to make this happen.
She thought about Beenan’s message, still sitting unanswered on her wrist comm. Level four. The salary. The safety net. The life she had built over twelve years, waiting for her to come back and put it on like an old suit.
She could not imagine putting it on. She could not imagine leaving this place, these people, this dog, this man who kissed her in the rain and held her hand in a hallway and wanted her to succeed even though it would cost him.
How did I ever consider going back?
Bean sighed and tucked himself even closer.
Holly closed her eyes and let the question go unanswered, because she already knew.
She had considered it because she was afraid.
And she was still afraid. But the fear had changed shape.
It was no longer the fear of failing to complete a goal.
It was the fear of losing a part of her that she’d only just discovered.
She fell asleep with her dog warm against her side and the rain falling softly over Moone’s Landing, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she was genuinely happy.