“While you were preparing to sacrifice yourself to protect me and Tavia. Yes. I know.” He closes the distance between us. I back into the filing cabinet—nowhere to go. “And I was supposed to let you? Watch you fly into danger because your pride is more important than your life?”
“It’s not pride, it’s—”
“It’s independence. I understand. I respect it. But independence doesn’t mean you have to be alone.” His hands brace on either side of me, caging me against the cabinet, his body a wall of warmth and barely-leashed intensity. “I’m not trying to rescue you. I’m trying to fight beside you. There’s a difference.”
“That’s very poetic, but you still made a seventy-three-thousand-credit decision without—”
“Because you would have said no.”
“Of course I would have said no!”
“Exactly. So I took the tactically sound option and secured your position without giving you the opportunity to self-sabotage out of misplaced guilt.”
I open my mouth to argue. Close it. Open it again.
“Did you just... admit to strategically circumventing my consent?”
“I prefer ‘proactive protective positioning.’”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m Lividian. We protect what’s ours.” His eyes hold mine. Bright. Burning. “Are you going to keep fighting me, or are you going to let me help you survive this?”
The fight drains out of me in a rush that leaves me shaking. Not with anger. With something scarier than anger. With the terrifying, bone-deep relief of not having to carry this alone.
“I hate this,” I whisper. “I hate needing help.”
“I know.” His hands slide from the cabinet to my waist. Careful. Asking. “I know you do.”
“It doesn’t make me weak.”
“Nothing about you is weak.” He pulls me closer. Not demanding. Offering. “Your strength is why I’m standing here. Because you fight your way out of everything alone, and I’m asking you—just this once—to let me stand with you.”
My forehead drops against his chest. The misbuttoned shirt gapes, and my skin meets teal skin that runs fever-warm, and the markings under my cheek pulse in a rhythm that feels like his heartbeat.
“You should have told me,” I murmur into his chest.
“Yes. I should have.”
“Three days, Cetus.”
“I was waiting for the right moment. Then the storms escalated. Then the evidence package. Then you packed your bag.” His arms wrap around me. “Every time I tried, something interrupted.”
“Pickles probably has a statistical analysis of your missed opportunities.”
“I have catalogued fourteen instances in which the Terraforming Specialist attempted and failed to disclose the escrow transfer,” Pickles confirms. “The primary interruption categories are: Tavia-related events, storm alerts, the Captain’s own evasive behavior, and the Specialist losing his nerve.”
“I did not lose my nerve.”
“Instance seven: the Captain bent over to retrieve a dropped tool, and you forgot how to form sentences for eleven seconds. I classify that as nerve loss.”
I laugh against his chest. It comes out wet and shaky and real.
“So we have the escrow. We have the PDC inspection. We have the Commerce Authority raid incoming.” I pull back enough to meet his eyes. “What else?”
“Mother Morrison has six OOPS couriers on standby as character witnesses. Luzrak is filing an emergency injunction against the seizure authorization. And Pickles has compiled enough evidence to bury Blackstar in litigation for the next decade.”
“You’ve been busy.”
