MATTHIAS
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Tell me you have good news,” I say to Clayton, wedging the datapad under one arm as I grip the handlebar. He throws a hairy, burly arm over my stiff shoulders. I fight the urge to bat him off.
My shoulders are tenser than the thread holding that Italian kid’s vest together. I don’t know what I’ll do if Alex–
No. Shewillget out of that room. I will get her out. I promised her – and myself. I won’t break that promise.
I will not return home without her. I refuse to go back to the veil of despair that’s haunted me these past few years. Ever since I watched her walk out the door, without even attempting to stop her.I was weak.Afraid.
I watch over my shoulder, as Clayton steers me further away from the others, and clench my jaw at the sight of thisGigolo, with his disheveled blonde hair and baby-smooth chin, hovering by the window and throwing soft eyes atmy Alex.Mein Herz.
When I saw his wandering hands all over her earlier, I saw red, and I had to bite back the urge to throw him out thenearest airlock.
“How are you holding up, Matty?” Clayton interrupts my internal spiral.
“Alex needs me.” I assert.
I didn’t come up here expecting her to run back into my open arms. Too much time has passed for that. Too much hurt. However, this was not a contingency I had foreseen, nor planned for.
I was foolish to think she would have remained unattached. I just wasn’t expectinghim. It’s not Luca specifically – I have never met the kid before. It’s what he represents. Luca couldn’t be more my opposite if Alex had tried. It's as if she used an algorithm to track him down. He’s everything I’m not, and I’m trying to ignore how much that thought hurts.
He’s in the heights of youth, and I’m…well, I’m finding a few too many greys peppering around the temples these days.
I’m still in decent enough shape, but he is aShrank.His biceps have biceps. Who has that much muscle mass after four months spent in an absence of gravity? I wouldn’t be surprised if steroids were at play. Not sure how NASA or the ESA let that slip past them.
A warm, firm palm squeezes the nape of my neck, in a move overly familiar considering Clayton’s not spoken to me for the better part of the past three years. Clearly long enough for me to forget how Americans have the inability to keep their hands to themselves. No prizes forguessing whose side he took when Alex decided to leave.
And it was her choice to leave.
She left me, the space agency and the country. She couldn’t get away fast enough.
Then, like theGeistfromMutti’sstories from my childhood, she was gone without a trace. All evidence evaporating alongside her, to the point I started to question whether she was ever real. The only clues she ever existed are the remnants of the memories haunting my dreams.
AndAlexhauntsmine.
She haunts my very existence.
She has taken up residence in my mind.
The past three years have been hell without her. I couldn't think. I couldn’t work. All I had was sleep, to look forward to my dreams of better times, when she was inourbed, in my arms.
“Matty?” Clayton speaks.
Pulling my eyes from Alex, I point my narrowed glare at him. He loses the smile real quick, dropping his arm from my shoulder.
“Alex needs me.” I assert again.
At the mere mention of her name, my eyes dart back to her, and my gut clenches. My mind spirals with thoughts of how she is on the wrong side of a depressurising airlock.
I could lose her for good. I waited too long to come for her. Nausea churns in my gut, and for the first time in my life true terror runs through me. With a gulp, I push the sensation down, deep down. Deeper than hell down.
Clayton pats my shoulder again. “Com' on Kiddo. Talk to me.”
Despite everything, the time, the distance, he always did have a way to cut through the bullshit, as he calls it, and see right through to the heart of the matter. Something only he and Alex could manage.
I sigh. “I just wanted to talk to her.”
