“What equation keeps you awake?”
He turned slightly, red eyes catching the nebula's light. “The ones without clean solutions.”
We stood in silence, watching space drift by. The nebula outside pulsed blue and gold, stellar gases dancing in patterns that would take centuries to complete. Neither of us performed. No mathematical showing off, no careful deflections. Just two insomniacs watching the universe turn.
“Her name was Vonni,” I said. The words came without planning. “My sister. Three years younger, but you'd never know it. She was the one who took care of everyone. Made friends with strangers. Believed people were basically good even when all evidence suggested otherwise.”
He didn't interrupt, didn't offer platitudes. He just listened as the nebula's light shifted across his face.
“She got sick during a trade conference. Some off-world virus that wasn't supposed to exist in our sector. One in a million chance, the doctors said. Like winning the universe's worst lottery.” I pressed my palm flat against the window, feeling the cold through the transparent aluminum. “She stayed optimisticeven when her lungs were failing. Kept telling me it would work out. Made me promise to live fully after she was gone.”
“Did you?”
“No.” The admission came out flat. “I turned myself into a function. Input: deal cards. Output: survive another day. Stopped feeling because feeling meant remembering how I'd failed her. Easier to be nothing than to be someone who'd lost everything.”
“You didn't fail her.”
“I sold everything. Took loans from anyone who'd lend. Promised things I couldn't deliver. She died anyway.”
He shifted closer. Not touching, just reducing the space between us. “Sometimes the universe takes what it wants regardless of what we do. That's not failure. That's probability.”
“Spoken like someone who's never lost anyone.”
“Spoken like someone who has.” His voice carried weight I hadn't heard before. He took a half-step toward me, then stopped himself. “You think you're the only one who's been betrayed by someone you trusted? Who's watched everything they built get stolen by someone who was supposed to...” He stopped, jaw tightening. “Sometimes the only way to survive is to become what they don't expect. You became a function. I became...”
“What?”
“Calculating. Cold. Someone who sees people as probabilities instead of...” He gestured at the space between us. “This.”
“What's 'this'?”
“Something I didn't calculate for.”
I moved closer without deciding to. My shoulder brushed his arm. He went still, not even breathing.
“Sabine.” My name in his mouth sounded like a question.
I turned to face him fully. His red eyes weren't cold at all. They burned with something that made my pulse skip.Want. Not just physical, though that was there too. Want for connection, for understanding, for something neither of us could name.
He lifted one hand, moved it toward my face so slowly I could have stepped back at any point. His fingers barely grazed my cheek. A question, not a claim.
I answered by not moving away.
He kissed me again, deeper this time, and my thoughts scattered. The careful walls I'd built began to crumble.
Heat flooded through me. Not just desire, a sudden jolt to nerves I'd thought were long-dead. But feeling. Real, dangerous, terrifying feeling. My hands found his chest, solid muscle under his shirt, hearts beating in alien rhythm. He made a sound, low and pleased, and pulled me closer.
This was what I'd been avoiding. This rawness. This want. This proof that I wasn't just a function but a person who could still?—
I pulled back, stepping out of his reach. My lips felt swollen, sensitive. My whole body felt too alive, too present.
“This is a mistake,” I said.
“Probably.”
“We should stop.”
“Do you want to?”
