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“Well, sure baby.” He shrugged. “Why?”
Mia cleared her throat.
“It was flying all around that room—the place The Prophet used to spy on everyone,” she said hesitantly. “And remember he told the Elders to, uh, send him that footage of…of me when I was…was…” But she couldn’t finish the sentence—couldn’t say that she wanted to be sure the embarrassing images of her touching herself weren’t anywhere on the camera bug’s image stream.
Sev seemed to understand.
“Hey, that’s all right, baby,” he murmured, casting a sidelong glance at her. “I know how embarrassing that must have been but we’ll be sure nobody sees it.”
“I…I was just trying to take care of the nectar on my own,” Mia said tightly. “Zellah—the girl I met in the Library when I went looking for the Dome blueprints—told me that, er, touching yourself was the best way to get it to…to flow.”
She was so ashamed of herself she could hardly speak.
“Touching yourself!”whispered the voices from her past.“Disgusting, filthy, sinful girl!”
“It’s okay, Mia. I promise nobody will see it,” Sev tried to reassure her again.
He put out a hand to squeeze her arm but Mia shrugged him off. Now that all the crazy drama of their escape was over, her head was filled with the memory of the “Judgment Session” with the Elders. She kept seeing herself stripped naked as the images of her touching herself played on the huge screen for anyone to see.
Sev saw it too—allof it,she thought, feeling sick to her stomach.What must he think of me now?
“Mia…baby…” Sev began, but she shook her head.
“Please, Sev—I don’t want to talk right now. Okay?”
“Okay, sure.” He nodded. “I’ll call the Mother Ship and have them fold space for us.”
Mia nodded but her thoughts were turned inward and filled with self-loathing.
She didn’t deserve him, she told herself. The images from her past were still strong in her mind and as happy as she was to have Sev literally back from the dead, she knew they weren’t meant to be together. He could do better than her—much better.
She had to let him go.
FIFTY-THREE
SEV
“Mia? What the hell is going on? Open the door—I mean it! We have to talk!”
Sev pounded on the silver panel door that led to the guest suite in the Mother Ship where his partner had been staying for the past three days. Three days in which she had completely refused to see him. But that ended now, he promised himself—he had been willing to give her space to recover from their time with the PPP but after the vid-conference call he’d just had from their Captain back on Earth, theyhadto talk.
At last, just when he was beginning to get strange looks from people passing by in the hallway, the door to Mia’s guest suite slid open a tiny crack.
“What do you want, Sev?” Her voice sounded dull and unhappy and the single eye he could see through the crack looked red, as though she’d been crying.
“What do I want? I want you to talk to me instead of avoiding me!” Sev exclaimed.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Mia said, still in that same, colorless voice.
“Nothing to talk about?” Sev nearly exploded. “What about the vid-call I just had with the Captain back home? You know—the one where she told me you asked for a different partner? What about that? Seems worth talking about to me.”
“I’m sorry about that…” Mia looked away. “I just…think it’s for the best.”
“For the best? How can splitting up be for the best?” Sev demanded. “You could have at least warned me before you ended our partnership!”
“I can’t talk about this right now. I can’t talk toyouright now.” And the door started to close.
“Mia, wait!” Sev begged, changing his tone. Clearly being angry with her wasn’t going to solve this. Something was going on with his partner but she wasn’t going to tell him what it was until he got her to give him a little face-to-face time.
