In other circumstances, he’d have found it cute. Or at least taken it as leverage to hold over the man later. In his current mood, he didn’t care. “Your secret’s safe with me, Sanderson. I won’t tell anyone you baby talk to the kittens when you’re alone.”
The first mate glared at him, wondering if Layth was being serious or not. No doubt thinking how he’d use the same information were the tables turned. Still, something of Layth’s stress must have shown on his face because Zion handed the cat over. “Thanks. I’ve got to check on our pickup. Supposed to be a big shipment of organic vodka headed for Farhope. Be a shame if a couple of bottles fell out along the way, right?”
“Yeah,” Layth said, distracted. He snuggled Collins against his chest, and the cat purred his loud appreciation. He turned to watch Zion leave and came face-to-face with Meja, standing in the cargo hold’s entry. Zion ducked past her, careful to avoid saying anything, itself a sign of the anger that rolled off her in a physical wave.
He’d never seen her angry. Upset, certainly, but angry? Nothing like this.
“You don’t get to just walk away after dropping that bombshell, Layth.” Her hands were clenched into fists, her whole body vibrating with the need to move.
Layth took a slow breath and tucked Collins back into the carrier. “I’m sorry you’re upset, but you know I’m right about this.”
“It’s not about you being right!” She ground each word out, as though he’d suddenly lost the ability to understand her. “What do you mean you won’t let me go?”
He moved closer, though he was smart enough to stay out of lunging distance. “Golden Ratio followed you to the store, correct? Either because they had a facial ID alert on the CCTV, or they had a trace on your omni.” She’d used it to open the dressing room. He hadn’t thought about it at the time, but it made sense, and was much more reliable than face scanning. “Probably the latter, or they’d be here already.
“All I’m saying is, the Acinonyx party is literally the most obvious place you could go. It’s a safe bet that they’ll have a sponsorship package; every major corporation on the planet does, and your old bosses absolutely target this clientele. Going there, especially with a cat, is just asking to be arrested.”
“No. That’s not what this is about.”
He blinked. “Of course it is.”
“No! That’s what it’s about!” Her shout echoed in the shuttle’s cargo hold, and he took a step back. “You don’t get to order me about. I’m not a cat or a dog that does what I’m told. Before you start, yes, I think they’re tracking my omni. If you’d been a grownup and talked to me like an adult, we could have discussed it. That might have been okay. But you made a pronouncement as though you could make my decisions for me.”
“That’s not—” He stopped, as much from her death glare as the sudden understanding. That was exactly what he’d been doing. Ordering her, as if he could stop her from throwing herself at difficult problems. “You’re right.”
She looked at him, her pale gray-blue eyes piercing even under the fluorescent light of the cargo hold. “And?”
He walked to the control panel and shut the door to the outside. Zion could still get in, but at least Layth would have warning and could clam up. He didn’t want the first mate stumbling into the middle of his confession.
“When I was in the Burbidge Defense Force, I had a…friend.” The wrong word—he wouldn’t soil the memory or his apology by hiding behind semantics. His hand slipped into his pocket and curled around the scrap of fabric he kept there. Its presence steeled him to continue. “No. A lover. We were lovers. Jayme was everything I had difficulty being—gregarious, extroverted. Fun. We were stupid about each other, and clumsy in our affection. We were both medical officers, so it was less of an issue than if we’d been soldiers, but we still had to keep it secret because the brass frowned on fraternization. The point is I cared about her.”
He walked to the chairs in the pass-through and sat down. After a moment, Meja sat across from him, forearms braced across her knees. She didn’t say anything, which he took as permission to continue.
“There was a barracks fire. We had snuck off together, and someone in her unit had left a flame untended. She… I tried to stop her, and she charged into the fire, trying to get people out of the building. She blacked out inside, and another trooper carried her out, but it was too late. Between the smoke, and the damage the fire had done to her lungs…”
Her fingers curled around his, thumb stroking the back of his hand. “I’m—”
“I couldn’t even grieve for her because we weren’t supposed to be together. And now I’m back here, and you’re doing the same thing, charging into danger without a care in the world. I’m sorry it felt like I was controlling. I just…I got scared, and then angry. But I shouldn’t have yelled at you. You’re perfectly capable of making your own decisions.” Heat clogged his throat, and he forced himself to swallow it. He’d embarrassed himself enough, he wouldn’t cry too.
Her voice was quiet. “I got angry and overreacted too. Thank you for sharing that story with me. I assume no one else knows?”
He shook his head. “Just you. And Collins.” And Jayme, whose name tape he’d stolen from her uniform so he could have something to remember her by.
“Well, I can keep a secret at least as well as he can,” she said. “And you’re right, the party would be dangerous. But how will race day be any better?”
“For starters? There will be a hundred times as many people. That will make it easier to blend in and get lost. Plus, there’s multiple exits and entrances. You’ll be harder to box in.”
She nodded and looked down at her dress. “I bought a really nice outfit, and now I can’t wear it. So, you know what that means?”
He looked up, squeezing her hands in his. “No?”
Her grin was all the forgiveness he needed. “It means, you’re going to have to take me to a nice party when this is all done, so I have an excuse to wear it again.”
His mouth twitched in a smile. His shoulders still felt weighed down, but the burden didn’t seem as heavy as it had. “That’s a deal.”
14
The area near the grandstands was a riot of color, noise, and activity. Meja wished she had an extra set of eyes, just so she could look everywhere at once. Even then she might not be able to absorb all the action around them. At least the crowd parted as she approached, keeping their distance, though many looked in awe at Collins as he lay curled in the crook of her arm, fixed to her wrist by a short leash from his harness. The murmurs about her assumed wealth and the presence of a cat swirled like their own version of the race at large.
Layth was tense next to her, wearing a dark outfit that turned him into a shadow. Here, she could see his military past come to the fore. She could practically hear his mental assessment of each piece of data as he added it to his mental landscape. Unfortunately, it also meant he’d fallen quiet since they’d gotten into the autocab for the trip to the circuit. They were well outside of Londinium; they had to be for the amount of space required for the raceships to operate.