I stand, backing away. “You can’t be here. This is crossing every line in the book.”
“I know,” he says quietly. “But?—”
“No.” My voice cracks like a whip. “You think this is a game, Kaz? You think this is about you winning? Because it’s not. This—whatever this is—it’s unprofessional.”
He rises slowly, hands open, eyes searching mine. “It doesn’tfeellike nothing.”
“It has to be,” I whisper. “For both of us.”
Silence stretches. The hum of the ventilation system fills the void where my heartbeat should be.
He nods finally. “Then I’ll go.”
He turns toward the door, pauses. “For what it’s worth… I didn’t come here to win. I came here because you make me want to try.”
Then he’s gone.
The door slides shut behind him, the sound too final, too sharp.
I sink onto the couch, every nerve still buzzing. My lips sting, my hands shake. I can still feel the warmth of his body in the air, fading like engine heat after a long flight.
I drop my face into my hands and exhale.
“Unprofessional,” I mutter to the empty room. “Completely, utterly unprofessional.”
But the worst part isn’t that he kissed me again.
It’s that I wanted him to.
And I still do.
CHAPTER 6
KAZ
The tarmac’s colder than a cryo coffin tonight, the kind of cold that bites even through the armored soles of my boots. I don’t talk. Don’t grin. Don’t perform. For once, I’ve got nothing to say. Nothing clever, nothing cocky. Just silence—and the words Nova threw at me last night looping through my head like a faulty thruster.
“It has to be nothing.”
Damn.
It wasn’t nothing. Itisn’tnothing. But she said it like a command. Final. So I nodded like a good little cadet and walked out her door, out of her space, like it didn’t tear something open in me.
Then her name pings on my flight roster.
Midnight. Solo sim. Instructor: Starling.
Yeah, okay. I know what this is.
I gear up in record time. The hangar’s a cathedral of steel and shadow, all hiss and hum and red hazard lights pulsing like warning hearts. The silence is so thick it feels holy. My fighter waits, hatch open like a mouth ready to swallow me whole.
She’s already in the tower, of course. Silhouetted against the control panel lights, arms folded like armor across her chest.
I flick on comms. “Midnight rendezvous in the sky? You sure know how to make a guy feel special.”
“Fly the sim, Kaz,” she replies, voice clipped, no frills. But not cold. Not quite.
I slide into the cockpit and pull the canopy down with a hiss. “You got it, ma’am.”
