Page 200 of Every Almost

Reyna tightened her arms.

The ship could wait. Vondra could wait. Everything outside this room could fucking wait.

She rested her cheek against Charlie's hair, next to her temple. She didn't tell her it would be all right, because it wouldn't, at least not tonight. She didn't promise Vondra would find an answer, because she wasn't sure there would be one. She didn't speak at all, in fact. She just held Charlie.

Thirteen years ago, Reyna had believed you got through grief by staying on your feet. By never stopping yourself long enough to remember why it was you were pushing so hard. Reyna lost Elena, then Jere, and the bridge of the ship she'd made a life on with the people she considered her family, went quiet. The crew supported her in the way they could. She was a newly appointed captain for reasons that affected everyone on board, so they could only do so much. People like Kess stayed close while Borran made sure to keep her fed. And Orion provided a space for her to speak when she wanted to, and even when she didn't.

But none of them had held her like this. No one had. She'd made sure of it. She hadn't let them.

Charlie's breathing was hot and uneven through the fabric, and Reyna knew, with a clarity that should have alarmed her, that she would stand here until the ship's dawn cycle if that was what Charlie needed. Her alarm over it was real, but it didn't change a single thing.

After a long time, Charlie's breathing finally slowed. The desperate edge left it while her grip eased on Reyna's uniform, though she didn't let go. Reyna loosened her arms and let the space between them open without stepping back.

Charlie didn't leave it.

She shifted just enough to breathe, her hands moving from Reyna's back to the side of her uniform. They were close enough that Charlie had to look down slightly to meet her eyes.

She looked at Reyna for a long moment, eyes red and bright in the starlight. Then past her, at the bench.

Reyna understood immediately. They moved to the bench without separating fully, Reyna turning first, Charlie following close enough that Reyna could feel her there the whole way to the bench.

Charlie rested her forearms on her knees, her fingers following the circle of her bracelet around her wrist as she toyed with the knots.

"She didn't know me," she said, so quiet Reyna almost missed it. "In the dream. Katie didn't know who I was."

Reyna's hand went still against the bench.

"I... went back to Earth, somehow. But she was... older, and didn't know me at all."

Reyna didn't know what to say to that. She could easily reroute systems and file requests, even push Vondra until the woman stopped answering her vidcalls. She could cause a ripple in Coalition demands if she chose to do so. But she couldn't give Charlie back her sister. She couldn't undo what Kess had told her, and she couldn't make a dream lie.

So she stayed.

"You know what Katie did for me," Charlie said. Reyna nodded, because of course she remembered. The doorway, the nineteen-year-old with no qualms about following her sister and no plan beyond that. "But, she also knew every part of me. In fact, she was the only person on Earth to know every side of me."

Charlie looked at the bracelet on her wrist.

"She knew me before I was Charlie to anyone else. Before Frank and Helen, before California, before any of it. Back when it was just the Wickett house with not enough air in it." Her thumb moved over the knot. "She's the only person alive who ever called me Charlotte and lived to tell about it." She almost laughed. "She didn't just know the kid who fixed the toasterbecause nobody else was going to. She understood the girl who came home smelling like motor oil because Frank let me take apart things I should absolutely not have been trusted with."

"She knew me when I was bossy and when I hovered. She knew the way I could turn love into a checklist if nobody stopped me." Her fingers tightened. "She stopped me."

Reyna didn't ask how. Charlie told her anyway.

She told Reyna the full story about Frank and Helen Beckman, four houses down, who had seen her when no one asked them to. How Frank had let a neighbor kid take apart his car engine before she was old enough to drive it. How Helen kept a yellow kitchen table always set with four place settings. How two neighbors became the parents her own never figured out how to be. She told Reyna how Katie had been there before any of it, since the very beginning, when it was just the two of them.

Reyna listened. She didn't interrupt or try to fill the spaces Charlie left between sentences. She understood that what Charlie had told her weeks ago, with her parent's rejection and Katie walking out with her, had only been the short version. This was the rest of it.

"When I got my driver's license," Charlie said. "A license to operate a vehicle on Earth," she clarified, her voice different. Still rough, but lighter. "Frank tossed me the keys to his Cutlass. That was the model of his car, the same one he'd let me work on with him for years. He told me to run to the store for Helen to get buttermilk. Just three blocks away. A short drive. But the first taste of true freedom." She shook her head. "I'm halfway down the driveway and I hear Katie behind me. She was ten and she just ran past me, got to the passenger side before I did, and just planted herself there, arms crossed and chin up. Like she'd been waiting for the opportunity her whole life."

The corner of Charlie's mouth pulled. "I said, 'It's only three blocks, Kit-Kat.' And she looked at me like I had seven heads andsaid, 'So? Just how much trouble do you think we can get into in three blocks?'"

Reyna felt her own mouth curve.

"So she went with me. Obviously. Once I backed out of the driveway, she reached over and cranked the radio up so loud the rearview mirror began to shake. 'Go Your Own Way' came on, a good song, one of the best. By the band I told you about, Fleetwood Mac." Charlie laughed, and the sound cracked open in the quiet room, full and real. "She sang along to the entire thing. Got every other word wrong."

Reyna watched Charlie's face. She was smiling, and it was real. It reached her eyes, coming from whatever place still held a ten-year-old Katie planted at a car door with her arms crossed.

"That was Katie," Charlie said. "Is Katie. She never waits to be invited. She just decides she's going to be in your corner and that's pretty much the end of it."