“In my bag. Bottom zipper.”
He flops off the bed like he’s melting and begins digging with all the focus of a miner mid-strike. I rest my forehead against the doorframe, exhaling slowly.
“You okay?” Verzius asks gently.
“No.”
He doesn’t press.
The flight deck is worse. Blinding white under the overhead lights. Lines of ships, all gleaming too bright, like they’re trying too hard.
I’m halfway through checking the manifest when I feel it.
A ripple. Like the air’s been sliced open and stitched back together wrong.
Then I see him.
Kaz.
My legs forget how to move. My stomach drops, then clenches into something ugly and molten.
He’s standing by a craft, talking to a mechanic. He’s taller now. Bulkier. The shadows around his eyes have grown darker, deeper. His stance is sharper—like every muscle in his body’s permanently braced for impact.
Then he turns.
And for a moment, time stops.
His eyes find mine like magnets snapping into place. His mouth twitches—not a full smile, more a muscle memory trying to remember how.
I can’t breathe.
We just stare.
Ten seconds. Twenty.
A lifetime.
Then I turn and walk away.
Verzius finds me outside the hangar, sitting on a crate, hands shaking.
“You look like someone told you carbs were canceled,” he says lightly, passing me a thermos.
“I saw him.”
His expression softens instantly. “Kaz.”
“Yeah.”
He sits beside me. “And?”
“And nothing. He was there. I was there. We looked at each other like ghosts.”
“You knew this might happen.”
“I didn’t think it would feel like this.”
“You didn’t think you’d still want him.”
