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It would certainly make a huge difference in how bad I likely smelled. Was it…days ago that I last managed to get a bath? “I don’t get hot water at home unless we warm it over the stove, so I’ll take advantage of the offer, if that’s okay.”
“It’s okay.” Gunnar nodded as Crew left the room, redressing himself as he went.
“Yes,” Mace let me go so I could get out of the bed as well. “Take all the time you want. Despite the fact that it wasn’t working, we don’t usually suffer from lack of hot water here. You’ll have the basics to meet your needs, nothing fancy, even though we’re cut off from other planets. We can offer hot water, a bed, food, and safety.”
I climbed around him and slipped my feet to the floor, chuckling. “I don’t have a bed at home, just a pad on the floor, a blanket, and a pillow. What you’ve just described is my definition of luxury, not basics. Thank you. I realize you don’t have to do anything for me.”
Gunnar widened his eyes, his expression a mixture of stunned confusion. I didn’t imagine he often found himself befuddled, which made the expression bizarrely adorable. The enhanced rarely felt any confusion whatsoever, so far as I could tell.
“Amias lived these last years without a bed and hot water…?” He made the words a statement, but I could pick up on his unspoken question.
“He could have had one. I think most of the enhanced do, but he preferred to share his pad with Stone.”
Mace cleared his throat. “Raven, if Stone also was used by Clarke’s associates sexually, how did Amias react? Your description makes it sound like he was very attached; yet he just let that happen?”
I nodded, not surprised it didn’t make sense to someone who never lived our life. “The men that Stone serviced for Clarke—well, anyone we touch because of our orders? They’re meaningless to us. We do what we must to survive, because he owns us, and he owns the whole planet. I’m sure that Amias didn’t like the situation, but Stone loved only him. Whatever went on between the two of them, it was different than what Stone had to do for Clarke.”
“Why didn’t he just take you two and leave?” Gunnar crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s what I would have done. Grab the husband. Grab the sister. Come home. You could have been learning to read and bathing in hot water for the last five years. Whatever went down that last day that Amias was here when he announced he just had to leave, he knew he could come home. That he could always come home.”
Mace nodded. “He had to know.”
“It wasn’t just us, though,” I tried to explain. “A whole housing area counted on him. Stone loved all of them, all of us. They…tolerated me as Stone’s sister. He never would’ve left them. He really believed that we were all better together, and that we could survive better as a unit. If Amias even suggested leaving the planet, Stone would have refused him. Amias loved him, so he would’ve understood that to take Stone away from the people who relied on him would be to destroy him. Stone would never choose to leave us behind.”
They didn’t understand, and I could tell. Honestly, I didn’t really understand it, either. I never loved anyone the way Stone and Amias loved each other. Despite knowing their choices, I had to admit I would’ve chosen differently if I was in their position. If I had been Amias, I would’ve picked up Stone and left the second I spotted him.
I would have asked forgiveness later.
If I’d been Amias, I would’ve left me behind the first week we met, but he was a better person than me. They both were.
I stopped short about a second after I stepped into the bathroom. In theory, I knew how the shower worked. The older people talked about them all the time, reminiscing about how it had been before. I guess technically it was only fifteen years since everything changed on my planet, but before seemed like a different world to me.
Twisting the faucet as Gunnar had done earlier, I let the water pour out of the gilded device. It occurred to me that I didn’t have a change of clean clothes, and despite my lack of concern over nudity, I didn’t want to spend weeks naked.
I poked my head out of the bathroom, spotting Mace quickly. “I have two changes of clothes on the shuttle. I didn’t bring them because I didn’t want them to get wet, and I intended to come right back to leave the planet.”
Mace nodded. “I can get those back for you by tomorrow. You’ll have your clothes.”
“Thank you.” Then I remembered, no more thank yous. “Never mind. I didn’t say that.”
He smirked at me. “Good.”
The hot water proved to be glorious. I closed my eyes and let it roll down my back. I cried out from the joy of it, probably the closest I’d ever been to an orgasm. I smiled at the thought. The cold fled my body. Yes, this was exactly what I’d needed.
My weariness from traveling swirled down the drain with soap and filth. Although I’d need to board another shuttle to get home, I had to admit I didn’t look forward to the experience, and I silently vowed to myself that I’d never be on one again, if I could help it. The noise. The constant feeling of knowing I wasn’t on the ground…all of it unsettled me in a way I didn’t like. I liked real, planetary gravity.
That was a word that I learned only recently. Gravity.
I turned off the water and wrapped myself back up in the towel before I exited the bathroom, expecting the guys to be gone from the room they’d loaned me. But they hadn’t moved, still lying right where I left them. Gunnar patted the bed where I sat previously, inviting me to join him.
With no reason to fear them, I obeyed. I dropped the towel and climbed back into the bed, where they wrapped me under the blanket, before they both enveloped me in a hug, sandwiching me in their embrace. I wasn’t cold anymore, but I didn’t mind the feeling of their bodies against my own. Stone had been a hugger, a big one, and I missed him. My breath caught, and I realized I didn’t know how I’d live the rest of my life without a hug from my big brother.
“Do you guys give hugs out regularly?” I joked, trying to lighten the moment.
Gunnar laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever given one before, to be honest, so the answer would be no. Not me. And not Mace, either.”
“You’re so much warmer. Your skin feels better.” Mace spoke quietly. “Now you need to sleep, because your body is telling me you haven’t in a very long time. I can hear the strain in your breath, in the swoosh of your blood, in your heartbeat. You are aching to sleep, and I know, because I have lost more people than I can count, that you don’t want to be alone right now. I don’t want to, either. Neither does Gunnar, so lie here with us and fall asleep. Maybe we will, too, but no matter what, you won’t be alone with the grief tonight. We can share it, like Amias never let you do.”
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