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“Ezo,” Ana cries. “You can’t do that to yourself. You couldn’t have known. No one on your entire planet knew—”
She is wrong. “They forecasted a large storm,” I argue. “I begged my sisters to get to the city but I knew they wouldn’t leave my mother behind. I should have gone and physically removed her myself.”
Ana just keeps shaking her head, though, refusing to understand. “No, Ezo. God, have you been blaming yourself this entire time? For two centuries since? Oh my God.”
She flings her arms around my neck but I cannot accept the comfort she offers.
“I accept my guilt in this,” I whisper into her hair. “It’s the only honor I have left to give them. I swore that my penance would be to spend my life in service and save as many lives as I could, in their names.”
“Oh, Ezo,” she says, squeezing me tighter.
“I went back to my unit. I was reassigned to build the Salvation Ships. I worked day and night to help my people escape before again it was too late.”
“And you did,” Ana says, pulling back to look into my eyes. “Don’t you see that? You did save lives. So many lives. You saved an entire race.” And then she quiets. “That’s why you volunteered again, isn’t it? You volunteered to go through the dangerous transition so you could save them all over again.”
I have never thought about it that way. I just— I could only imagine how many more million faces would be frozen in the cold, clutching one another. These last fifty years, it has been the same on the ship. We had saved as many as we could from the dying planet, but now who would save us from the endless sea of space?
So when our destination was announced and they asked for volunteers, of course I was the first to raise my hand.
“Oh Ezo,” Ana says, her eyes full and sad, “then we both have to do what’s right. You have to be with someone who can give you children. It’s…who you are. I won’t take that away from you.”
Is that why she thinks I’ve told her all of this?
“Stop,” I say quickly. I must stop this misunderstanding before it starts. “That is not why I told you my story. I told you because I have had no family for all these long years. It should have been about duty and honor, but really I learned everything about Earth that I could because I imagined finally having a place to belong. For the first time in almost three hundred years, I began to dream of a home again.”
“But none of it was real until you. Do you understand me?” I grip her hands, begging her to understand. “I cannot lose my family again. Not now that I have found you. So you cannot leave me. You cannot—”
“I won’t. Ezo, look at me, I won’t. I swear. I’ll never leave you nor forsake you. In sickness and in health. In good times and in bad. Till death do us part.”
Her words are beautiful and by the fierceness in her eyes, I know she means them.
I began my story so that I might comfort her. How did this get twisted around so that she is the one comforting me?
She is beautiful, her brown eyes bright, her pink hair wild and her grip strong. “Till death do us part,” I vow in return.
Chapter Fifteen
Ana
After our emotional confessions earlier in the car, I managed to drive us home. Ezo’s eyes sizzled on me the entire time and I gripped his leg in return, needing the contact after being scraped so raw.
I can’t imagine what he went through. The strength it must have taken to endure all that and then the space trip that followed, hurdling through the darkness, God—
We made love with a furious passion as soon as we got through the door. We barely made it to the couch before he was inside me. And I felt everything. His anguish and grief still so fresh even two centuries later. His astonishment at the joy he has found in me.
His determination to never let me go.
It’s why I’ve sat him down now, steaming mugs of coffee in hand as we sit on the balcony of my apartment watching the sunset.
He watches it with the wonder of a little boy. “Your Earth is so beautiful. And your sun…” He stares even though I’ve told him not to look directly at it, even while it sets. “Your scientists say it will last many, many more years?”
“At least five billion.”
“They are sure?”
“They’re sure,” I smile. “We can Google it together later. You can see for yourself.” Duh, he probably doesn’t know what Google is but he nods absently, eyes still on the horizon.
“So I was thinking,” I say and he finally looks my direction. “The doctors and scientists on your ship. They’re probably way more advanced than here on Earth, huh? Since your technology is so kick ass.”
