Shade’s pause was longer this time. “I’d rather use yours.” His voice had turned husky as well.
I stood there, vacillating. Hardly breathing. My heart beat hard, my body heated, and my mind screamed at me because I didn’t know what to do, and a captain always decided.
Abruptly, I turned. The talk had come, even if I wasn’t ready for it.
“What are you doing, Shade? What are yougoingto do?” I asked.
He had his cruiser. He could leave. He could blab about the Fold, although I didn’t think he would, or I wouldn’t have brought him here in the first place. And he’d made it through the sticky part without dying, so I figured the Fold must have thought he was okay, too.
Some people totally ruptured on the way in, suffering from sudden, violent aneurysms. They inevitably turned out to be people we wouldn’t have wanted in here anyway. The Fold destroyed her foes, orours, I supposed, which made us fairly confident about those who got through. And while I couldn’t be certain, I didn’t think Shade had enough type A1 blood in his system to truly invalidate the Fold’s defenses.
He still looked bad—as haggard, tired, and disheveled as the rest of us—but also determined. His eyes snagged mine and held. “I chose you, Tess. I want you. All you have to do is want me back.”
Emotion knotted around my heart, squeezing. I wanted him back, but I was afraid.
Shade’s gaze stayed steady on mine. He was asking me to accept the things he’d done before we met—and what he’d almost done after. To accept and forgive.
Could I do that?
“I think…” I swallowed, my heart hammering out of control. Shade had proven himself to be on my side in the end, and wasn’t that what mattered from now on? I believed in second chances. I’d needed some myself.
“I think my shower is probably big enough for two,” I said.
His eyes flared, the desire in them flushing me with heat. Hesitantly, I lifted my hand to Shade’s chest.
His hand covered mine, pressing until I felt the thud of his heart against my palm. “I want to comfort you, Tess.”
Warmth washed through me, along with the ever-present pain of loss. I wanted his comfort. I probably wanted it too much.
“Fair warning,” I said in a voice I hardly recognized. “The water might run out.”
“Then you need bigger tanks.”
“I do. I could never afford them.”
Shade looked aghast. “Showers are sacred. I’ll fix that.”
I felt myself smile. It kind of broke my face, but it also brought some relief, as though now that I’d done that—smiled after Miko’s murder and Shiori’s abduction—I could take the next step toward moving out of the heaviest part of grief.
“With what?” I asked, wondering how he planned on paying for improvements. “Is there a big stash of universal currency in that little cruiser of yours?”
“I have more than two hundred million units spread over eight different untraceable accounts, and all my pass codes memorized, despite them being annoyingly complex and long.”
I blinked. “Why in the galaxy do you have that much currency?” I asked, tugging my hand out from under Shade’s.
I didn’t need to ask how. The Dark Watch obviously paid its elite bounty hunters well. It was possible I had acquaintances in prison because of Shade, and the fact that I was ignoring that sat like a chunk of ice inside me that wouldn’t melt.
He leaned against the wall, rubbing the back of his neck. He winced, as if the words were hard to get out, and it made me worry that things were even worse than I thought.
“I’ve been trying to buy back an empire I lost after my parents died in a freak shuttle accident,” he finally said. “It turned out my father was really, really in debt to an asshole named Scarabin White. That’s the person you met on the dock of the casino—the one who gave me the silver money clip with the engraved bird’s head.”
I remembered. I’d wanted to wash my hand after that man had touched it. It hadn’t been hard to see that he was rich, powerful, and used to getting his way.
“White owns that whole place—the resort and casino—and my father…liked to gamble, it turned out. I had no idea until ten years ago, when his debt suddenly transferred to me. It was… It felt overwhelming. I’d just lost my family, and I wasn’t used to running things. I’d just finished my engineering studies and had come home a few days earlier. Instead of trying to work off the debt like I should have, I went for a quick fix. I went to that stupid casino and gambled him for everything. I bet it all—and lost.”
“Oh, Shade…” I could imagine the devastation of that, how he must have felt, especially right after losing his parents. It must have been doubly awful, because he didn’t seem like the kind of man who made reckless, impulsive decisions.
Although maybe he did. He’d thrown it all away to protect me, hadn’t he?
