Halo by Kelly Gay

Author:Kelly Gay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2016-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Rion found Cade in his quarters, lying on his bunk, hands tucked behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. She sat on the mattress near his knee. “You know I have to go down there.”

Always forward. Only forward.

His chest rose and fell with a deep sigh. He pulled his attention from the ceiling. “I know. You’re incredibly transparent when it comes to things you want.”

At her eye roll, he rose onto his elbows until they were eye level and laid it all out. “You’re going in dark. You’ll check things out. Make a beeline for the buoy and then improvise your way out.” A lopsided smile pulled at one corner of his mouth, but his eyes were worried and still annoyed.

“Your point?”

“We’ve been crewing together for six years. We play our little games, you and me. Take what we want from each other, dance around any kind of future or possibilities . . .”

As Cade tried to find the right words to continue, Rion realized that he’d summed up their relationship with a few simple sentences, words that sounded so easy and maybe even a little empty. But they weren’t. At times, she’d had similar thoughts. Wanted possibilities, wanted to admit feelings, admit loneliness and fears, and look to a committed future together. But the places they went to, the people they dealt with, the risks of space travel . . . Rion didn’t like to lose or hurt or contemplate the possibility of future losses.

And neither did Cade. He’d already lost his family, a wife and two children. Parents and siblings. He didn’t want to lose again, and especially not to some crazy-ass undertaking on a wrecked destroyer with, of all things, a Hunter on board.

She understood.

But she was still going down there. And he damn well knew it.

Cade returned to staring once more at the ceiling with a tic in his jaw. “I’ve been thinking about the first time we met, when Sorely threw you against the bulkhead.”

She smiled at the memory. “I never hit the bulkhead.” Because Cade had been lined up there with the rest of the crew, watching in the cargo hold of Birger’s ship, and she’d plowed right into him. He’d boosted her up and whispered in her ear: Old left shoulder injury. Knees are bad too. Then he’d pushed her toward the fight with a smack on the ass. It had shocked her so much that she’d glanced back at him, surprised by his audacity, and when she turned back to the fight, Sorely’s fist met her face. She dropped like a stone, the world spinning. Slowly, she’d rolled to her belly and pushed up to see Cade wincing apologetically. And then she’d gone for Sorely’s knee and then his shoulder.

She won that fight because of Cade.

It had been a shifting point in her status on the ship and in her career to follow.

“You trying to tell me I can’t win this fight?” she asked.

His brow lifted and he nudged her thigh with his knee.

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