Chapter 6
Rayna slipped out of the suites when she heard Carmen and Anne, who were getting ready for bed—as if the blackness of the void beyond the viewport could tell them whether it was day or night—whispering about the strange, only semi-understood hazards ahead.
“Maybe it would’ve been better to sleep through it,” Anne said. “I’m just not sure I want to know what’s happening.”
“I know,”Carmen said. “I mean, I don’t know what’s happening. But I know what you mean about not knowing.”
Rayna didn’t blame them for their doubts, but their confusion and fear only seemed to add to her own, and the walls of the suite pressed around her like the panes of a larger, more elegant but still utterly imprisoning coffin.
She half expected to be stopped at the doorway by guards as she steppedinto the corridor, but there was no one about.
Not even Raz.
She snorted softly to herself at the stupid way her heart sank a little deeper. What? Had she really thought he’d be pining outside her door? If he had been, it would’ve only been because the suites were actually his.
But after dropping that clusterfuck of a bombshell about having their memories wiped if they wanted to go home, hehad promised to send the Earth envoy to them as soon as the representative arrived. He had recommended they stay in the suites even if they didn’t want to be put in stasis.
“Fewer memories to erase,” he explained.
She shuddered again at the idea of erasing herself. But being comatose again didn’t sound any better.
And being stuck in the room with her accidental victims dreading what would happennext was worse yet.
Wandering through the big, empty hallways in her borrowed clothes and slippers made her hunch her shoulders. It was too much like the nights after Mom left when she’d slipped through the house in her pajamas—she had to get her own glass of water now—and heard her little sister crying in her room.
And hurrying to her parents’ bedroom—now just Daddy’s—to tell him that Vaughnwas crying. Only to hear him weeping too.
God, it had hurt so much. Not just grieving over her own abandonment but realizing how much they hurt too and that neither of them could help her, and that she couldn’t help them. Not really. Oh, they could collapse on each other, but what good would that do?
At the base PX one day, while she’d tried to remember what Mom had always put in the shoppingcart, Daddy’s CO had told her what a good little trooper she was. He’d ruffled her hair, which was awful, because he didn’t know her well enough to do thatandit had taken her forever to do her hair by herself. She’d known in that instant she wouldn’t follow Daddy into the military no matter how much Vaughn said it sounded like heaven to run around all day, fighting bad guys.
Sure, they couldfight bad guys, but they’d never win. Because sometimes the sabotage came from within, and she’d never forget that, never forget the wreckage that came from being vulnerable to someone who said they’d always be there. And then left.
And now it turned out, she hadn’t even had a chance to fight Blackworm. He’d taken her without a peep, as far as she remembered.
Although now that she knew about“refocusing” memories, maybe shehadfought and she didn’t even recall.
“Unfair,” she whispered.
“The universe isn’t fair.”
Sheeeped as she spun around. The slippers skidded on the smooth decking, and she almost went down.
Raz grabbed her elbow and held her upright with an easy, poised strength until she got her feet underneath her again.
She scowled at him—and his cool dignity, speakingof unfair—and snapped, “What are you doing out here?”
“Walking around my ship.” He released her and crossed his arms over his chest. A deep breath expanded the width of his pecs exponentially. “What areyoudoing out here?”
Whatwasshe doing? Staring at his chest, apparently. Which was revealed in excessively defined detail by a thin, tight gray material. Wait, no, couldn’t say that. “Uh, walkingaround your ship.”
Even the most dedicated power walking wouldn’t give a body like his. The fitted tunic clung to his broad pectorals and each one of his many washboard abs, revealing the taut muscles of his biceps. His lightly tanned skin glistened with a fine sheen of sweat. Apparently aliens sweated? Who knew. Was it salty, like…?
Wait, no, not eventhinkingthat.
He tilted his head, anda lock of dark hair swept across his brow. All the other coal-black strands were caught up in a knot at the back of his skull, and she found herself wondering how long it would be if he let it down… “Couldn’t sleep?”
What, with an alien? She supposed she could sleep with an alien. She wasn’t racist or species-ist or whatever –ist it would be to refuse to sleep with an alien out of hand justbecause—
