But at least we’d fall together, and if that was the bare minimum I could get, so be it.
“I love him.” I couldn’t look at her, so I stared at Roys’ tracker moving across the screen. My chest ached, and for a moment, I thought I’d pass out. Imagine that. Passing out from admitting a truth.
“Uh, that’s nice. He seems… nice.” She tapped her fingers. I wasn’t sure what expression she wore. I wouldn’t look at her. “You’re sure?”
“You think I’d stupidly say that if I wasn’t?”
“I guess not, but why did you?”
My mind reeled for an answer that wouldn’t appear. Mouth opening and closing, I finally clamped it shut so hard my jaw ached.
Maddy took a measure of mercy on me. “Does he know?”
“Like I’d tell him.”
“Why not?”
“Him being my captain does make this troublesome.” Although that was the least of my worries. Having any feelings toward him other than lust was the genuine horror. I didn’t do feelings. I didn’t date. Relationships were fleeting and pointless. They would leave you disappointed, and I had been disappointed enough. I had hurt enough. I didn’t want to hurt more.
“Like anyone cares. If anything, you will be perceived as the easy way out of trouble. Keep you happy, the captain gets laid, so the captain is happy,” she countered.
“Gee, thanks for the pep talk.”
“I don’t know what else to say here other than he seems good for you.” Thecopilot chair squeaked and my eyes shifted to catch her fingers tapping the visor in her lap. “All of them, actually.”
“What do you mean?”
“This little group you have.” She waved at the trackers on screen. “Your friends — you care about them and they care about you. That’s what we always needed.”
“We had each other.”
“And that wasn’t enough.”
I flinched.
She observed the trackers, swaying from one to the other. “What I’m trying to say is, if we had more people on our side back then, things would have been different. We had each other, but we were kids. We needed people who gave a shit about us, like our parents.”
“Yeah.”
But life wasn’t easy for most. Those lucky enough to have friends, family, the people who gave a shit, were few and far between, and yet, somehow, I found this ragtag team. All accidentally, with a lot of reluctance on my part, but we were a team, a family of sorts, one I needed. I cared about them more than I was willing to admit for a while, and they cared about me, also more than I was willing to accept.
“You have people too. The survey team likes you,” I half said, half asked.
“They do. They’re good people, all of them, and they’ve done a lot for me. I…” The bridge of her nose wrinkled. “Syrox found it humorous that you left. He figured you would come running back for me. It’d be a fun trap and, even if you didn’t return, the mental torment amused him, too.”
My already aching stomach lurched. The thought had been at the back of my mind,always wondering how she survived while, deep down, having a good idea of the answer. But I wanted the answer to be different. I wanted to hear her say her life hadn’t been horrible, that she somehow lived better than we could hope for.
“He got any knowledge about Benno’s operations that he could out of me, then sent me out to work. Whatever work brought in the most credits. The acquaintance I mentioned with the gem collection lived in the upper ring. They wanted company. I didn’t hate being there, especially when they offered a way out. They worked on a survey team years ago, and we talked a lot. They even introduced me to their work. I showed promise, so I took the opportunity and got out of there.”
“I’m so—”
“Don’t.” She held up a hand, her voice stern and unyielding. “Syrox did that.”
“Because I left you there.”
“You did, and for a long time, yes, sometimes even now, I put all the blame on you. I woke up every morning hating you more than the one before. I still do, sometimes. I was young, angry, alone, and you were easy to blame, easier to hate, so I hated you with everything left in me because it was the only way I could get myself to wake up in the morning, but…” A broken sob escaped her that had me biting back mine. “I grew up, and I looked back, and I had to ask myself, what would have happened if you had come back for me?”
“We would have escaped. We would be like we used to be, a family.”
