I laugh. “Gods. You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
I shake my head. “You make me insane.”
“I am aware.”
We sit like that for a while. Shoulder to shoulder. Breathing the same air. I shift slightly, and my hand brushes his knee.
He doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t move away.
And neither do I.
CHAPTER 8
TATEK
She doesn’t move her hand.
It rests lightly against my knee, fingers curled in just enough to graze the fabric of my uniform. Intentional? Unintentional? I don’t know. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. That the proximity means nothing. That I can catalog the contact and store it with the rest—another sensory imprint to discard during morning recalibration.
But I don’t.
I feel it.
Her warmth bleeds through the layer of synth-fiber like a signal too strong to block. It climbs my thigh, a static heat that spikes somewhere low in my stomach and settles like molten metal in my spine.
I inhale.
Shallow.
Controlled.
It doesn’t help.
She shifts slightly, exhaling through her nose, and leans her head back against the wall beside me. Her hair brushes my shoulder. Only the ends. But I feel every strand like it’s been encoded in my nerve endings.
This is not operational.
I tell myself that again. It doesn’t change anything.
I close my eyes.
All it does is make it worse.
Because when I do—she’s there.
Not just her shape. Her voice. The cadence of her sarcasm. The tilt of her head when she’s challenging me, eyes narrowed just enough to feel like a dare. Her scent—subtle, mineral and electric, the kind that clings to memory long after the source is gone. She’s braided into my thoughts now. Inseparable.
I open my eyes again. I have to. Her proximity is too much.
But she doesn’t move.
And neither do I.
Hours later,I sit alone in my assigned quarters.
