“Can this not wait until the morning?” I ask.
“In the morning, you’ll run out of here like your feet are on fire before I’ve woken up.”
“Harvest begins tomorrow. I have much work.”
“Well, so do I.”
I scoff, rolling over.
She scoffs right back at me and climbs over my legs to her side of the bed. I close my eyes, resolutely ignoring the feeling of her body brushing over mine. Why is she so much harder to ignore when I am exhausted? And why, when I am half asleep, is it so easy for my treacherous mind to imagine all the other ways she could climb over me?
It is my fault she was abducted.
I fixate on the memory of her first discovering John Smith’s betrayal and how she stared at me, shocked and scared and furious.
My fault. My fault.
She wants nothing more than to return to her home. And I cannot afford to forget that fact, not even for a second, not even when I am on the brink of sleep.
“Chloe told me?—”
“Chloe?” I sit up. “You were talking to Chloe?”
“I can talk to whoever I want. I’m not your captive.”
I take a deep breath, my temper rising. “I did not mean that.” Of everyone I have met, Lydia is the fastest to anger me, as if she knows exactly what to say to piss me off.
“Chloe told me that you’re a liar,” she says. “I didn’t believe her, except that you’re acting all weird.”
“And you trust Chloe?”
“Don’t growl at me,” she snarls.
“You were the one who wanted to talk,” I remind her. Slumping against the headboard, I bury my face in my upper hands. This is why I said no. Nothing good ever comes of us speaking.
“Stupid me,” she says, lying down, arms crossed and glaring up at the ceiling.
I follow her line of sight. Directly overhead is an empty hook from which a LOVE GALAXY camera used to hang. Lydia tore it down after John Smith deserted us. I caught her stamping on the camera, grinding it under her boot heel.
New guilt gnaws at my stomach.
“What did Chloe say about me?” I ask quietly, knowing I will not like the answer but feeling I should ask all the same. If Lydia wants to talk, then I will talk. It is the least I can do for her.
She was stolen from her home because of me.
Lydia is quiet for so long I am half asleep again when she finally speaks.
“She said that you don’t want me to leave. That you’re lying about wanting to help me get home. But of course I know that isn’t true. She was only saying that because…well, because.” Ifeel her shrug and look at her just in time to catch her watching me.
For a heartbeat our eyes meet, then she returns to staring up at the ceiling and the remaining evidence of LOVE GALAXY, hanging over our heads like a weight threatening to fall onto us.
“She said that the Guild will know where Earth is, and if we were to ask, it’d help us. Are you absolutely, completely sure it won’t?—”
“It will not.”
“And you know this because you’ve already spoken to them?” There is a hint of…something in her voice. Accusation? Disbelief? I wish I could understand her expression, but it is not one I am familiar with.
I shake my head. “Even if the Guild wanted to help, there is nothing it could do. Your planet is not in its database nor on any of its star maps.”
