“I was thinking about having a late dinner delivered.” Lukas rummaged in his closet and brought out the soft cloth robe that Juliette loved to pull on after a hot shower. He hung it from the hook on the bathroom door. “Do you want me to run you a bath?”
Juliette took a heavy breath. “I reek, don’t I?” She sniffed the back of her hand and tried to nose the grease. There was the acidic hint of her cutting torch, the spice of exhaust fumes from the digger – a perfume as tattooed on her flesh as the markings oilmen cut and inked into their arms. All this, despite the fact that she had showered before she left Mechanical.
“No—” Lukas appeared hurt. “I just thought you’d enjoy a bath.”
“In the morning, maybe. And I might skip dinner. I’ve been snacking all day.” She smoothed the sheets beside her. Lukas smiled and sat down next to her on the bed. His face bore an expectant grin, that glow in his eyes she saw after they made love – but the look dissipated with her next words: “We need to talk.”
His face fell. His shoulders sagged. “We’re not going to register, are we?”
Juliette seized his hand. “No, that’s not it. Of course we are. Of course.” She pressed his hand to her chest, remembering a love that she’d kept hidden from the Pact once before and how that had wrenched her in half. She would never make that mistake again. “It’s about the digging,” she said.
Lukas took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then laughed. “Only that,” he said, smiling. “Amazing that your digging could come as the lesser of two harms.”
“I have something else I want to do that you aren’t going to like.”
He raised an eyebrow. “If this is about trying to spread news of the other silos, about telling people what’s out there, you know where Peter and I stand on that. I don’t think those words are safe. People won’t believe you, and those who do will want to cause trouble.”
Juliette thought of Father Wendel and how people could believe amazing things crafted from mere words, how beliefs could form from books. But perhaps they had to want to believe those things. And maybe Lukas was right that not everyone would want to believe the truth.
“I’m not going to tell them anything,” she told Lukas. “I want to show them. There’s something I want to do up top, but it requires help from you and your department. I’m going to need some of your men.”
Lukas frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that.” He rubbed her arm. “Why don’t we discuss it tomorrow? I just want to enjoy having you here with me tonight. One night where we aren’t working. I can pretend I’m just a server tech and you can be … not the mayor.”
Juliette squeezed his hand. “You’re right. Of course. And maybe I should jump in the shower real quick—”
“No, stay.” He kissed her neck. “You smell like you. Shower in the morning.”
She relented. Lukas kissed her neck again, but when he moved to unzip her coveralls, she asked him to douse the lights. For once, he didn’t complain as he often did about not being able to see her. Instead, he left the bathroom light on and shut the door most of the way, leaving the barest of glows. As much as she loved being naked with him, she didn’t like to be seen. The patchwork of scars made her look like the slices of mineshaft that cut through granite: a web of white rock standing out from the rest.
But as unattractive as they were to the eyes, they were sensitive to the touch. Each scar was like a nerve ending rising from her own Deep. When Lukas traced them with his fingers – like an electrician following a diagram of wires – wherever he touched was a wrench across two battery terminals. Electricity fluttered through her body as they held each other in the darkness and he explored her with his hands. Juliette could feel her skin grow warm. This would not be a night where they fell fast asleep. Her designs and dangerous plans began to fade under the gentle pressure of his soft touch. This would be a night for travelling back to her youth, of feeling rather than thinking, back to simpler times—
“That’s strange,” Lukas said, stopping what he was doing.
Juliette didn’t ask what was strange, hoping he’d forget it. She was too proud to tell him to keep touching her like that.
“My favorite little scar is gone,” he said, rubbing a spot on her arm.
Juliette’s temperature soared. She was back in the airlock, such was the heat. It was one thing to silently touch her wounds, another to name them. She pulled her arm away and rolled over, thinking this would be a night for sleep after all.
“No, here, let me see,” he begged.
“You’re being cruel,” Juliette told him.
Lukas rubbed her back. “I’m not, I swear. May I please see your arm?”
Juliette sat up in the bed and pulled the sheets over her knees. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t like you mentioning them,” she said. “And you shouldn’t have a favorite.” She nodded toward the bathroom, where a faint glow of light leaked out from the cracked door. “Can we please shut that or turn out the light?”