Page 5 of Adrift! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #2)

Ikaryo looked away from her. His augments tracking the naked emotions on her face felt more invasive than the feelings button. But even giving her that courtesy, he was achingly aware of her tiny movements, her every breath, the delicate tremble of her fingertips.

It wasn’t his place to get so personal with a guest. He wasn’t the cruise director like Felicity or captain to decide on their fate or even in an IDA counselor with access to therapeutic training, species-specific psychological evaluations, and personalized profiles.

As he’d already told her, he was just the bartender.

And yet, he found himself tangling his fingers with hers to tug her upright behind him. “Maybe you can’t see the stars with your naked eyes, but do you want to see something else?”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Come with me.”

Abandoning his post—they were out of coffee anyway—he led her out of the Starlit Salon.

The corridors were empty, as if they were the only two on the ship.

She held on to him tightly, as if she feared being left behind, lost in these quiet halls where the lights were turned down low to conserve power.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Our chief engineer designed a capacitorus—a containment unit—to capture the energy anomaly.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” she muttered.

He wanted to urge her to explain, but even with his translator, he couldn’t frame a question that didn’t sound meddling. And then they were standing in front of a reinforced portal twice their height.

Remy tilted her head back. “Are you going to toss me out into space for a closer look at those stars I can’t see? Not that I’d blame you, considering.”

He gave her hand a reproving squeeze. “This isn’t an airlock, at least not the kind that goes out of the ship.” He leaned forward to palm the control. “Let me show you.”

Despite her dour words, she followed him step for step. For all her avoidance and words of doubt, the unhesitating proof of her trust—or at least her curiosity—turned on some sort of light within him that he suspected no augments would reveal.

When the doorway cleared, soft, fragrant air curled out to surround them, and the set of Remy’s shoulders eased as she took a breath. “A garden in space?”

“An atmo-hall. All the greenery is part of the ship’s filtration and enrichment systems. Also, I think it’s beautiful.” He tugged her again, just another step of momentum, then released her.

She wandered forward, her fuzzy socks making no noise on the decking. Unlike the rest of the ship, full lighting had been maintained for the plants, and the glow around her almost dazzled him. He should adjust his augments accordingly…

But he didn’t.

At one climbing vine, its lush, complex flowers almost as red as her hair, she paused and leaned in for a deeper breath of the spicy fragrance.

He focused on the way her eyes half closed in pleasure. “You know this one?”

“It’s a rose. At least I think it is. It smells like a rose, but I’ve never seen flowers this large and curly—and the thorns are all strange too.”

“Even though the ship has gravity and lights—when energy monsters aren’t rampaging anyway—sometimes things in space don’t respond like they would on their planet of origin.”

The narrow-eyed look she shot him was less pleased. “Is that a metaphor?”

“Maybe. But it’s reality too.”

When she cupped one of the blooms, the riotous crimson petals rimmed in lavender overlapped her fingers. “I suppose that’s why I came all this way: to not stay the same.”

“You can go so many directions from any point in space.” Calling on his Earther interaction studies, he smiled at her. “Just…not right at this moment.”

Though he expected her to scoff at him downplaying the situation, instead she tilted her head, her green gaze sliding away from him. “When you left your home, was it… How did you decide which way to go?”

In all the lightyears he’d traveled, had anyone ever asked him such a question? Certainly someone must have. But he couldn’t remember it, and if they had, he doubted he’d answered with any genuine insight.

But when her wary glance angled back to him, he knew he couldn’t respond with one of his blithe answers, not even with one of the Earther smiles he’d learned. If he did, somehow he knew she’d isolate herself even more thoroughly than the Love Boat I lost in the Zarnax Zone.

“Maybe it would’ve been different if I’d gone of my own will,” he mused.

“Or if I’d known I could always go back.

But maybe in some ways it was easier, just going.

” He touched the augments in his forearm, sweeping higher to his face.

“Once these were installed and healed, I invested my relocation stipend and just…left.” He hesitated, the memories at once soft and pointed like the rose.

“I’m making that sound easy, and it wasn’t.

I was too young to really have a plan, and my transfer guide suggested waiting.

But I have a large extended family, and as they spread out through our system, no place seemed like an obvious choice for me.

So I kept looking. Now I’ve been on a dozen ships, past hundreds of stars. ”

“And you’re still looking?”

“Because there’s so much to see.”

Her lips pursed, and he knew she’d noted the evasion.

But how could he tell her he’d only signed up to work the cruise knowing that the passengers would just come and go, like meteors flashing?

There’d be no suffering in watching them leave since they were never going to stay.

Meanwhile, he’d continue on, from ship to ship, never going back. Paths that never converged again.

She rubbed a petal between her fingers. “I’m not sure about this purple, but on Earth, red roses are a symbol of romance.”

Pathetically grateful for the deflection this time, he nodded. “That explains why Mr. Evens—that’s the ship’s owner—requested it even though it’s not common in atmo-halls.” He reached out to stroke one of the new buds.

“Watch those thorns.”

What a strange choice to symbolize love. “I can dial down the sensitivity in my skin.”

“That must be…useful sometimes.”

“Every time I accidentally cut myself instead of the garnishes.”

Her mouth quirked. “I’d take that over a feelings button.”

Another joke. She was like a furled rose, beauty tightly contained behind warning thorns.

Earthers were complicated. And Remy McCoy seemed to be deliberately confounding. So why was he letting her get under his skin?

Distracted by his own confusion, he wasn’t careful despite her admonition. Though the prick of the thorn was more a surprise than painful, both made him wince.

Remy clicked her tongue as he recoiled with a drop of blood on his fingertip. “I just said…” She peered closer. “Your blood is blue?”

“Different chemistry than yours.” Snagging the bar rag still in his back pocket, he swiped away the blood. “Only one heart to pump it, though, just like yours.”

She sucked in the corner of her lower lip, her brow furrowing. “But…you don’t feel hurt?”

“If I turn it down. But if I didn’t feel the pain, I might keep doing what hurts me.” He peered at his fingers. “And actually, it does still hurt.”

“Let me see.” She wrapped her fingers loosely around his wrist, turning his hand toward one of the recessed lights nurturing the rose. “Looks like the tip of a thorn broke off. Ouch.”

Though he didn’t adjust his tactile sensitivity, he didn’t even feel that prick anymore. Instead, all he felt was her. The gentle, inexorable pressure of her hold sent electricity dancing through his augments, and silver blue sparks zinged up his forearm, reaching for his one, lonely heart.

He knew he should pull back. The wound was negligible, and this was exactly the kind of personal involvement the employee handbook warned against. But he’d have to break the circle of her fingers, and he could no more do that than jettison her out an airlock.

“It’s fine,” he said, though his voice came out rougher than intended. “I can remove it later.”

“It’s not too deep.” When she angled his hand higher, her thumb brushed over his knuckles. “Hold still.”

He held very still. Too still, probably, like his mechanical components had locked up, frozen despite the sudden voltage threatening to melt him from within.

Watching her frown furiously at the tiny intrusion, feeling the warmth of her breath feather across his skin, inhaling the lingering scent of Earth’s precious morning stimulant which was probably to blame for this absurd overreaction—

“Ha.” She looked up at him, triumphant, holding a miniscule fragment of the thorn between her polished fingernails. “Got it.”

They were close. Closer than they’d been even when he’d steadied her in the corridor.

Close enough to count the amber flecks in her green eyes and the freckles across her cheeks if his ocular implant hadn’t already done it automatically.

Close enough that when she smiled—really smiled for the first time since he’d met her—it hit him like a solar flare, blanking all coherent thought.

“You did,” he said, but he didn’t step back.

Neither did she. And though neither of them moved, the space between them seemed to shrink.

Her amber/green irises shrank too, eclipsed by the blackness of expanding pupils, and her fingers, still wrapped around his wrist, trembled.

The almost imperceptible sensation reverberated through him, a hundred-fold and amplifying.

“Remy…” He stopped himself. Any next words he might say were a mystery even to his universal translator.

Though he let out a slow, steadying breath, the heady fragrance of the roses swept in to fill the void. He hadn’t meant the short walk to the atmo-hall to take them so far off course. He’d only wanted to fill the isolation she’d clutched like an empty coffee cup.