Page 235 of Every Almost

But Charlie was already moving before Reyna had stepped clear.

She needed off this ladder. She needed her boots on the deck and some distance between herself and that look, and she needed it now. She needed it before the part of her that had stopped listening to reason did something idiotic.

Three rungs from the bottom, her wet boot found the wet rung at exactly the wrong angle, and she slipped.

“Charlie!” Reyna shouted.

She didn’t fall. Instead, Charlie’s hand slapped down hard against the roof of the console, her arm locking and her body swinging until her back crashed against the ladder. Then Reyna’s hands were on her waist, catching her, holding her up.

And that made Charlie’s limbs tremble.

For what was probably nothing more than a single second but felt like time stood still, Reyna’s hands held her up. Both of them breathing hard, both of them soaked clean through, the coolant making the shaft glow faintly, dripping off her nose, eyelashes, and hair as she stayed where she was, afraid to move again.

There was nowhere for her to go. The ladder was behind Charlie, the console was behind Reyna, and thirty inches of the shaft space between them. There was no version of down that didn’t go through the space Reyna was currently standing in, occupying completely.

Oh my god.

So Reyna lowered her. Her body slid down the length of Reyna’s, the slick fabric of their clothes between them, chest against chest until her hip passed Reyna’s waist. Reyna’s hands rode up Charlie’s sides to keep her steady as she lowered her because, like it or not, Charlie was in a position requiring assistance.

Charlie couldn’t say a word. It was pure logistics, lowering someone back to safety, and yet it was the least logistical thing that had ever happened to her.

Then she was standing on the ground, facing Reyna, in a space built for one.

The adrenaline let go all at once, and everything went still. The alarms, the rushing, the surrounding roar, all of it vanished at once.

In that stillness, Charlie noticed she had nothing left to hide behind. No console to work from, no problem to fix, no crisis to run. She only had herself, soaked to the skin, three inches from Reyna, with everything she had been feeling right there on display for Reyna to see.

And she did nothing about it.

The emergency lights had dropped to a low, warm amber that caught the gold of Reyna's markings so they seemed lit from the inside. Charlie suddenly understood something very real, about how she had never once let herself look at Reyna like this.

And now, she couldn't stop.

Reyna's hair was wet, the lilac gone deeper with the damp. There were strands loose across her forehead, with one plastered along her temple. Charlie's whole attention narrowed to that single strand.

Her hand moved before she could stop it, her fingers finding the wet strand and pushing it back. Her fingertips traced the edge of Reyna's hairline, past her temple and down, along thecurve of her ear to the line of her jaw where the skin was impossibly warm. Even when wet and cold-soaked, the skin was warm in the way Charlie was learning only Kaelari skin could be.

Reyna's breath hitched, and then Charlie saw a sight to behold. She watched Reyna's markings pulse.

It wasn't a change, or flashing a different color. But for one beat itbrightenedin a single, solitary flare that ran the length of the markings on her throat to her jaw and settled. It made Charlie think of a heart giving one hard knock against a ribcage before going quiet again. There and gone.

But Charlie felt it more than she saw it. She felt it under her fingertips against Reyna's jaw, one beat of something Reyna's whole body was holding in check, that one pulse having escaped, what seemed, against Reyna's intentions.

Charlie completely stopped breathing. Because aside from the stillness, or Reyna's markings, or the warmth of Kaelari skin under her fingertips, there was one part Charlie couldn't ignore.

Reyna had yet to move away.

Charlie watched Reyna's eyes go dark and fixed as that realization washed over her. Charlie felt Reyna's hands tighten ever so slightly on Charlie's sides.

But it was those three inches between Charlie's mouth and Reyna's that felt like the entire universe. Until Charlie realized they were getting smaller, neither of them stopping it. The gap was closing on its own, both of them leaning into something that had taken the decision right out of their hands, and?—

Maren was back before Charlie heard her coming.

"The secondary systems are stabilizing; the tertiary array is?—"

She was already up against the door, datapad up, reading the report she'd been ordered to complete in a room she had catastrophically not finished scanning.

She stopped, her datapad lowering by an inch.