She turned back to the jungle after only a cursory glance at the temples. “Do you think they have flervers here?”
I held back my amusement. The conflict in her was obvious, just like it had been on Albion 5. Cautious but curious. Nature scared her. She also loved the adventure of it. She’d face down an armed city goon with only her fists and feet for weapons, but she’d run screaming if an animal came near her.
Not that she was wrong. Some of the animals here could gobble up a human in one bite.
“I think flervers are a Sector 2 thing. I’ve never seen them anywhere else—although they do have snakes here.” And other things Tess didn’t need to hear about right now.
Her head thumped the back of her seat as she looked straight ahead again. “Great.”
I reached over and twined my fingers through hers. “The biggest snake might be your uncle. According to my watch, we have sixteen hours before meeting day starts.”
She sighed, her gaze straying back to the crowded temples. “Let’s find a place to dock, then.”
“I have that covered.” I let go of her hand and, with a swipe of my fingers, woke up my new com unit. I baptized it with a call to the automated reservation service on Reaginine. “Aisé Lodges. Private bungalow for two. Two nights total,” I ordered.
SEARCHING scrolled across the screen in green block letters.
Tess shot me a wary look. “Whatever that is, it sounds expensive. I can’t afford that.”
“I can.” The only thing I had left from my pre-outlaw life was currency. Might as well use it.
“Money can run out,” Tess said.
“Don’t worry, starshine. Unless I need to finance the entire rebellion on my own, the money’s not going to run out.”
Her lips puckered. The huge stash of universal currency I’d amassed to try to buy back my docks from Scarabin White obviously left a sour taste in her mouth. Her chin lifted. Her eyes hardened to blue ice, and my gut sank. I should’ve known better.
Here was the reckoning. I could feel it coming on at warp speed. It wasn’t the money itself that bothered Tess. It was how I’d made it. I’d wanted to treat her to something special. Instead, I was about to get a fight—one I’d had coming for a while.
She turned away, her hands curling into fists in her lap. They drummed against her thighs with light, steady beats. The rest of her stayed stony and silent.
Fuck. “Say it.”
She glanced over with a crisp turn of her head. “Say what, Shade?”
“Say what’s on your mind.”
Her frosty gaze dropped the temperature inside the cruiser to subzero. Would she refuse to talk and pretend everything was fine? Or would she finally spit out all the hurt and anger and disappointment that had been festering like a sore between us since Albion 5?
“Fine.” Anger suddenly charged the air around us, replacing the chill with something fury-hot and fierce. “You want me to say it? How’s this?” Tess’s nostrils flared, and I braced myself, every muscle inside me tensing. “How could you? What were you thinking? How could you live like that? How could you live with yourself? Do you have any idea how many people you’ve hurt? The damage you might have done to the rebellion? To my friends? To the whole freaking galaxy?” Her voice rose. Her eyes spit fire, nothing icy in her expression now. She growled at me. Literally growled, her teeth clamped together and her face all flushed.
“You’re right.” Call me stupid, but Tess’s angry outburst sat a lot better with me than the frigid distance she’d tried to put between us. That didn’t stop cold from worming its way into my chest and freezing my lungs solid with how deeply I’d failed everyone who’d ever counted on me. I was done failing, and I’d apologize to Tess as many times as she needed me to. “I’m sorry. For things I’ve done. For lying to you. I would change so much if I could.”
Her eyes squeezed shut, clamping so tight her nose scrunched up. “I know.” When she opened her eyes again, the light inside them was different, softer somehow. “And then I think: what’s done is done. He’s made a new choice. Changed. He’s helping. He’s helping me. And he’s mine now, so just move on.”
Mine. The word electrified my heart, heating it up and making it beat too hard. I wasn’t even sure Tess understood how true that was. I’d been bone-deep devoted to getting my docks back, no matter the cost to myself or anyone else—until that cost had been the woman next to me.
Bone-deep devotion to her now thickened my throat, giving me a sandpaper voice that scratched out in a low, rough rasp. “I hated what I did. Hunting people down for the Dark Watch? That’s not something I ever wanted. I did it because I backed myself into a corner of epic proportions, and it was either give up my family’s docks forever, work for Bridgebane, or start hacking banks.” I looked at her, willing her to at least try to understand. “There are some sums that are just…astronomical. There’s no way to make that kind of money through regular means.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“It’s not an excuse,” I blurted out. “It’s an explanation.” And it sounded weak to my ears.
“So explain. How does one become my uncle’s top bounty hunter for the Dark Watch?”
I tapped my fingers against my knee, remembering how fast it had happened. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to give myself time to think. “The opportunity just presented itself one day when Bridgebane needed a quick repair on something. I was at the base of Nuthatch, moping around my lost docks, as usual. He asked me who in the area could fix a finicky cruiser. I could, so I did. Figured I’d tinker with an engine and earn a little money.”
She frowned. “Uncle Nate was on Albion 5?”
I had no idea why, but he’d definitely been in Albion City not long after life as I knew it fell apart. “About ten years ago. After I got his cruiser up and running, he offered me a one-time job to test me out. It turned out I was good at bounty hunting. Jobs kept coming in. I advanced to his elite force. Currency piled up, and I put it all aside to buy back the docks as soon as I could. It was only ever a job to me. A means to an end. I didn’t do it for fun.”
“But you did it anyway.” Bitter disgust from my girlfriend made me feel like shit, especially when I deserved every ounce of her outrage and could add my own self-loathing to it.
“Yeah, I did it anyway. But now I’ve stopped. Because of you, Tess, I changed my life.”
Something more brittle, like hurt, jerked across her expression. “So it’s my fault you lost everything?”
“No!” Shit. I ran a hand through my short hair, gripping the back of my neck. “Changed my life for the better. I met you, got to know you, and I realized you were the kind of person I wanted to be. I didn’t like who I’d become, but I liked you, and I wanted to like myself again.”