Page 39

Zandrel

I wake in a cloud of soft and warm and peace.

Safe and comfortable. With birds singing outside the window and no hint of danger for a light-year or two.

On my back with Ros beside me—draped across my chest, hand resting over my heart—in those first few moments of waking I might be a different being in a different life, so far removed from my reality.

Her dark brown hair spills like an ink stain over the sheets. Morning sun streams through the window and highlights every beautiful angle of her face, and for a few long moments, I’m unable to do anything but stare at her.

But it’s a double-edged sword.

As beautiful as she is, and as content as I’d be to stay here staring at her all day, the sun brought with it a stark reminder that time is up.

Today is our last day.

Unable to escape that truth, and just as unable to remain where I am, I slide out of bed and head for the bathroom.

Every part of me protests as I do. Every part of me aches to get back into bed and curl up next to her, to steal just a few more moments of the borrowed time we’ve been living on.

I’ll be back with the Aux later today.

After filming wraps, after Ros and I go our separate ways, I’ll be back on a ship and yes, it’ll take a few spans of travel to the nearest jumpgate, but just a short jaunt from there back to Aux Headquarters.

Enough time to get my head on straight.

Enough time to plan.

Enough time to remember exactly why it’s so important I return.

Because I’ll be damned if I can remember that, now.

With Ros’s scent still clinging to every inch of me and dread pooling low in my gut, leaving here without her feels like it might be the biggest mistake I’ll ever make.

If I could afford to be selfish, I’d say the hell with the Aux and everything they’ve taken from me. I’d let them rot, let them sort out their abhorrence on their own time.

But I can’t afford to be selfish, not when it means that some kid out there who’s just like I was—just as scared, just as alone, just as vulnerable—might not have anyone to stop what happened to me from happening to them. Letting things remain as they are within the Aux when I have the power to change the course of so many lives isn’t a choice I can make.

I exhale slowly through my nose and turn on the tap. In cold, bracing handfuls, I splash water over my face and hope it will do anything at all to snap me out of the heavy, bleak pall that’s set down on my shoulders.

When I look up, running a towel over my face to dry it, Ros stands in the bathroom doorway, one shoulder propped against the frame as she watches me.

She’s wearing my shirt, the hem of it just brushing the swell of her thighs, and she’s a delicious, rumpled mess. My mess. A mess I’d like to tumble back into bed and keep there all day.

In a flash, I see a thousand mornings just like this one. A different house, a different bathroom, a thousand different versions of Ros over the years. Maybe with a few more laugh lines around her eyes or a few strands of gray in her hair, confident and happy, with the glow of a life well-lived.

But she’d still be looking at me just like that. Eyes soft, mouth tilted up at the corners, wearing my rumpled shirt.

In that moment, all those mornings feel so achingly real that they steal my breath away.

When she realizes she’s been caught staring, Ros laughs softly and drops her gaze.

“Is everything alright?” I turn to face her, and when she looks back up at me the softness in her eyes is gone. It’s replaced by turbulence, uncertainty, and I curse myself for ruining the moment, for chasing away those dreams.

She hesitates before she speaks, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she considers what she wants to say.

“Would there ever be… Is there any kind of future where the two of us could…”

Ros’s words trail off, and my mind fills in the blank she leaves with a hundred different possibilities.

A future where we could both stop fighting.

A future where we could find peace.

A future filled with slow contentment and the two of us together, forget the rest of the universe and anything it might want from us.

But though my mind might be filled with the hazy, wonderful, achingly impossible wish of those thoughts, the only thing that comes out of me is silence. Enough of it that Ros shakes her head and covers all that vulnerability with a crooked, forced smile.

“Sorry,” she says, and I hear everything the word costs her in the deep shaking breath she takes. “I know that’s not how this ends.”

“Ros—”

“I’ll see you at the Choosing?”

There are a hundred things I could say. Apologies, maybe, or hollow promises. Pretty words to soothe her.

But the facts are still the facts.

I am who I am.

The work needs to be done.

And the woman standing in front of me is an impossibility I can’t even begin to understand.

Would breaking my own heart, and hers, by drawing this out any longer be worth it? Would it lead us to anything but more pain?

I nod.

Another smile, one that wobbles at the corner. “Let’s give them one hell of a show.”