Page 13 of Stars

“I’ll drive.” Mark led the way out of Mission Control, Dan at his side. Sasha followed, his heart in a maelstrom, his bones trembling beneath his muscles. He palmed his phone in the pocket of his trousers.

Sergey… What would Sergey tell him to do? Sasha wanted to call, hear his voice, ask his advice. Sergey was so much better dealing with people. But Sergey was asleep, snoring through the dead of Moscow’s night.

He was on his own.

Mark held open the door to the Mission Control parking lot, and as Sasha passed, Mark squeezed his shoulder again.

* * *

“Well.”Dan’s expression was guarded, his eyes assessing Sasha like he was an enemy. Freddy’s careened around them, the laughs of the happy-hour drinkers and the clinks of beer bottles and cocktails rising and falling in waves. Everything blended together, the sounds of the crowd pressing in on him and turning him inside out.

And now Dan, the man who’d lived every single one of Sasha’s dreams, stared at him like he was a threat.

Sasha peeled the paper label from his beer bottle in ragged strips, creating a bird’s nest of trash on the tabletop between his elbows. They’d already gone through the obligatory chitchat managed by Mark. Talk of his birthday, questions about any plans that he had that night. Nothing. Was he excited for training to end? Yes.

And then silence.

Sasha chanced a darting glance to Dan. Inhaling, he hunched over the high table, over his beer, his shoulders rising almost to his ears.Run. That old litany popped up out of his soul, the old advice he used to follow at every turn.Run. Go now.

Mark sat back, not saying a word. He stared at his own beer, lips sealed tight. It would have been easier if Mark had said it, blurted out the truth. Taken this moment away from Sasha, this shredding of his soul. But Mark wouldn’t.

The last time someone spoke for Sasha—outed him—it had been in his former squadron, and they’d beaten him almost to death in their locker room.

No, he preferred to control his own identity.

You have the power of the tundra within you, Sasha. You have the blood of the bear in your veins.

Kilaqqi’s voice, his words from two years before, rose within Sasha. Kilaqqi had found a home in his soul, a place that had been empty for over thirty years. He’d wondered, sometimes, what having a father would feel like. How other men lived their lives with father figures to look up to. A man to aspire to be like, to learn from. Two meetings in the tundra and a psychedelic mushroom trip, and now he knew. Kilaqqi was as close to a father as he’d ever had.

“I’m…” Sasha ripped another strip of his beer label. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean…” Frowning, he shook his head. “I did not mean to upset you. Or make you think I hated you.” His voice twisted. He squeezed his eyes closed. “I donothate you,” he whispered.

“Okay,” Dan said, in the same tone the astrophysicists used when trying to explain their incredibly complicated science experiments on the ISS to the pilots, the jet-jockey astronauts, for the fifth time. “Regardless of whether you dislike me, you still made me and my partner feel like animals in a zoo.”

Sasha flinched. Oh, he knewexactlywhat Dan meant. Exactly how that felt. He ripped his beer label to paper dust, his fingernails shredding fibers until they disappeared to nothing. “I’m sorry.”

Dan nodded. He signaled for another beer, and when he turned back, his eyes were pinched, his mouth set in a thin line. “Apology accepted. Don’t be like that again and we’re good. If that’s all…”

Mark’s gaze bore into Sasha’s profile like a magnifying glass burning a hole in a piece of paper. But Sasha could get out of this. He didn’t need to say anything. He could let it go, right now. He didn’t need to tell Dan the truth or reveal why he’d been so enthralled last night. He didn’t need to say it.

You can have one or the other. Space or Sergey. You cannot have both of your dreams come true. That is not the way the world works. The fear that lived in his bones, that scratched at his soul, slithered free, infecting his thoughts again. What would he choose if forced to pick?

How did Dan have it all?I want to be like you.

“No,” Sasha croaked. “That’s not all.”

Dan sighed, and the waitress arrived with a fresh round for everyone. Dan and Mark downed huge gulps each, and Sasha started stripping paper from his beer label like he was being paid for the work.

“What is it, Sasha?” Dan asked, almost snapping. “If you have questions about what it’s like to be gay, Google is a better place to ask.”

“I don’t need Google,” he growled.

Dan frowned. Mark shot Sasha a small smile, a nod.

You are exactly who you are, Sasha Alexanderovich Andreyev.

“What the hell am I here for—”

“I’m gay,” Sasha breathed. For the second time in his life, he’d said the words out loud, admitted who he was without the surge of self-loathing, the tidal wave of disgust. When he’d collapsed in Sergey’s hold years ago, he’d repeated the hateful slurs he’d heard his whole life. He wasn’t gay, he waspidor. He was worthless. He was an abomination.