He couldn’t remember a time when his father hadn’t been there to help him. Even when he hadn’t needed a hand, he’d moved through life with more confidence knowing that his dad would catch him if he stumbled. Now that the safety net was gone, Doran couldn’t shake the sick sensation of falling.
And what about his father? Was he lonely and afraid, too, or had he transformed his cell into a makeshift office and let his lawyers do the worrying? Doran had no way of knowing, and he hated that. He missed the sound of his father’s voice. He missed making his dad laugh. There was no way for them to talk now, and Doran had never learned what he was supposed to do once he reached the coordinates in the outer realm.
He would continue with his mission, but he no longer felt confident about clearing their names. Yesterday he’d borrowed a data tablet and learned a detail about the case that made him believe someone had framed them—someone within the government. The Enforcers claimed to have found Doran’s DNA on a crate of stolen Infinium from their transport. But Doran had never set foot on board a government ship, and he’d never heard of Infinium. That could only mean the Enforcers had planted the evidence, and if that was true, he wouldn’t get a fair trial.
Panic squeezed his rib cage, and it occurred to him that no matter how hard he fought, things might never be the same. His old life could be over, replaced by this new existence of running and hiding.
No. He shook those thoughts out of his head. His father was depending on him to stay strong and do his job. Whatever awaited him at those coordinates in the fringe was the key to their freedom.
He had to believe that.
The next morning, he squinted against the starlight filtering through the porthole and glanced down at Solara’s balled-up form, hidden beneath a heap of blankets so that only her nose peeked through.
“Why are you still sleeping on the floor?” he asked, then cleared the gravel from his throat. She couldn’t possibly be comfortable down there. Just looking at her made his shoulders ache with the remembrance of those unforgiving steel panels.
To dispel the sensation, he reached both arms above his pillow and arched his bare back in a stretch, elongating muscles that had grown stiff with disuse. In response, a few wayward vertebrae popped into their rightful places along his spine. It felt so good that he repeated the movement, then pulled each knee to his chest to stretch his legs. Much like his shower privileges, he hadn’t appreciated his full range of motion until he’d lost it, and he vowed never to take his body for granted again.
Solara yawned and rolled onto her back, her naked fists poking through the blankets in a stretch of her own. He was glad she’d quit wearing her gloves, but he kept his mouth shut about it. She was sensitive about her markings, and he could never manage to discuss them without pissing her off.
When she didn’t answer his question, he indicated the empty space beside him. “It’s a double bed, remember? There’s more than enough room for two.” He sniffed himself and added, “I don’t smell. At least, I don’t think so.”
She sat up, grumbling and rubbing the side of her neck. She must’ve tossed and turned a lot in her sleep, because a riot of hair had escaped her braids and formed something resembling a bird’s nest at her forehead. It made him smile.
“You know why,” she said. “You need the—”
“Whatever.” He waved off her excuse because that’s exactly what it was. “There’s nothing wrong with me.” He pushed the blankets down to his waist and said, “Come and see for yourself.”
Wearing nothing but a T-shirt that barely reached her thighs, she stood from the floor and took a seat on the edge of the mattress. She seemed to have lost some of her modesty, and Doran didn’t mind that, either.
“You still have bruises,” she criticized, pointing at the yellowy splotches beneath his flesh.
“But they don’t hurt anymore.”
With a dubious twist of her lips, she placed her warm palms on his sides, then ran them up and down the length of his rib cage while Doran’s breath locked inside his chest.
Hot damn.
At her touch, every internal organ between his hipbones tightened—and a couple of external ones, too. His skin hummed alive beneath her fingers, like energy flowing through a completed circuit, and he was grateful as hell to have a thick layer of blankets concealing his lap.
“Am I hurting you?” she asked.
Doran shook his head. He felt an awful lot of sensations at the moment, but pain wasn’t one of them. Maybe sleeping beside her wasn’t such a good idea after all. He gathered her hands and held them at a safe distance from his body.
“See?” he said, and swallowed hard. “Soon I’ll be good as new.”
She studied the tips of her own fingers, not seeming to mind that they were trapped between his palms. “Then you’ll be gone,” she told him. “And I’ll have the whole bed to myself. I might as well wait.”