He didn’t say so, but she had a point.
The Banshee had reached Obsidian yesterday, and they’d been hiding on a large orbiting meteor while Solara repaired the damages to the two-man craft. Once Doran felt well enough to travel, he would shuttle planet-side to the private ship waiting there. After that, he’d never see the Banshee or her crew again.
But he didn’t want to think about that right now.
Instead, he turned Solara’s knuckles to face him and skimmed a thumb over the codes tattooed on her skin. Strange how the markings didn’t bother him anymore. If his assets weren’t frozen, he’d hire a flesh forger to give her a new start. After everything she’d done for him, she deserved it.
“So you can stand to look at them now?” she asked.
“What?”
“That day in the washroom, right before the propellant cell broke. You told me that if you could stand to look at my tattoos, then so could I.” She pulled her hands away and tucked them beneath her thighs.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “You never gave me a chance to explain.”
“Okay, then.” One eyebrow lifted in challenge. “Explain.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
Doran noticed that chills had broken out along her thighs—not that he was staring or anything. Just a casual observation. And since the problem in his shorts had abated, he lifted the covers and invited her to join him. She hesitated for a beat, then crawled in beside him, and soon they lay six inches apart in mirrored positions, facing the ceiling with their hands folded on top of their stomachs.
“All right,” she said, cozying in. “Make it good.”
“This story doesn’t have a happy ending,” he warned, and though he hadn’t intended it, his voice sounded dark. She turned her neck to face him, but he stared straight ahead. It was easier that way. “A lot of this is public knowledge. I’m surprised you never heard about it.”
“No gossip tabloids in the group home,” she told him.
“It was a big deal when it happened, but that was a long time ago. Even if you saw it on the news, I guess you would’ve forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?”
“I was abducted when I was nine,” he said, the rote words rolling easily off his tongue. “Me and my brother, we were held for ransom. The nanny was in on it. She disabled the alarm and let the guys in the back door while everyone was asleep.”
Solara pushed onto her elbows, forcing him to make eye contact with her. “You have a brother? I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t,” he said, and paused to let that sink in. “Not anymore.”
A tattooed hand flew to her breast, and when Doran blinked, he saw the inky knuckles of the man who’d clapped a palm over his mouth and dragged him from his bed that night. There had been so many markings—rows and rows of them, right on top of each other—and he hadn’t understood what they’d meant. Until the next day, when he was locked inside a closet with a concussion and a bloody lip. Then he’d learned.
Solara brought him back to the present with a gentle touch. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “How old was he?”
“Same age as me. We were twins.”
“Twins,” she echoed. “That must have made losing him even harder. I’ve heard that twins have a special bond.”
Doran couldn’t say whether or not that was true, because he had no other siblings, and nothing to compare it to. He recalled that he and Gage were like two sides of a coin—made from the same mold but distinctive enough to anyone who paid attention. Doran took after their father, crushing the other kids’ lemonade stands by undercutting prices, while Gage shadowed their mom in her laboratory, peering over the counter in awe of her experiments. But despite their differences, he and his brother were unstoppable partners in crime. They’d learned at an early age that the nanny couldn’t tell them apart, and because she could never be sure which boy she’d seen jumping on the sofa or dropping marbles inside the piano, neither of them were ever punished.
Of course, she’d paid them back—in spades.
Doran realized he’d fallen silent, and he turned to Solara with an apology in his eyes. But Solara didn’t seem to mind. She quietly lay back down and hooked an arm through his, then waited until he was ready to go on.