Darker Space by Lisa Henry Page B

skull, suddenly seized by the batshit-crazy idea that I was his battery.
    I’d put my hand on his chest.
    His heart had begun to beat again.
    “I remember.”
    “Your face.” Cam’s breath was warm against my lips as he kissed me gently again. “The pale, wide-eyed face of this terrified human kid.”
    I closed my eyes.
    “I hadn’t seen another human face in four years. It felt like longer. It felt like everything that had come before the Faceless was unreality. Everything until you. I didn’t know how homesick I was until I saw your face.”
    I smiled and broke our kiss.
    “What?” he murmured.
    “You and me, LT,” I whispered back. “We only get shit right when it’s us against the universe.”
    Cam leaned back, frowning slightly. “Is that really what you think?”
    Wasn’t it the truth? My stomach clenched, and I tried to make a joke of it. “Sure. You turn into a romantic, and I turn into less of a dick.”
    He didn’t smile. “I think…I think we get it right most of the time, Brady.”
    Except even now he was thinking of the black, of how free and alive he’d felt when he’d been floating in it, and of the ache its absence left inside him.
    “We did.” The words sounded hollow. “We do.”
    Cam pressed his forehead to mine. “I hope we do.”
    I closed my eyes. “Because I don’t know how to do the other stuff.”
    He put a hand on the side of my head and stroked my cheek with his thumb. “What other stuff?”
    “The stuff that doesn’t matter when we’re in a cage. Like the times we meet up with your old friends and they talk about stuff I don’t understand.” I frowned, trying to make sense of something I’d never even articulated to myself. “Like university and taxes and politics, and shit I don’t know anything about. And they’re nice guys, and I know that, but sometimes I think there’s a bigger gulf between here and Kopa than between here and anything that happened out in the black.”
    His breath hitched.
    “And I tried real hard to fit, but you and me, we only work when we don’t have all that other shit between us.”
    “Bullshit,” he said roughly, the word rumbling in his chest. He pushed my head back to make sure I was looking him in the eye. “That’s total bullshit. You think you’re not good enough for me?”
    “Whole fucking world thinks it, Cam.” My eyes stung.
    “I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks.” He shook his head. “How many times, Brady? How many times have I told you that, and you still don’t believe it?”
    “I try to.” My voice rasped. “When you say it, I do, and then…then shit gets in the way again.”
    “Because you let it.”
    “Yeah.” I hated myself for admitting it. “I guess.”
    “I love you,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to be us against the universe to make it work, okay? Or us in a cage. It can just be us .”
    He made it sound so simple, but how could I compete with starlight?
    “It can be,” he whispered. “It can be as simple as we want.”
    “Me and you in a cage.”
    I think my past had ruined me for simple.
    I leaned my head on his chest. His arms came around me. I closed my eyes and listened to his heartbeat. For a moment it beat in counterpoint to my own, and then we slipped into sync.
    “Am I your heartbeat again?”
    “You always have been.”
    “I meant literally.”
    His fingers counted the knots in my spine. Unease spread through him, and then through me. As gentle but relentless as the tide. “I don’t know.”
    I slid my hand under his shirt.
    The muscles in his abdomen tightened. “Cold!”
    “Sorry.” I wasn’t. We both knew it.
    He relaxed as I shifted my hand higher and held it over his heart. “How does it feel? In your medical opinion.”
    “Not a trainee medic anymore, LT.”
    “Their loss.”
    I snorted out a laugh. “Not really.”
    Doc had always said I had a good bedside manner. Maybe I did. Doc had even had this crazy idea that he could make an officer