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She jerked back.
“I’ll show you how. We have time.”
“No way in hell,” she said, throwing another beleaguered glance at the airlock. Definitely terrified of space. So why was she in a spaceship of all places?
“We can turn the gravity off for practice,” he suggested. “It won’t be a live jump. Stand in the airlock with me. Get acclimated to—”
“No.”
He was drawn a step closer. “If you don’t learn this now, there could come a day when your life depends on it. What will you do when that day comes?”
She shook her head so rapidly, her hair whipped around behind her. Her cheeks had lost that vibrant color that stained them before. “I know you mean well, but I’m never gonna be able to do that.”
Her eyes moved fearfully between the door and his face. Shame cracked through her brittle expression. “I know how weak that makes me sound, but Ican’t.”
He stared at her. How in all the stars had she ended up there?
“Did you come to space willingly?” he suddenly asked. It had never occurred to him before that she might have been forced to leave Earth.
“What?” She blinked. “Uh, yes… It was my dream to see the stars and meet aliens, and I had to work very hard to even be allowed to go. I’ve always been in love with space.”
“But you’re terrified of it,” he pointed out.
Her shoulders sagged. “My life isn’t logical. Usually I just go from one disaster to the next.” Her deep brown eyes glowed with his reflection as they moved over him. “Haven’t you ever wanted something despite knowing it would end badly? That’s everything for me. I wanted to go to space and part of me hoped…” She shook her head. “What am I saying? I don’t know what I hoped.”
He had a suspicion that she was talking about more than just space. Her eyes constantly seemed to puzzle him out—but she had yet to arrive at any conclusion. He felt the same way. This pressing need to navigate the mess between them drove him to lose control of every interaction.
Despite the lies.
He wanted her. He wanted her to trust him enough to introduce her to the freedom that only the stars could offer. When he was out among the pure void, feeling the rote orbit and the brilliant silence, itdidmake sense. And when he looked at her, he realized she couldn’t see it, as if she was blind. Somehow that broke his heart.
He wanted to break the distance between them—to find that understanding—but he was clueless where to start.
And even though he was on her ship, it felt as though she’d thrown up more walls than before.
She chewed her lip, shifting nervously. Her eyes scanned the area behind him where a narrow utility closet was hidden. But she kept glancing at him like an obstacle in her path.
“Something else on your mind, Lucca?”
She frowned, focusing on the wall behind him. “The lights.” Her voice was low with sustained frustration.
“I could bring them back on,” he offered. His mind was working out a number of inadvisable ideas. “But I want something in return.”
Her brows knitted as those dark eyes returned to him. She held her tool-belt up, various odds and ends jutting out of the thick canvas material. “Don’t bother, I’ll take care of—”
“It’s not something your tools can fix. I put them out of order on purpose.”To mess with you. Because I’m a giant asshole.But if he left her to her own devices, he got the feeling that she would literally live inside the walls and become one of the systems.
Her little brows plunged lower.
“And my computer?”
“Oh. That really is fried.”
He could tell she was struggling not to blow up on him. With a sudden movement, she ripped the tie out of her hair and re-gathered the entire dark length—banding it at the nape of her neck as a way to let off frustration. Her hair reached to her ass. It was glorious, and it took painful effort to keep his hands off it.
Releasing a breath, she squared off against him.
“What do you want?” she asked.
