“Look at you, my little rulebreaker.”
“There’s nothing little here,” Lee reminded her, leaving Kat grinning wildly at his back until they stopped at a secluded spot a decent-way up the risers.
Most of the arena was bathed in darkness. But a few sides over, they could see the bright neon yellow and magenta of acouple of RIMs just beginning to hover into action with Demi’s excited hollering.
“Do you think it’s his first rendezvous with the Spectrum after hours?” Kat asked.
“Sounds like it,” Lee chuckled beside her as he attached one of the light strips to his RIM, then extended a hand out for hers.
She savored the darkness with its soft edges, curling around them as she sank down onto the bench behind her, hovering like the RIMs, just at the edge of the fray. The unusual serenity of the Spectrum broken by their newest camaraderie and the undertones of a good time.
This she could get behind.
Lee joined her, setting both mod-vehicles down behind them. He shifted his weight as he leaned back into his hands, content to watch the others zoom around. A show of lights, with only hums of sound bites hailing them.
She’d never really been the watching type. Never cared to.
But if she had, would she have seen him earlier?
She traced his silhouette in the starlight. The shape of a boy who would put everyone before himself—who would putherbefore himself, if it meant making her happy. Even now, that worry and fear and who knew what else, burrowed beneath the hard lines, nearly detectable and carefully concealed. And yet, despite having barely tilted her head, not even disturbing the air particles moving around them, he was aware of her. He knew she was watching. And he saw her.
“Lee,” she said quietly. He acknowledged her immediately, his chin flicking towards her.
“When was it for you?” She swallowed, having great difficulty putting her thoughts into words. “When did you decide that you wanted to be with me?”
And while her heartbeat relayed what the rest of what her words could not, he took his time, dragging his teeth over his lipwith that same sexy confidence, the same assurance as he made every decision in his life.
“It was always you,” Lee said, finally. He didn’t waver, his echo but a variant of the same sentiment he had used that day on the ship. “From that first day we shared a sandwich before boarding the transports. And the first day you beat me at the Laser Rounds… and every day afterwards.”
His words carried her breath to higher intervals, with no sign of letting up. “Always?” she whispered, barely a kiss on her lips.
He reached over, sending those air particles scattering as he tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear, letting them settle against the back of her eardrum. “Always.”
The earnestness behind their whispers crashed into her in a mélange of shock and surprise, with a force that had the hairs on her arms standing up. But oddly, they didn’t scare her now.
No. Now they enraptured her, they empowered her. Wrapping her up in a security blanket that sent a fresh tidal wave of pebbles up her arms and into her heart.
It was always you.
It will always be you.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to see you.”
Her heartbeat, like the kiss that he pressed to her lips, was featherlight. His fingertips like snowflakes where they grazed her jaw and neck. But the hunger behind the premonition—there was nothing light about that. It was in the cadence of their breaths, and the hesitation behind his touch, like phantom traces in the gaps.
She was going to eat him alive.
“Oy, you two. Get out here!”
Or she would have.
Lee grinned, his teeth flashing brilliant white in the shadows, and Kat so badly wished they’d been close enough for Kamata to see the gesture Lee directed her way.
But she was sitting up again when she heard the reverberating taunt. “Girl sure likes to talk…” It was about time she showed them exactly who Kat Hanneman was.
Maybe it wasn’t about getting her feet under her, but learning to fly at a new pace. They had time to lay out all the heavy stuff and build her legacy. But tonight? Tonight was for the RIMs. Tonight was for living. And so she swiveled around to face the two mod-vehicles sitting on the ground behind them.
“Blue or Green?”
