She looked back up. “Maybe he wouldn’t be afraid if I make it clear I’m interested.”
“He’s not afraid of rejection.”
“Yeah, I know.” She looked down again.
A knot formed in my throat. I loved Jax so much. I wanted him to be happy. He’d be forty in a few years. Life was passing him by, and he wasn’t living it. I loved Fiona, too. “You’re the one thing that can drag him out of the past and bring him joy again. Please don’t give up. He needs you.”
“I’m not sure he wants to be happy.” Her voice wavered. She swallowed. “It’s like he doesn’t think he deserves it. Not when his wife and kids are all dead.”
Unfortunately, I agreed, even though I hated it. “But that’s only half of it. He’s terrified of actually getting what he wants and then losing it—just like he lost them.”
Fiona took a deep breath, steadying herself. “It’s not as though I can claim a danger-free existence as a push in the right direction.”
“No, but keep wearing that corset, and he’ll crack. Hell, I almost want to kiss you, you look so good.”
Fiona laughed, some of her usual confidence coming back. She slung a jacket over her arm and moved past me, stopping just outside the door. “Should I tell them on the Unholy Stench that you need the details of their plan ASAP?”
I nodded, although it sounded like a classic get-in-while-there’s-confusion and get-out-before-they-notice-you type of heist. “I’ll head over to their hangar as soon as the Mooncamp crew clears out our cargo holds. They’re due any minute now. Can’t do anything until that’s done.”
“Got it.” Fiona started down the corridor, tossing me a sultry look over her shoulder. She put a little extra swing into her hips.
I laughed and wiggled my fingers in goodbye. “Have fun with Frank,” I said suggestively.
“You know as well as I do that Frank’s gay.” She turned back around with a smile.
I chuckled, wondering when Jax would finally figure out that Frank wasn’t a rival for Fiona.
* * *
Raz arrived with only half a crew, promising the other half in about an hour after a gale storm around Mooncamp 3 died down. I hadn’t been to any of the other DT moons. The food coordinator redistributed from here, so this was where the Endeavor landed. From what I’d heard, the inhabitable moons orbiting Demeter Terre were all pretty similar: mostly empty, largely barren, and incredibly windy.
I hated going outside here and mostly stayed in our designated shed. There wasn’t really anything out there besides pieced-together living quarters, sudden squalls, and relatively clean air, the latter of which we could take advantage of from the hangar.
While we’d flown in, Shade had asked me why this had become the principal settlement, probably because it looked so bleak and underdeveloped. I hadn’t had much of an answer. As far as I knew, no single moon had been chosen over another for its merits. A few ships had landed here first during the panic to get off Demeter Terre, probably because they were damaged or their crews were dying, and that was that. Mooncamp 1: established.
I helped Raz direct where our haul was going after he gave me half his spreadsheet. Shade, Jax, Merrick, and Sanaa did a lot of the heavy lifting on the Endeavor while the food crew filled hover crates according to Raz’s and my instructions. The crates were color coded for each of the six refugee cities, with red crates staying here, blue crates going onto a transport vessel destined for Mooncamp 2, yellow crates headed to Mooncamp 3, and so on. Raz’s overall distribution was pretty even this time, which meant breaking into sealed containers and manually parceling out the boxes or cans inside to provide similar amounts for everyone.
“For fuck’s sake, Raz.” Jax wiped sweat from his brow before taking a long drink of water. “Could you have made this any slower?”
Raz gave Jax an owlish blink from behind his round glasses. “Are you in a hurry?”
“I’m always in a hurry.” Jax’s smile said he was just fooling around. “And you’re lucky you didn’t kill us with last night’s dinner, or your spaghetti arms would be the ones lifting all this food right now.”
“My spaghetti arms are perfect for checking off boxes.” Raz lowered his clipboard and peered at the contents of the large hover crate Jax and Merrick had just finished loading. After counting off the items, he gave the go-ahead, and his crew began maneuvering the crate off the Endeavor. They’d steer it out of the hangar and onto a nearby waiting transport. “See—check, check, check.” With extra flair, Raz marked three things off and then flipped the page of his spreadsheet.
Jax chuckled, then groaned when he saw the next hover crate. It was just as big as the previous one and needed the exact same contents. Raz buzzed around like a worker bee, busy and dedicated. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times in an hour he went up and down the loading ramp at the back of the Endeavor, making sure the supplies we’d brought were headed to the locations he’d chosen with care and intention. His B-Team was unloading the Unholy Stench in the next hangar over. We had more food, so we got Raz and his main battalion. The DT Mooncamp food coordinator was one of the only people I knew who refused to use a tablet. He said it was a pen and paper and his own damn writing, or nothing. Seeing how straight the lines were on the spreadsheet he’d given me, I knew he also used a ruler.
We were more than halfway done unloading when the rest of Raz’s crew showed up, bringing the remaining transport vessels and hover crates that had been stuck on Mooncamp 3 in the tempest.
“Good. They’re here.” Jax glanced past me toward the hangar entrance as he helped two women and a man fill a green hover crate with boxes of the dried brown beans we all ate on a regular basis. From the picture, they looked like animal droppings. I had to convince myself they weren’t sometimes. “We’ve almost cleared out the two cargo holds with food in them. Almost everything’s in the hangar now and ready to be loaded up again.”
“Did you set aside anything for yourselves?” Raz asked.
Jax shook his head.
“You’re sure?” Raz turned to me for assurance.
“We stocked up not long ago. We’re fine,” I answered. If there had been anything fresh, I would have kept it. I was generous but not stupid. Cans, boxes, and other tasteless generic stuff, most of it containing the ubiquitous trigrain something, could be had anywhere it was safe to dock. “If we end up starving, we’ll come back here. I know you’ll feed us something catastrophic.” I grinned at Raz, taking the sting from my words.
He scratched his head, pushing his fingers through his buzz cut. “Was it that bad?”
“Worse,” I answered, meaning it.