“I’m the reason for it.” Darren clenched his hands into fists, letting his nails dig into his palms.
“You are and you aren’t. And that will never change. But just like you can’t win against him”—she slid the pack with the apples to him, urging him to finish it with a tip of her chin—“I don’t think he can just give up on you, too. Not since that night he found you here, trying to drown your pain in a cup of lukewarm coffee.”
Darren’s eyes went wide. “You saw that?”
“Was about to play your savior when your knight in shining armor showed up and beat me to it.” She huffed out a laugh and shook her head, amusement and fondness swimming in her gaze as she lifted an eyebrow at him. “He didn’t even hesitate. He marched right in, like he was on a mission. And I’m glad, Darren. That you found someone you trust with all of yourself.”
A need even greater to go to Aiden bubbled up in Darren, but he pushed it down and sat stiffly on the sofa. He didn’t say anything further, and neither did Bea, picking out the slices of green apples and eating just them as she guided Rick throughthe engineering’s diagnostics menus. Worry and fear of what he could lose spread through every cell of Darren’s body, throwing him into a state of agitated alertness that he couldn’t get rid of even as he mostly emptied his mind of thoughts about Aiden. But he didn’t leave the table, not even after Bea was done eating and took Nyle away for a break.
He remained in the mess hall and just stared at the ceiling, waiting for Aiden to come looking for him. Eventually, exhaustion caught up to him as the last of the adrenaline left him and he let his eyes close for a moment before he’d managed to think better of it.
Darren’s eyelids twitched as he felt the presence of someone. He opened his eyes slowly, using a hand to shield them from the ceiling lights. It took him a few moments to orient himself and remember where he was and how he’d ended up there, and when he did and found himself alone, his stomach dropped.
Aiden wasn’t here. He’d not come looking for Darren, which likely translated to him not wanting to talk yet. It hurt, yet just like Bea had said earlier, he didn’t think he had any right to push the issue, not until Aiden was ready.
Getting up to his feet, Darren stretched. The blanket that he hadn’t noticed draped over him slithered down to the floor, pooling around him in a heap of light blue.
“Hey,” Bea said as she came around the curve of the corridor and paused near the star map, eyeing Darren’s blanket as if it had spawned out of a black hole. “You… good?”
Judging by the dull throb of his head and the heaviness in his limbs, he doubted he’d caught more than an hour of sleep. His stomach was churning as well, but he didn’t feel like eating… especially when he concluded that Aiden was probably too wound-up to have touched any food yet.
“Y-yeah,” he rasped, shooing the grogginess away from his brain. “Aiden?”
Bea leaned her hip against the edge of the map’s metal frame. “Ran into him when I took Nyle to his room a while back. He’s probably sleeping.”
Darren nodded and picked up the blanket, folding it neatly as he placed it on the couch’s armrest. “Thanks,” he said, tipping his chin at it.
A smile tugged at the corners of Bea’s plush lips. “Wasn’t Nyle or me. Or Rick, for that matter. He’s been in the conference room talking to Kristen about ship systems.”
Darren’s heart leaped, only to drop to his feet. It had been Aiden then, yet he’d not woken Darren up to talk. It stung, felt like a stab to his chest, but he inhaled deeply and tried not to focus on that thought. He made himself and Bea a cup of coffee and followed her to the cockpit, where they sat in each other’s company just like they once had when he had been a shipping mercenary and Bea his only crew member.
