Page 29 of Jarran

“Evie—”

“There’s no reason for you to sleep on a floor when there’s a bed this size. We’re adults.” She was aware that her voice sounded overly reasonable, like she was giving a professional presentation about bed-sharing logistics. “It’s fine. We’ll just sleep. There’s more than enough room.”

He looked at her. She sent him a too-cheerful smile intended to hide the roiling nerves and arousal squirming around her insides. Neither of them acknowledged the fact that every recent time they’d been in close proximity, they’d wound up kissing.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

Great. Settled. Two adults, one bed, zero problems. She was going to be fine.

THIRTEEN

Evie got him to sit down and eat a proper meal. He became curious about the replication device, so Evie showed him how it worked. Jarran stood beside her while she scrolled through menus, his shoulder close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off his skin. She ordered coffee first, because priorities. It was good coffee. Better than anything on the Korath-7, which wasn’t a high bar, but still.

Jarran ordered fruit. She watched him bite into a dark red fruit, almost like a pear, and his eyes closed and his expression shifted into something so unguarded it made her chest ache. His meals had likely been basic, but he’d been allowed to eat some of the produce he grew. This looked exactly like one of the fruits she’d seen him harvest once.

“Good?” she asked.

“Very good.” He held it toward her. “Try.”

She leaned forward and bit where he’d bitten. The juice was sweet and sharp, almost citrus, and it ran down her chin. He watched her mouth while she chewed. She wiped her chin with the back of her hand and pretended she hadn’t noticed.

She thought about working on memory exercises, to pass the time, but decided against it. It was probably best that he didn’t bring up too much of his past here, where there were no safeguards if Pella Rin rose to the surface and took over. That was one person she wasn’t eager to see more of. Also, she reminded herself for the thousandth time: she wasn’t his doctor anymore.

The lights dimmed on a cycle, simulating nightfall. There was no way to tell what time it actually was, or even what system they were in. There were no windows or time-keeping devices to mark the passage of time and she’d stopped trying to track it.

“Well, I’m getting tired,” she announced with a pronounced yawn.

His expression turned stoic as they got into the bed from opposite sides. The sheets were soft and cool and the mattress was absurdly comfortable. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling and listened to Jarran breathing beside her. He was on his back too, one arm behind his head, taking up significantly more of the bed than she did. His tail twitched like a restless cat’s. He wasn’t relaxed either.

“Evie.”

“Yeah?”

“What is Earth like?”

She rolled to her side, facing him. He was still looking at the ceiling, his profile hard in the dim light. “Why do you want to know?”

“I want to know more about you.” His voice was rough.

She thought about it. “Rain. We have rain. Water falls from the sky. A lot, where I grew up. It hits the ground and everything smells clean. Green.” She paused. “You can stand outside in it and just get wet for no reason. It feels incredible.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Water from the sky.”

“There’s also snow, which is water when it’s frozen and fluffy.” She thought about that to keep from thinking about how good he smelled. “And sometimes there’s ice that falls. That’s not as fun to stand outside in.”

“I would like to feel rain.” His voice was low and soft and stripped down. “And snow sounds interesting.”

“Maybe someday,” she said. She didn’t know why she said it. There was no someday. There was a locked door and a Sifter warlord and an uncertain number of engineered soldiers between them and any version of someday that involved standing in the rain.

“Tell me another thing,” he said.

“Oceans. Huge bodies of water, so big you can’t see the other side. They move. Waves come in and pull back out, and the sound of it is…” She trailed off, unable to adequately describe it. “It’s the best sound.”

“Better than rain?”

“Different.”