I go through my days working off the base assumption that I can’t have what I want. That maybe I never should. So even when it seems like I might, I push my chances away.
Now I reach out and cup my chance gently on the jaw, bracing for him to pull back. “Ettian,” Gal whispers. He doesn’t move.
There’s more I should say. A better explanation for why I’ve finally come around. I know he probably needs it.
But I think we both need this more.
He’s going to stop me. He should stop me.
He doesn’t stop me.
And the weight of all my fears leaves me as my lips seal over his. I prop one knee up on the copilot’s seat to keep from toppling over as he pulls me down against him, his arms winding around me so enthusiastically that for a moment I forget why I was ever afraid in the first place. This isn’t an everyday sort of kiss. It’s deep. Hungry. Terrifying. Momentous. I’m kissing the Umber heir, and he’s kissing me back.
And I was right. I was so right. We’re slipping into alignment, clicking into place, solid and sure. Resisting this has been destroying us. Allowing it is putting us back together again. We should have been honest—we should have been doing this from the start.
The urge to make up for lost time is a little terrifying. “Gal,” I mumble against his lips, trying to break away. He lets out a soft, protesting hum, and the corners of his mouth tighten. I slide my hand down to his chest and push, pinning him against the seat so I can look him in the eye. “I’m sorry. And don’t you dare say it—don’t you dare tell me ‘no apologies.’ ”
He blinks up at me, looking dazed and giddy and so gorgeous that it takes a significant amount of willpower to keep from kissing him again.
“I’ve been holding myself at a distance because I thought I saw what I was afraid of. I saw how much you want this plan to succeed—I knew you need it to, but I kept expecting the worst, reading into everything the worst way.”
Those were the instincts that used to keep me alive, and only now am I seeing how much they twisted my perceptions. They let me turn Gal into the monster I feared he might become, giving him no chance to prove himself otherwise.
“And I’m sorry I went off with Wen today,” I blurt, the words cascading out of me in a rush. “I didn’t think. She nearly killed us when she spun out, and all I could think about afterward was how I could have left you here all alone, never having…Not knowing…”
The thought is too terrible to complete. Gal’s hand trails along my hairline, across my jaw. I lean into it, closing my eyes. “Ettian,” he murmurs again. His hand slips lower, his thumb moving to circle the jut of my throat. I make a surprised noise, but Gal doesn’t clench. Doesn’t threaten, or if there is a threat in this motion, it’s the softest one I’ve ever received. A notion flickers in the back of my mind—Gal’s the only person in seven years to touch me with this much tenderness.
Or maybe he’s the only one I’ve ever allowed. Maybe the only one I ever will allow. It doesn’t seem possible that in a galaxy where empires rule entire systems, where cityships wage war, where annihilation is a threat that can be made good on, there’s room for something as small and tender as a boy’s gentle hand on my throat.
Slowly Gal lets it slide, moving around my neck until he cups the back of my head. His thumb brushes over my wiry, buzzed-short hair. When he speaks, he breathes his words against my collarbone. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t want to make this harder on you, and I thought you wanted…Every day I wake up terrified that I won’t be able to come back from this. It seemed so much easier to shut down, to not feel anything at all, and I forgot what that would look like to you. I can’t…I need…I’m so glad…” He breaks off, inhaling deeply. “No empire is worth it if I don’t have you too.”
This time I tilt my chin down and let him come to me. In the darkness of my closed eyes and the hush of the cockpit, my world reduces to the slight hitch of his breath as he leans up and presses his lips to mine.
There’s no hurry. No resistance outside, no brink of war on the horizon, not even the thundering urgency inside me for more, more, more. Just the slow tilt of his chin. The warmth of his mouth. The way my shaking hands move up his sides. I feel him grin—nearly catch myself on his teeth.
And a deep certainty washes over me as his hands find my hips, skim under my shirt, run up my back. He’s never going to leave me behind. He never could. I pull back, trailing my fingers over a brow meant to wear a crown of brass and obsidian.
It feels ridiculous to say it now. For gods’ sake, we just caved into this. But two and a half years is more than enough to know, even if you’ve only been kissing for a microscopic portion of them, so it doesn’t feel shameful in the slightest to whisper, “I love you,” into the inches between us.
And it feels a thousand times more ridiculous when Gal whispers, “I love you too,” back.
He leans in for another brisk kiss, his nose smashing awkwardly into my cheek. “Tell me what you need,” I mumble against his mouth. “Where to be. When to be there. I’m never going to let you down again.”
Gal laughs, nuzzling my neck. “I need you here. With me. For as long as we can stay in this ship. I need them not to question that I want to sleep here. But most importantly, I’m gonna need you to kiss me again and tell me not to do something really stupid.”
“Really stupid?” I ask before obliging him.
When I break away, his eyes are downright wicked. “Do you want to steal the paint, or should I?”
* * *
—
Gal swipes the can from one of the scaffolds while the workers are looking the other way, covered by the thumping beats of the Archon music the detailing team is blasting from a haphazardly but lovingly rigged stereo system. He sprints back across the hangar with the paint in one hand and the detailing brushes clenched tightly in his other and dodges around the Ruttin’ Hell’s rotary thrusters, nearly running headlong into me. A glob of thick, brassy paint slips over the edge of the can, dripping onto the hangar floor, and Gal tries to wipe it away with the toe of his boot.
Instead he smears a streak of gold across the concrete. He laughs, bracing against my shoulder, but only makes it worse as he scuffs his boot along the floor. “Ruttin’ hell,” he mutters. The paint’s already starting to dry. “Whatever. Did you pick a spot?”
I point to a panel in the juncture between the ship’s body and the branches that hold the rotary thrusters. It’s clear of the heat shielding so the paint won’t get scorched off by the reentry burn, and it’s low enough that we don’t need a ladder to reach it.