Page 71 of How My Fake Alien Boyfriend Learned to Cook and Saved the Family Business

Sel looked at me with frustration that slowly melted into resignation. She must have noticed it, too, that she couldn’t hurt me.

“Ugh,” Sel said, scratching the neck of her suit. “I forgot how weird you are. Just…come on. I’m on a tight schedule, and I need to get out of this blasted suit.”

A flash of yellow lights from the road just beyond the forest clearing temporarily blinded me, followed by the distinct clunk of doors closing.

Leaves crackled and twigs snapped, and the silent night filled with the frantic cries of, “Wait! Stop! Don’t go!”

I knew those voices.

“What the—?”

I didn’t hear the next part of Sel’s exclamation because I was being tackled to the ground and rolled into a tangle of pink hair and soft warmth and love.

Lola. She’d come for me. I didn’t know how or why, but she’d come for me.

Clumsy hands fumbled at the back of my neck, and then she was pulling my suit over my head, down to my shoulders, my waist.

Sel’s gasp broke through the commotion, but I didn’t have time to think before Lola was pulling me into a kiss that tasted like sweet icing and bitter spice and longing.

“Gross, Lola! You promised you wouldn’t suck face in front of me,” I heard Jacob say from somewhere close by.

Lola pulled away, and I caught sight of her little brother standing awkwardly between my very angry colleague and us. If Sel’s eyes could shoot laser beams, I knew she would have been using them on me right then. I could already see the wheels turning in her head, documenting all the ways she would make me pay for this.

“Revealing your identity,” Sel said, crossing her arms. “Fraternizing with humans. Putting all missions, including future missions, at risk. I knew you weren’t the smartest Xaerean in the galaxy, Kalexdyorn, but this?” She shook her head slowly, baffled by the hubris. “You know I have to report you for this, right?”

And then the strangest thing happened. For a split second, I could have sworn that Sel looked…regretful. But it must have been a trick of the light.

“Do what you have to do,” I said with uncharacteristic confidence. “Just give me a chance to say goodbye. Properly.”

Sel lifted an eyebrow and pressed her lips together, then turned back toward the pod without saying another word. She was surely filing a report with our supervisors right that moment. But at least it meant I had a few minutes left with Lola. I couldn’t express how much it meant that my last minutes on Earth would be with her.

Lola’s arms squeezed me hard enough to hurt. “No! Kal, please. I came here to—to stop you. To make you stay. To make you see that you have to stay.”

The moonlight highlighted the tears on her face and amplified the blue in her eyes. She really was more beautiful than anything in the universe. I felt lucky that I’d had the good luck to know her, even if it was temporary.

I kissed her softly on the lips. “I have to go, Lola. I was never supposed to be here. I told you that. My time is up.” I lowered my chin so that our foreheads touched. “I am so sorry.”

“But…” Lola choked on a sob. “But I think I love you,” she whispered.

Had I heard that right? I stared at Lola in stunned silence, long enough that she shifted uncomfortably in my embrace.

“You don’t have to say it back,” she added hastily. “I mean, you don’t have to say it at all if that’s not how you—”

“I do,” I blurted out. “Or…I think I do.” An uncertain smile tugged at my lips. “Based on my research.”

“Your research?”

“And how I feel here,” I said, pointing at my chest with a tentacle, “when I’m with you. I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s warm and soft, sweet and—and comforting.”

Lola grinned. “Like a cinnamon roll,” she breathed.

“Like home,” I said.

“Then stay, Kal. This can be your home. I can be your home.”

Stay. Home. Love.

I wanted to stay. She had to know I wanted to stay. But I couldn’t picture a world in which that was possible. Sel was here to take me back.