Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(58)

In that moment, there was nothing in the whole universe she wouldn’t have given to make the last ten years disappear. To delete his hurts, and hers. To have lived this life differently, with him every step of the way. But the universe was not that kind. No take-backsies.

I’m so sorry.

? ? ?

Well, that sure was something. A pure magic something. He hadn’t meant to seduce her. He had intended to take this reunion slow, let them get easy with each other. Make sure his heart was safe this time, not used up and tossed. But on the other hand, he wasn’t sorry for what had just happened. Not for a moment of it.

Her face was tucked into the curve of his neck. Somehow they had pretzeled their bodies into just one reclined front seat. Probably something was going to go numb soon, but for right now, for this infinite pause, he wanted to hold her.

Her mouth moved against his skin. “Hey?”

“Yeah?”

“You know when you said, back during that holoconference the night Daniel died, that I had never called you pretty?”

Of course he remembered. He always remembered. “There are reasons why normal humans don’t recall every single word they utter.”

“Be that as it may,” she plowed on, “I might not have called you pretty to your face, but I wanted you to know that I have always thought it. You are beautiful to me.”

“Didja now? Well, that’s…wait, pretty?” He reared back and looked down at her dark head. “Pretty’s for spring frocks and lace bloomers and…flowers ’n’ shit.”

Her laughed burbled, a sound made of pure joy. “Handsome, then?”

“Dukes, caliphs, and corp lords.” He feigned offense. “You’re killin’ me.”

“Hot?”

“Tacos.”

“Fuckable?”

“I’ll own that one.”

She steepled one elbow against the seatback, propped her chin on the heel of that hand, and turned those dark-star eyes on him. “You’re more than that, you know.”

“What you mean?” Moments like these, sometimes it was easier to joke than tussle with embarrassment or confusion. “There’s more to life than just being really, really good-lookin’? Not to mention useful between the sheets?”

“We are in a car,” she reminded him. “No sheets for miles. And I might know shit about life as a whole, but I am certain there’s definitely more to you than godlike looks. All that potential, Kellen. The world is metaphorically your oyster. That fucking idiom was made for people like you. You just have to reach out and grab it.”

He raised his eyebrows and flexed long fingers against her silk-skinned rear. “Talk on some more about grabbing. I like where this part’s going.”

“I’m being serious here.” This was where she’d sigh and roll her eyes. Or where he would have expected her to, once. Only she didn’t. She just kept staring. Then she went on. “When I met you, you were the smartest kid in the room. The finest scholar of what you have to realize was a very competitive class of small humans. That’s why they teased you at first, the other students. Because of all of us, you were the one who was most likely to run the world. To lead us. If you got rolling, nobody could resist you. Least of all me.”

He closed his eyes and flattened back against the body-warm seat. He didn’t want to see her face with all that faith shining out of it. “You know what? Them dudes recruited me to the MIST filled my head with similar bullshit. Got me thinking I could make a difference, big’un, help all the folks back home and lots more besides. They had this research core group they were putting together, complete with a place for me. Said I was gonna do cross-species bioalteration work, maybe crack immortality. That was where my research was leading, and holy hell, it was exciting from, you know, a scientific standpoint. Other unspecified magic shit was s’posed to happen too, and poof, the whole world would be peace and glitter and, I dunno, unicorns fartin’ rainbows. All’s I had to do was drink their Kool-Aid, follow their orders, and jump off a cliff.”

“What cliff?” Her face was so solemn, and he couldn’t lie.

“They offered me a deal, princess. No baggage. Come alone, or go on my merry way and wave the daydream goodbye.”

Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again, threading faint words. “No baggage, huh? I thought you wanted to go to your mom after the hurricane.”

He did the head-tilt lip-purse abbreviated version of a shrug. “I didn’t, not particularly. Nobody wants to go back to the person who hurt ’em. Nobody wants to stay with the person who can cut them loose without a second thought.”

What amounted to abandonment by his mama had hurt for a long time, but a long time ago. There were other parts of his childhood that he’d never get over, but having Mama sign over guardianship wasn’t gonna cause him any more sleepless nights. He hadn’t been the slightest bit tempted to leave the MIST, not even when Angela had told him about the storm.

“I was worried about my mother and Sissy, sure enough, but Lufkin is pretty far inland and wasn’t threatened by that storm. I could have settled my worry without leaving Abu Dhabi permanently. No, sweetheart, when they offered me that deal to drop baggage, they weren’t talking about Mama.”

Her mouth made a silent O. “What did you…?”