“Don’t worry, starshine. Unless I need to finance the entire rebellion on my own, the money’s not going to run out.”
Her lips puckered. The huge stash of universal currency I’d amassed to try to buy back my docks from Scarabin White obviously left a sour taste in her mouth. Her chin lifted. Her eyes hardened to blue ice, and my gut sank. I should’ve known better.
Here was the reckoning. I could feel it coming on at warp speed. It wasn’t the money itself that bothered Tess. It was how I’d made it. I’d wanted to treat her to something special. Instead, I was about to get a fight—one I’d had coming for a while.
She turned away, her hands curling into fists in her lap. They drummed against her thighs with light, steady beats. The rest of her stayed stony and silent.
Fuck. “Say it.”
She glanced over with a crisp turn of her head. “Say what, Shade?”
“Say what’s on your mind.”
Her frosty gaze dropped the temperature inside the cruiser to subzero. Would she refuse to talk and pretend everything was fine? Or would she finally spit out all the hurt and anger and disappointment that had been festering like a sore between us since Albion 5?
“Fine.” Anger suddenly charged the air around us, replacing the chill with something fury-hot and fierce. “You want me to say it? How’s this?” Tess’s nostrils flared, and I braced myself, every muscle inside me tensing. “Howcouldyou? What were youthinking? How could youlivelike that? How could you live withyourself? Do you have any idea how many people you’ve hurt? The damage you might have done to the rebellion? To my friends? To the whole freaking galaxy?” Her voice rose. Her eyes spit fire, nothing icy in her expression now. She growled at me. Literally growled, her teeth clamped together and her face all flushed.
“You’re right.” Call me stupid, but Tess’s angry outburst sat a lot better with me than the frigid distance she’d tried to put between us. That didn’t stop cold from worming its way into my chest and freezing my lungs solid with how deeply I’d failed everyone who’d ever counted on me. I was done failing, and I’d apologize to Tess as many times as she needed me to. “I’m sorry. For things I’ve done. For lying to you. I would change so much if I could.”
Her eyes squeezed shut, clamping so tight her nose scrunched up. “I know.” When she opened her eyes again, the light inside them was different, softer somehow. “And then I think: what’s done is done. He’s made a new choice. Changed. He’s helping. He’s helpingme. And he’sminenow, so just move on.”
Mine. The word electrified my heart, heating it up and making it beat too hard. I wasn’t even sure Tess understood how true that was. I’d been bone-deep devoted to getting my docks back, no matter the cost to myself or anyone else—until that cost had been the woman next to me.
Bone-deep devotion tohernow thickened my throat, giving me a sandpaper voice that scratched out in a low, rough rasp. “I hated what I did. Hunting people down for the Dark Watch? That’s not something I ever wanted. I did it because I backed myself into a corner of epic proportions, and it was either give up my family’s docks forever, work for Bridgebane, or start hacking banks.” I looked at her, willing her to at least try to understand. “There are some sums that are just…astronomical. There’s no way to make that kind of money through regular means.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“It’s not an excuse,” I blurted out. “It’s an explanation.” And it sounded weak to my ears.
“So explain. How does one become my uncle’s top bounty hunter for the Dark Watch?”
I tapped my fingers against my knee, remembering how fast it had happened. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to give myself time to think. “The opportunity just presented itself one day when Bridgebane needed a quick repair on something. I was at the base of Nuthatch, moping around my lost docks, as usual. He asked me who in the area could fix a finicky cruiser. I could, so I did. Figured I’d tinker with an engine and earn a little money.”
She frowned. “Uncle Nate was on Albion 5?”
I had no idea why, but he’d definitely been in Albion City not long after life as I knew it fell apart. “About ten years ago. After I got his cruiser up and running, he offered me a one-time job to test me out. It turned out I was good at bounty hunting. Jobs kept coming in. I advanced to his elite force. Currency piled up, and I put it all aside to buy back the docks as soon as I could. It was only ever a job to me. A means to an end. I didn’t do it for fun.”
“But you did it anyway.” Bitter disgust from my girlfriend made me feel like shit, especially when I deserved every ounce of her outrage and could add my own self-loathing to it.
“Yeah, I did it anyway. But now I’ve stopped. Because of you, Tess, I changed my life.”
Something more brittle, like hurt, jerked across her expression. “So it’s my fault you lost everything?”
“No!”Shit. I ran a hand through my short hair, gripping the back of my neck. “Changed my life for the better. I met you, got to know you, and I realized you were the kind of person I wanted to be. I didn’t like who I’d become, but I liked you, and I wanted to like myself again.”
Tess digested that in silence, mashing her lips back and forth. Finally, “Do you—”
A robotic voice coming from the cruiser’s com unit interrupted whatever she was about to say. “Bungalow 39. Two-night reservation. Please proceed to these coordinates.”
I didn’t bother looking at the numbers that popped up on the screen. I could walk the Temple Lands of Reaginine with my eyes closed and had been stomping around the nearby jungle and taking ill-advised dips in the Gano River since I was a kid. One Aisé bungalow or another had been my own personal paradise for three weeks of every year of my life until a little more than a decade ago. When my parents died, I stopped coming. I didn’t want to be here alone. Praying could be done anywhere, and honestly, I didn’t do it that often. Now that I was back, though, somethingdidfeel holier here. More sacred. But this place equated family to me, and I didn’t have one anymore.
Or if I was lucky, maybe I did. I glanced at Tess. It didn’t matter to me that she was skeptical about the church. Reaginine had more to offer than the Sky Mother and a place to worship.
I slowly dropped in altitude and headed for the riverside resort nestled in the heart of the Gano Jungle. The weight on my chest wouldn’t let up, but I didn’t know if that was because Tess was mad at me for things I couldn’t change or because the last time I was here, I was a university student who’d gone fishing with his dad and read out loud to his mother. She always said that poetry sounded better when you could just close your eyes, sit back, and enjoy it.
Tess sighed and scrubbed both hands over her face. “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” I was the one with bad decisions darkening my soul in every corner.
