Chapter 18 #2
"No." I pull back enough to look at his face.
The starlight catches the blue of his eyes, turning them luminous.
"I forced myself to sit with them instead.
I spoke their language and held their hands and tried to be the person I needed someone to be for me, all those years ago.
" My voice wavers. "First, Sator was that person for me; then you.
And now I can be that for someone else. Because of him. Because of you."
Cody’s hand comes up to cradle my jaw. His thumb traces the ridge of my cheekbone, feather-light across my scales.
"You are the strongest person I have ever met," he says. "I'm so proud to call you fa'ren."
I catch his hand against my face and hold it there.
"Then let me be your fa'ren too." I say it quietly, but I do not look away. "Not just the person you protect, but the person you trust with the things you carry."
A flicker shifts behind his eyes before being quickly suppressed. "A'Vanti, I'm fine—"
"You are not fine." I say it without accusation. I take a slow inhale, trying to collect my thoughts.
"Cody. You do this thing." I choose my words carefully.
"You take care of everyone around you, and you turn your own pain into a joke, and you put yourself in danger as if your life is worth less than everyone else's.
And I have been patient, because I know what it is to keep things locked away.
But I am your mate now." I reach for his hand.
"I need you to stop treating yourself as expendable.
Because you are not expendable. Not to me. "
I press his palm to my cheek. "You spent this entire day carrying the same weight I carried. And instead of sitting with any of it, you climbed onto a roof and built me a bed under the stars."
"Because you needed—"
"Because it is easier to take care of me than to take care of yourself."
The words land. I see the impact in the way his whole body stills, in the way his jaw tightens briefly, in the way his eyes go bright and startled.
The silence stretches. Above us, the stars burn with their ancient, patient light.
When he finally speaks, his voice is rough. Stripped bare.
"I don't know how to stop." He says it like a confession.
"I've been the person who shows up for everyone else since I was sixteen.
Since Dad got sick and I was the oldest and someone had to hold everything together.
" His jaw works. "That last night, in the hospital, I was sitting with dad at three in the morning.
Just me. Mom had fallen asleep in the chair, and my sisters were home.
It was me and the machines and the sound of his breathing.
" His voice fractures. "And his breathing changed.
You hear about that, the way it changes at the end, but nobody tells you what it actually sounds like.
Nobody tells you that you'll spend the rest of your life hearing it in quiet moments.
I woke up my mom, and we held his hand and talked to him.
We told him we loved him. And then… he died, and it was awful, but I forced myself to keep holding it together because my family needed me.
And then I joined the Air Force, and they gave me a whole new set of people to show up for, and I was good at it, and it felt like enough.
" His hand presses to his eyes. "And then on Osti, I walked into that cell and I saw you, and you were… you looked so—"
He stops. His throat works.
"Like him," he says, barely above a whisper. "At the end. You looked like him… like my father. Bone thin and scared, yet brave and fierce."
The words hang between us, and I understand now what I am hearing. He has never said this to anyone. He may never have even said it to himself.
"And I picked you up and I kept moving," he continues, his voice cracking at the edges. "The way I always keep moving. Because if I stop—"
He doesn't finish.
"If you stop," I say gently, "you might have to feel it."
A sound escapes him. Not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. Something in between that sounds like it's been locked in his chest for years.
"You do not have to keep moving right now," I tell him. "You can stop. I am here. I am not going anywhere."
The sound that escapes Cody is short and sharp, like something cracking open that has been sealed too long. He presses his fist against his mouth, and his whole body shakes with the effort of not falling apart.
I pull him against me. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and hold on, and I do not tell him it will be all right. I do not tell him anything. I simply hold him the way he has held me.
After a while, the shaking stops. His breathing evens. But he does not pull away, and I do not let go.
"Thank you," he says finally. His voice is hoarse, but steadier. "You make it easy to talk about hard things."
"I only return what you've already given me."
A silence settles between us, soft-edged and still. Below, the distant sounds of the hangar drift up – voices, the clank of equipment, the low thrum of engines cycling down for the night.
Cody shifts beside me. I watch as he pulls a small object from the pocket of his discarded flight suit.
"I've been waiting for the right moment for this," he says. "There probably isn't one. So."
He sets it in my palm.
I go still.
It is a val'ari. The golden hairclip is designed to look like a gho'ba in flight.
"Cody." My voice is not entirely steady. "Where did you get this?"
"L'Tarne helped me program the design and get it made in the science lab replicator.
" He is watching my face with the careful attention of someone who is not certain they have done the right thing.
"I asked him for help in getting you a mating gift and he said that this clip is a traditional item a male would give his mate. "
I close my fingers around it. I stare at it a moment, unable to speak. Instead of words, I decide to show him how I feel.
I kiss him.
Not the hungry, urgent kisses of the springs, when everything between us was brand new and overwhelming and we couldn't get close enough fast enough.
Not the tender exploration of our first kiss outside my quarters, when I was still learning the shape of his mouth and the warmth of his skin against mine. This is something else entirely.
This is a kiss with his tears still damp on his lashes.
I pour into it everything I cannot say. My grief, my gratitude, the fierce and boundless love for this man that I never would have believed possible before my rescue.
Cody responds slowly. He has cracked himself open, and I can feel the vulnerability in the way his hands tremble slightly against my back.
I pull back just enough to find his eyes. They are bright and uncertain in the starlight.
"You did not save me because I reminded you of him," I say quietly.
"You saved me because that is who you are.
The resemblance may have driven your feet down that corridor, but everything that came after?
Every book, every meal, every minute you waited outside Dr. Singh's door. That was you choosing me. Not a ghost."
His breath catches.
"I see you, Cody," I tell him. "You. Not the boy in the hospital. Not the pilot in the cockpit. You. Cody. The man who gives me architecture books and makes me laugh and calls me mate just to watch my scales flush."
Something shifts behind his eyes. The uncertainty doesn't vanish, but it loosens. Like a knot worked free by patient hands.
He leans forward and presses his forehead to mine. His breath is warm against my lips. "I see you too," he says. "I've always seen you."
This time when I kiss him, he does not hesitate.
His hands come up to cradle my face, and there is nothing tentative about the way he holds me now.
The kiss deepens, and we sink down onto the bedroll together.
The stars wheel overhead, and the desert night wraps around us, and the coolness of the air is a counterpoint to the heat of his skin against mine.
I trace the scar through his eyebrow with my fingertip, the way I did the first time. He closes his eyes and exhales, and I feel the last of his tension leave his body beneath my hands.
His eyes open. Blue and steady and present.
He presses his lips to my throat, then my collarbone, then the center of my chest where my heart beats closest to the surface. Each kiss is slow and deliberate, as if every part of me is worth his full attention.
I arch into him and feel the full length of his body against mine, and a sound escapes me that I do not try to contain. There is no audience on this rooftop. No walls to muffle what passes between us. Only the open sky, and the stars, and the vast quiet of the desert.
His hands move over me. He finds the places he already knows, the sensitive ridge along my hip, the spot beneath my ear that makes my breath stutter, and he lingers at each one.
I pull him closer and wrap myself around him, and the sound he makes against my throat is low and undone. He is shaking. I hold him tighter, trying to anchor him to my body, and the shaking subsides.
Then I roll him onto his back.
He goes willingly, though surprise flickers across his face. "A'Vanti—"
"Quiet. It's my turn to take care of you." I settle over him, pressing my palms flat against his chest. His heart is still hammering beneath my hands. "I consulted the human mating manual. It was very specific about this part."
A sound escapes him that is half laugh, half something more ragged. "You're funny."
"I never joke about research. It was very educational." He huffs another laugh but raises his hands in surrender.
I hold his gaze as I find the zipper of his flight suit and pull it down. The fabric parts beneath my fingers, and Cody watches me with an expression caught between amusement and something far less composed.