“I had Baker modify the recipe like you requested.”
Right, the enzyme. She’d forgotten that the enigmatic Baker was returning to the ship on Heph Prime. She had an excuse, she supposed, but still she felt guilty about not remembering. “Is it working?”
He chuckled, his gaze sliding to one side rather than meet her face. “I don’t know. I’ve been too worried about it to stop the antihistamine. I can handle being a little groggy more than I can handle having my eyes swell shut.”
“It’s just as well,” she said. “It takes about a week or two for levels to be therapeutic. But then you should see an improvement.”
“I assumed it would be something like that. Have they noticed the change in their food? Are they still eating?”
She leaned closer to him, smiling as she handed him the first bowl from the fabricator. “You’ll have to come see for yourself.”
Layth glanced at the bowl of food in his hand, then at the door to Meja’s berth, and tried to visualize what he’d expected to happen. Why had he left the table? She’d been perfectly able to hear him; the Sentinel’s mess wasn’t that large. It didn’t make sense, and the illogic gnawed at him. He didn’t do things without reason, and the only reason he kept coming back to was he wanted to be close to her.
But that didn’t make sense either. He’d spent plenty of time close to her prior to this, but thinking back, he realized he’d spent the last few days distancing himself. Stopping by long enough to make sure she wasn’t in pain and easing her off the suetrex in a way that wouldn’t prompt an addiction response. Even walking back from the mess, he’d stopped at the med bay first to give her time to her to reach to her room rather than appear to be waiting on her.
He knew when he was being conscious about avoiding someone.
He knocked on the frame next to her door, and it slid open almost immediately. Annoyance creased Meja’s eyes and sparked in her voice. “It’s about time you got here. Collins has been growling nonstop because I won’t let him eat his sisters’ food.”
He resisted the urge to grin—barely—as the feline in question tried to sneak past her calf and out into the hall. He scooped the cat up with his free hand while whispering, “Oh no you don’t. Not fishing you out of the air system again.”
“I thought I was the one who fished him out.” Meja closed the door behind her. The other two cats hadn’t bothered to look up from their bowls.
He put both Collins and the food on the floor next to the rooms only chair, then sat. “It’s funny. I don’t actually remember.”
She leaned against the desk rather than disturb the two cats currently eating on her bed, and chuckled. “Honestly, I don’t either. But I’ll take credit for it.” She let out a prolonged, weary sigh. “How in the hell am I going to smuggle a live cat into the TriSystem Races?”
“Why are we smuggling a cat down to the surface?”
She blinked. “Because no one is going to pay for something they can’t see. Especially not race folks.” It was stupidly risky, waving a giant red flag in GRCA’s backyard. “If someone sees one of the cats, they’ll practically sell themselves.”
“That’s if they don’t rat you out to Golden Ratio instead.” He hated to think like that, but it was a possibility. “I think it’s too risky.”
“What’s risky is keeping these cats any longer than necessary. Taking one down is a smaller risk. Remember, GRCA is looking for three. The sooner we can split them up, the safer it will be for all of us.”
She wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t have to like it. “I still think it’s an unnecessary risk, but you’re right. As long as you agree that if it’s too dangerous, we pull out.”
“You’re coming with me?” The moment of hope on her face was painful enough to scar. It flickered and faded as she waved him off. “No. You’ve done more than enough as it is. I know you’re watching me to protect Captain Barnes’s investment, but there’s got to be a limit to that.”
She hadn’t meant it as a barb, but it hurt anyway. He studied the emotion for a moment, making sense of it. “She’s not the only reason I do things. Sometimes, I do them because I enjoy them. Being the medic allows me a fair bit of freedom after all. The captain doesn’t want to risk alienating me.” He smiled to let her know he’d meant it as a joke, even if his words were partly based in truth.
She watched him, eyes narrow as a grin pricked the corner of her mouth. “And what sort of things do you do because you enjoy them?”
“Plenty. I read. I play terrible Go. I…” He would have said he exercised, but that was a mandate from the captain. While he didn’t have Barr’s or Tyler’s slavish addiction to the weights, he recognized that the workouts were part of staying healthy in space and enjoyed them, required or not.
“I don’t mean your hobbies.” She laughed. “What do you do when you go planetside? When you don’t have to keep a fool and her cats safe, that is.”
He didn’t go planetside, not if he didn’t need to engage in some extracurricular sales to restock the med bay. “Like I’ve said. It’s not a good idea to put your only medic in harm’s way.”
She turned to face him as the other two cats jumped down from the bed to check if their brother had finished yet. “You put yourself between me and an armed bounty hunter.”
“And we both saw how well that turned out. You got shot.” A rough chuckle scratched out of his throat. “How do you know I wasn’t putting you between me and them?”
He’d examined his motivations on that issue and decided it had been dumb luck that they shot her through the façade. And if he’d had it all to do over, he knew that he’d have changed their positions without regret. He was much more okay with being injured himself than he was with her being hurt.
Her touch at the point of his jaw was insistent, dragging his face up to meet her ice-rimed gaze. “You don’t mean that.”
Shame burned in his throat for having said it aloud, and he shook his head. “No. I didn’t.”
“You’re not that person. No matter what you think of yourself.” She took a deep breath. “If your family couldn’t grind you into that person, then no one else could either.”
Her fingertips were hot against his skin, but he didn’t want to pull away from them. Instead he let them lift him from the chair until he was standing in front of her. They were close to the same height, only a few centimeters of difference. His mouth felt hot, dry, and he swallowed. The sound felt too loud in the sudden quiet of the room.
Her gaze dropped to his lips. “I’d like to kiss you.”
It was a statement, not a question, but the words send a frisson of nervous energy along his spine. The idea terrified him as much as it excited him. Admitting to himself, as well as Meja, that he found her attractive. He brushed his thumb along the pale curve of her cheekbone and nodded. “I’d prefer it to be mutual, but if you really want it to be one-sided…”
Her brow furrowed, and he had to resist the urge to smooth it out. “Is that a yes or a no?”