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Mid-lap, he paused. And looked bereft as hell when his eyes swiveled to her.
“Yeah,” he lied, squeezing his hands into fists and trying to control the surges of light. She saw it now—the electricity in his body hitting the walls of its cage. He opened one hand to rub the back of his neck, redirecting the tension without curing it. “I should be asking if you’re okay. You’re the one who was almost thrown outside.”
She took in every frantic detail. She was shaken—but he looked devastated.
“It’s okay tonotbe okay,” she said. “You don’t have to be invincible.”
She stepped tentatively closer, taking one of his large hands, and noting the hard tension in his forearm. She could use a metric ton of force on him and he wouldn’t yield, but if she drove something into the right point, she imagined he would snap.
“Did they hurt you?” she asked.
“No.”
“Would anything help?” she asked quietly, searching his distressed face for clues on how to help. He looked like he had an answer, but didn’t want to say it to her.
“I’m not gonna judge you for it,” she added, “whatever it is.”
“Fighting. It’s why I turned into a bounty hunter. Fighting gets it out.”
“Is there a waywecould burn off that steam?”
His eyes roamed over her for the briefest moment, quickly disengaging. “Not in this case, Lucca. I could hurt you.”
Well… she was grateful he was that self-aware. But she hated seeing him like this. He slipped his hand from her grip and sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’tneedto do anything. I just need a few moments,” he said. She was sure he wanted that to be the case.
“Do you want to describe it to me?” she prodded. “Whatever it is you’re feeling? Or… do you want me to leave you alone?”
What is wrong?
What happened to you?
Why are you in so much pain?
Please,she begged with her eyes.Talk to me.
Slowly, he came to a decision. He didn’t look at her when he spoke.
“When they dragged you away and I couldn’t get to you, it was like…” His eyes turned distant and haunted, like he was in a completely different place.
“The night we were turned over to the human ship, the one thing I tried to do was stay close to Baade. He wasn’t a fighter. He was Erulean—his shell was made to protect him from the water, not… violence. We had a relationship kind of like ours, Lucca. I watched over him whenever things got dangerous. It’s the only way I know how to have relationships with people.”
Bleak silence surrounded them. Beyond the window, colorful specks of metallic light flew by in cheerful indifference to their sobering talk.
“They didn’t even let us say goodbye,” he said. “They stabbed him with something and dragged him away, and I couldn’t stop it. I never saw him after that.”
“Were you reliving that just now?”
His eyes were round and unseeing. “Mmh.”
That would traumatize the fuck out of her.
“And now what do you feel?” she asked.
His eyes moved sightlessly over the floor. One of his hands slid over his chest before dropping. Every movement racked the tension up between them, and it wasn’t the sexual kind.
“It’s been years. I haven’t found him. I still feel like he’s out there…”
Tiny flecks of white static burst around him. White, not blue. Almost veering on yellow, pallid and sickly. This was a chapter that had never been closed for him. He wouldn’t rest until it was. Lucca couldn’t fix it for him and that made her feel incredibly helpless.
