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“You can’t go!” My heart rate is spiking. “Please don’t go,” I beg. I don’t even like this nurse. Why is she acting like he murdered my whole family?!
I go very still.
Did he…?
No.
No.
I can trust him.
Can’t I?
“Luna,” he says, a knot in his throat. “I…”
I shake my head on instinct. “No. Please.” I death-grip his hand. He’s not peeling me off him. If he were a murderer, he’d have handcuffs. He’d be in jail. And when I look at him, I know—I know he’s good. Why would I give my kyber crystal to someone bad?
He is light.
He is harmony.
He is love.
The Force is within him. I saw it. I knew it.
I’ve just forgotten it somehow.
“You can’t be here,” the nurse sneers.
“He can’t leave!” I scream, uncommon rage storming me. Anger. I just want to cling to someone I know I can trust. And she’s trying to take that away. In the last three years, I have no clue what my relationships with my family and friends are like, but I know this.
The crystal. The watch. The sex this morning. He’s here. He fought to see me when everyone else told him not to.
I trust Donnelly.
“He. Can’t. Leave,” I repeat, almost out of breath. I’m working myself up, and her hatred of him volleys into concern for me.
“Ditto,” he says to the nurse. “Can’t leave. Stuck here like glue.” His hand still tightly clings to mine.
“I’m getting your doctor.”
“Do that,” Donnelly tells her. “Go get my best friend, Becky.”
She glares but beelines out of the room.
Best friend? I frown up at Donnelly. “You’re friends with Farrow?” Since when?
While helping me back onto the bed, he tells me it’s not something they advertise all that much. “It’s mainly Farrow though,” he says. “Always acting like he’s a take-me-or-leave-me meh friend.” Donnelly smiles a little at this, like it’s an inside joke. “But the guy has never wanted me to leave. He’s made it easy for me to stay.”
“Farrow is a caring bean,” I say, letting out the last anxious breath.
“Nah, he’s a kidney bean. Full of piss…” He trails off at my laughter, and his smile matches mine until the noise dies down.
Time is ticking. Someone will come in any minute now. Donnelly surprisingly risks another round of the nurse’s wrath by sitting on the edge of the bed.
I pick at my thumbnail. “I’m a really shitty intergalactic detective. I thought I had a baby.” I speak so softly; I doubt he hears. “I would’ve never guessed he was Moffy’s. He would’ve been last on my list.”
“You’re not a shitty intergalactic detective,” he tells me, which jars me in surprise. “I’d hire you.”
“For all your interstellar troubles?”
“I’ve got plenty of those.”
“Same. A lot can go wrong in space,” I say and relax into the casualness of this conversation. I like how it’s broken into the intensity of the others. “Everything can really be solved by discovering a perfectly mined mineral on an otherworldly planet. Then you’ve created super space medicine. Super space condoms. Super space lube.”
“You sharing your super space products?”
“Maybe.” I shrug. “For a fee.”
He sucks in a breath. “Girl, take…” He doesn’t finish, his voice dropping off.
“What?” I look over at him.
He skims my features. “Take my money,” he mutters, sounding sad.
I struggle to speak because it hurts how he’s seeing me. His face is fracturing. Pain lances his blue eyes as if he’s realizing that he’s lost something too.
Lost me.
He’s stopped pretending that I remember him.
I blink back tears, but I swallow the lump. “I could use a partner in this detective case,” I say. “The Case of Luna’s Missing Memories.”
He smiles, even if it’s a sorrowful one. “Sign me up.”
Chatter escalates outside until I hear a forceful knock. “Don’t leave,” I remind him, a little more whiney than I meant.
“If I can help it, I won’t.”
28
PAUL DONNELLY
“Donnelly,” Farrow says with a sigh and an eye-roll like I’m in deep shit this time. Don’t I know it. Luna thinks I’m just some run-of-the-mill bodyguard. Background. Wallpaper.
She thinks I’m no one.
The girl I’ve given my heart and soul to doesn’t know she even has my heart and soul.
But she’s alive. She’s awake. Can I really ask for more?
The fact that she’s demanding I stay is another checkmark in the plus column. Gotta hang on to those good things. They’ve been hard to come by, and this whole night, morning, whatever has crushed me enough.
“He needs to leave, Dr. Hale,” Nurse Macy says with heat while she’s latched to Farrow’s side. “He can’t be in here.” Her glare slices to me. “And get off her bed.”
My ass is barely on her bed. “Sure, Becky.” I stand, trying to brush her off, but Luna panics, her chest rising and falling in uneven patterns. I’m not going anywhere. I reach out and hold her hand, showing her I’m staying.
