“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be.” Her voice cracked on the second word. “You did everything you could.”
He nodded once and walked away.
Holly stood alone in the square. The fountain sat broken and silent in the center. A sense of abandonment already stretched across the stone path in the uncirculated air.
She turned and walked back to the hotel.
The walk to room seventeen felt interminably long. She stopped at his door and knocked. The sound was small in the empty corridor.
Rasker opened the door. Behind him, she could see the room. His personal things were packed. His clothes were folded in a travel container. The compact NuProd unit, the one he’d set up in the lounge for the festival, sat beside it, in its case and ready for transport. He was leaving. Perhaps he had been preparing to leave for days.
“Holly.” His expression shifted when he saw her face. “Come in. I need to tell you something. I think the inspectors made an error that we can?—”
“No.” Her voice was flat. She couldn’t help it. There was nothing left in her to shape into warmth or nuance. “I’ll keep this quick.”
He stopped. His hand remained on the door as his eyes searched her face, and whatever he found there made his expression tighten.
“I’m going to sell the outpost to you,” she said. “And whether or not you were playing a long game with me, and this was your plan all along, or if there was more—” This time she cut herself off with a curt shake of her head. “It doesn’t matter. You put in the time. You earned the commission. And, hey, we had a goodtime.” There was bitterness, thick and sharp, woven into her words and she couldn’t bring herself to feel bad about it.
His gills quivered. It was the only part of him that moved. “I see.”
“There are conditions in my grandfather’s will that you should know about.” She leaned against the doorframe because her legs were unreliable. “If Moone’s Landing is sold, the proceeds don’t go to me or my family. They go to the construction of a statue of Charles Moone, to be displayed at whatever monstrosity of a station replaces this one. And the will specifies that the lowest offer be accepted, so lucky day for your clients. My grandfather made sure that no one would profit from selling this place. It was his final act of spite.”
Rasker’s face remained perfectly still. No reaction. No softening. He held the controlled stillness of someone shutting down, feature by feature, until what remained was the consultant she had met on her first day. Polished. Professional. Unreadable.
“I didn’t know,” he said with the slightest nod.
Holly stared at him. She had walked down this hallway with fragile and desperate hope in her chest that he would say the thing she needed to hear. That he would reach for her. That the man who had kissed her in the rain and carried her through his doorway would show up in this moment when she needed him most.
Instead, she got the consultant.
“I’ll contact Rest ’N Recharge with this new information.” His eyes flickered, fast and unguarded, but then it was gone. His voice was level. Businesslike. “I’ll be in touch, Holly.”
“You should speak with my lawyer, Mr. Binn.” Her voice was pure frost.
“Very well,” he replied, clipped. “I’ll be in touch with your lawyer.”
She looked at him for a moment. At the packed bags and the dismantled equipment and the man standing in the middle of it all with his hands at his sides and his face arranged into nothing.
“I was wrong about a lot of things,” she said quietly. She let the words carry every meaning she intended. The station. The future. Him. “Clearly.”
He didn’t respond. Or if he did, she didn’t hear it, because she had already turned and was walking back down the hallway. Each step was mechanical. Her rust-colored shoes padded softly on the floor, taking her away. Away from one of the most painful mistakes she could recall ever making.
She let herself into her living unit and closed the door.
Bean was on the couch. Luv was in her corner, her optical sensors dim. For once, the Homeboti didn’t say anything. The unit was quiet. The plants on the windowsills were wilting. Everything was just as she’d left it that morning, but nothing was the same.
“Luv, I want you to know that I won’t abandon you or Bean. You’re coming back to Earth, or wherever, with me.” Holly sat down on the couch and Bean crawled into her lap. She’d need to start thinking about practical matters. Like where she was going to live with these two. “Unless you’d rather go with someone else.”
“I’ll be staying with you, Holly,” Luv said quietly. “I don’t trust anyone else not to install that software patch.”
“I don’t either.” Holly smiled weakly. “Maybe I can beg to get my job back at Sol-Arc.”
“Don’t you even think about that right now,” Luv tutted, taking up a throw blanket and spreading it over Holly and Bean. “You’ve been going too hard these past weeks. What you need is sleep, and a lot of it. Lie down, now. Close your eyes. I’ll wake you if anything happens you need to know about.”
Holly didn’t have the will to refuse. She slid to the side, so she was lying down on the couch, put her arms around Bean and let her eyes fall closed.
