“Like you ignored my call, but took Leo’s?” His words are playful, but not without a bit of sting.
Our kiss, his lips on mine—suddenly they’re all I see when Ilook at him. Yet another stretch of uncharted territory I haven’t learned to navigate. “Look,” I tell him, “I just needed a break, I didn’t mean anything by it, okay? It’s been a long day.”
“Sure, I get that,” he says, sheepish. “You deserve a break—I was just giving you a hard time. Sorry.”
“So, Grace and Yuki?”
“Oh, no,” he says. “That’s actually not what I was trying to get in touch about. I mean, that was a big part of it, yeah, but the most pressing thing is that Zesi’s having a separate issue in Control and wants to get your input—told him I’d relay the message while he works on it.”
This definitely qualifies as urgent, and I feel a twinge of guilt over cutting him off earlier. I close my eyes, take a deep breath. If things keep spiraling at this rate, the station is basically doomed. Heath grasps my shoulders, his hands soft but firm. I open my eyes again, only to meet his. They’re the color of shining steel, a burst of gray that turns dark at the edges. Haven kept all the colors for herself, apparently, all the green and gold and blue; the precise shade of her hazel irises shifts with the light.
“One thing at a time, Lindley, okay?” Heath’s smile is small but steady. “You’re not alone in this. You’renot.”
He sounds so sure. I nod, let his words sink in. Try to feel them.
He’s right, in a way. The six of us are in this together. They’re not going to let me break.
So why do I feel like everything is on me, when it comes down to it?
Maybe because I’m the most visibly in charge. Commander, like my mother was, no matter how hard I try to separate myself from the title. Maybe because I get all the questions, and tend to have the most answers.
That’s the problem. I only havemostof the answers.
Heath squeezes my shoulders. “I’m here for you however you need me to be, all right? If that means you need to ignore my next hundred calls, I get it. Okay?” He searches for my eyes until I meet them. “Just call me back within a quarter hour, though, if you do that. Might be urgent.”
I grin, and his smile cracks into a laugh. “I think I can manage that,” I say. “Speaking of urgent, I think you should go find Leo instead of coming with me to Control.”
“Yeah,” he says. “You’re probably right.”
“And Heath?”
He looks up from his buzz screen. “Yeah, Linds?”
He’s never called me that, and it throws me off for a split second. I decide to let it slide—I’m not sure I like him using Leo’s name for me, but I’m also not sure I don’t.
“Thanks,” I say. “I needed this.”
His mouth turns up at one corner. “See you in a bit.”
15
BLINK TO BLACK
HAVEN AND LEO are already in Control, waiting with Zesi, when I arrive.
“Is Natalin coming?” I ask, noting her absence.
“Oh,” Zesi says, messing with a section of the control panel, not taking his eyes off it. “No, she said you told her to work on some sort of food plan—should I have told her to ditch that for this?”
“No, no,” I say. “That’s exactly what I would’ve told her, just wanted to make sure she wasn’t on her way. What’s going on? Heath said it was urgent?”
Zesi, on his rolling stool, spins around to face us. “Okay,” he says. “Don’t kill me.”
“Notthe most promising way to begin,” I say, crossing my arms. “What?”
“So—okay—okay.” He’s nervous, fidgety. I’ve never seen Zesi like this before, and it’s unsettling. “This whole time, I’ve been looking in the wrong place for incoming messages, right?I thought I’d get an alert here, where it saysmessage alerts. I mean, seems logical enough.”
I look where he’s pointing, at the same dark stretch of unlit panels I used for my failed attempt at contact with Earth earlier.
