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He kissed her forehead and temple. “I’ll be okay, and so will you. We’re nearly there.”
She nodded again, clinging to him tightly, reluctant to let him go. Tilting her chin, he met her lips in a long, emotional kiss. The hollowness in her chest deepened. Seemed to drop forever. After a long embrace, he separated from her and ran a thumb along her face.
And then he left the cabin.
A minute later he was back on Wingless and she was staring blankly at his empty console chair. The seat was so jarringly inert, the screen dark.
The Selkie was unbalanced without him in it. It was just her, the systems, and nothing to affect the cold routines. A foreboding sense descended. The fear of losing Caligher had taken root. Suddenly, she was tempted to sabotage her own ship just to force him to take her with him.
Caligher’s voice boomed through the comms, distorted as if it had traveled through a tin can to get there. “I can see you brooding, Lucca. You haven’t even moved, have you?”
Rubbing her eyes, she sank into her seat and started the engine.
Nearby, a tiny robot climbed the catwalk like a mechanical scorpion, searching for dust to clean with its tiny vacuum tail. There were a dozen such robots loose on her ship now, fulfilling their various purposes. Caligher had left changes all over the place. Inside the ship. Inside her.
Something stung her eyes, but she cleared her throat and readied her ship, fighting against that suffocating chill. Her throat was rough when she spoke at last. “I’m good. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER23
LUCCA
On the day they were scheduled to reach the jump point, Caligher fucked her against the window as promised. It was more coincidence than anything—she’d been standing at the window, staring at the tiny sliver of the Crescent Rim in the distance, when Caligher had come up behind her. She’d started touching him, needing physical comfort and closeness.
Her emotions were in shambles. Unexplainable bouts of insecurity cropped up. She dismissed them. Sheneededhim to destroy that jump point. But while the jump point remained, and this inscrutable cloud of unspoken words hovered between them, she grasped at straws to mute that feeling.
She let her worries fade into raw, magnetic, physical need, clutching his powerful back as close as was physically possible. He propped her against the rail lining the window and entered her without uttering a sound. Something about the voiceless, primal way he took her swept her under a current of mind-numbing bliss.
When it was over they washed in the bathroom, then relaxed in the kitchen, shooting the shit over drinks. Caligher fixed her a cocktail with a floral bouquet as tall as the drink itself. Lucca made her best impression of a Bloody Mary and he went crazy for it. She saw his eyes widening with delight as he took in the salty, herbal mix.
An alert signaled their approach of the Crescent Rim. She felt the change in vibrations of Wingless’s engines overhead, slowing their course.
They wandered into the cockpit, laughing easily. The Crescent Rim was close, now. She could see the melted glitter of the lights that lined its inner curve.
She nudged him gently. “Can we visit it?” She nodded at the site. “After it’s over? I would love to see it.”
“I would love to see it, too.”
“It was the first thing I saw on the way in,” she said. “We passed it too quickly. It was there for a few minutes, and then gone, with nothing but months of darkness.” She rolled back and forth on the balls of her feet.
So much of her life had been her staring at the things she wanted, waiting for the day when she could have them. It felt as if her life was finally starting.
Her shoulders hunched slightly.
Just get through this day.
Lucca was at peace with her fate.
“It’s prettier than they said,” Caligher murmured, standing beside her at the top of the narrow staircase.
“I was so mad we couldn’t even like, stop to get a closer look,” she said. “It’s really beautiful.”
For a moment, he looked almost wistful beside her. Something had changed, as of late. Caligher didn’t fake his expressions as much as he had in the beginning.
“It’s an old city,” he said in a low voice. “A popular destination for those who feel that theHeartisn’t for them. Retirees. Eccentrics. Something of a mustering zone for the odd ones out. They say if your heart’s desire eludes you all your life, you’ll find it waiting in this city. Of course that’s fantasy, but people keep repeating it like it’s real, so there must be something to it.”
“Must be,” she murmured contentedly. “We have similar myths. Mountains you climb. Folding a thousand paper cranes. I think the point is the journey—not staying stagnant, you know?” She paused a beat, looking down at their differently formed feet—her booted ones, his glowing, webbed toes. “I think that’s why I came to space.”
Was that an ember of hope in her chest? A warmth that overcame the churning in her gut?
