I look over the options on the kitchen-mate and nearly drool. This thing can make anything I want. Thousands of recipes both common and exotic, right at my fingertips, and now I don’t know what I want.

Tapping away, I just decide to conjure us a feast. Steamed fish and rice in spicy ginger sauce, tissue-thin vegetables arrayed in a fan, and four different desserts. I hope he likes choclaste. This gourmet unit even has real wine in stock; forget the nasty synthetic stuff.

By the time I get everything laid out, Jael’s back. I make a note to seal my door since it’s apparently coded to admit anyone. He looks better, his freshly washed hair gleaming like molten gold.

“What if I’m allergic to fish?” he asks as he joins me at the small table near the kitchen-mate.

I grin. “Good thing this isn’t real fish.”

He knows as well as I do that this is simulated from base organic, but the beauty of a gourmet unit is that you can hardly taste the difference. These days, only the elite know what it’s like to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and only throwbacks consume real flesh.

“Point.”

When there’s food like this around instead of paste, you won’t find me letting it get cold. I practically inhale mine, down two glasses of wine, and then start eyeing the desserts before Jael cleans his plate. I settle on a rich raspberry-filled truffle and nibble at it while he catches up to me.

By tacit consent, we shift to the sofa for the conversation he refuses to let slide. I close my eyes and tilt my head back, hoping to elicit sympathy, but this is Jael we’re talking about. Of course it doesn’t work.

“What do you want to know?” I ask with a sigh.

“What happened out there?” He touches my cheek, forcing me to look at him.

“I don’t know.”

“Make me understand, Jax. If grimspace poses a danger to you, I need to know it. I’m supposed to protect you from all threats, remember?”

I let out a long breath. “I could . . . feel it. Don’t ask me how. It’s like I’m part of grimspace when I’m not even jacked in. Doc started running tests on me, before . . .” With a weary wave, I gloss over details he already knows. “But he never came to any conclusions about what makes me different. And now he has a lot of other stuff on his plate.” Massive understatement.

Both his brows go up, but I don’t glimpse the skepticism I dreaded. Jael doesn’t know the worst of my unstable tendencies, however, so he isn’t likely to dismiss this experience as a “delusions of grandeur” fantasy. I relax a little.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” he says at last. “You’re a fucking legend, you know. Still jumping at your age. It’s inspiring.”

Mary, he makes it sound like I’m a geriatric case, beyond the hope of all antiaging treatments. I grit my teeth. Counting to ten doesn’t help.

“Well, you do all right for someone who looks like he ought to be in wet naps,” I tell him sweetly. “Do you shave yet, princess? I bet you couldn’t grow a beard if you wanted one.”

He’s had enough of the wine not to get riled up, more’s the pity. “You’ve got enough chin hair for both of us.”

“Is that why you were staring so hard at my ass when I went to the shower? Because it hasn’t got any hair on it?” A flip response, not one I expect to make him choke on his drink. “You were looking!”

“Not on purpose,” he protests. “Or rather, no more than any man would when confronted with a naked woman. It’s practically against the law not to look. They revoke your man membership if you play the gentleman too often. In a way, I was paying you a compliment.”

“To be sure. So you haven’t been guilty of ogling old ladies before?”

“You’re not old in the traditional sense,” he says, tilting his head with a judicious look. “Just for a jumper. You know.”

Of course I do. In my first five years on the job, I attended the funerals of fifteen classmates from the academy. After that, I stopped offering to speak at their services. I swallowed my sorrows instead. That’s how my nav-star legend came to be born. Not the party girl they all supposed, or at least, not for the usual reasons.

Loss seeps out from behind my mental barriers, old wounds, old pain adding to the fresh one, a big jagged hole where March used to be. So many people, gone. What Jael said is true—being the last one standing sometimes does feel like a curse. Just like that, my mood dips to low ebb.

I need to be horizontal and buried in blankets. A band tightens across my chest, burgeoning into an ache that threatens to close my throat. Mary curse it, if I don’t get him out of here, I’m going to break down right in front of him.

And I won’t have that.

“There’s nothing you can do, or need to do about what happened out there, Jael. It doesn’t factor into protecting me. Doc figured out why I respond to grimspace damage the way I do, and I know what to do about it. Speaking of which, I’m due for a shot. Unless you just like needles, I suggest you get on your way.”

“No,” he says quietly. “Do your thing, but this conversation isn’t over.”

“The hell it’s not. This is my room! And I don’t want you in it anymore.” I get up from the sofa, and my hands shake as I draw the med kit out of my bag.

I’m not sure I can manage the treatment without hurting myself. So I close my eyes. That helps a little, though I’m still millimeters away from losing it. The hypo’s preset and automatic, so I just press it against my wrist. A single hiss and it’s done. I push my breath out in what’s meant as a sigh, but it comes out as a groan.

“Right,” he says, low. “You pulled a spike out of my gut and saved my life. That might not mean anything to you, but it’s worth something to me. I’m doing my best to be a friend to you, and you act like you’ve never heard of such a thing. A blind man could see you’re hurting, Jax, and I know damn well why. It’s because of who we left behind.”

“Yeah.” My head droops. I can’t look at him as the tears overflow, trickling down my cheeks. “I’m pretty sure I’m dying of it, and I can’t bring myself to care.”

He comes to me and touches my cheek, featherlight. “Well, I do.”

* * *

CHAPTER 44

l lean toward him, or fall.

Jael wraps his arms around me, patting in an awkward way that’s meant to be comforting. I can tell he doesn’t know much about the job for which he’s volunteered. If I wasn’t gulping back sobs, I’d laugh at his expression. He leads me toward the sofa while I cry and cry, holding nothing back.

There are so many things tangled up inside me that I don’t even know why I’m weeping. March is part of it, of course, but it’s more than that: an accumulation of woe that I can’t deny anymore. Tears stream freely. My nose starts to run.

“Aren’t you a sight?” he whispers. “It’s all right. I won’t tell anyone what a wet rag you turn into after a couple of drinks. In the vids, they have you up on tables flashing your tits once you down a few rounds, so this is a bit of a shock, innit?”

I mumble into his shirt, “Fuck the vids. They’re all posted by assholes.”

And then I remember how many members of the gutter press died on Lachion. That probably qualifies as speaking ill of the dead, but I don’t care. I feel his hands on my back, thumping gently. You’d think I was an infant he intended to burp.

I hiccup.

The next thing I know, I’m blinking gummy eyes, and I feel stiff all over. Jael is still curled around me, one hand on my shoulder, but he’s out, too. I can’t tell how long we’ve been asleep, but it doesn’t matter. We have two days to rest.

On this ship, nobody’s trying to kill me, eat me, or otherwise disperse my molecules. That’s a welcome change. I’m still tired, so I stagger toward the huge bed and flop down. Then I sink back into the delicious, gauzy darkness.

Much later, I surface again, feeling more coherent this time. I adjust my robe, which has gapped in all the wrong places. Rolling out of bed, I assess the situation.

Poor Jael toppled sidewise on my sofa. He’s going to be sore, and it serves him right for being such a stubborn bastard. I do feel better, but I would’ve cried whether he stayed with me or not. It irks me that he shoved his way into my business, but I’m not furious over it. So I wake him by kicking him in the ankle instead of somewhere worse.

He squints up at me and groans. “Maybe you’d keep men around longer if you didn’t do that.”

The joke falls flat, but I pretend it didn’t catch me in a raw place. “Yeah, well, I’m not trying to keep you. You have your own room, go to it.”

Maybe I should thank him, but mostly I’m embarrassed over the way I melted down. I refuse to hash over my emotional state or give him dewy-eyed looks bursting with boundless gratitude. If he craves that sort of thing, he should hit up a girl named Fawn, who dances at the Hidden Rue on Gehenna.

As he gets up, the door slides open. I turn to see Dina standing there with a wide smile because she’s on her own two feet. But the pleasure in her expression dies like light leaving a dead bulb. Her gaze shifts between the rumpled bed, my dishevelment and Jael’s sleepy good humor.

“I can’t believe I was actually starting to like you,” she bites out. “In your mind, he’s as good as dead. So why not replace him?” She turns so the door closes behind her, leaving her words to accuse me in her stead.

Shit.

Even if it stings, part of me understands why she made that mental leap. I didn’t grieve years for Kai before falling for March. So maybe Dina thinks that’s the way I operate. One man exits; another man enters, and I just love the one I’m with.

But it’s not like that. I hope when she cools down I’ll be able to explain, although in the strictest sense, it’s none of her business who sleeps in my room. I’m conscious of Jael standing beside me, looking shocked. But before I deal with him, I code the door so it’s only accessible to me for the duration of the flight.

He arcs a brow at me. “I guess breakfast’s out of the question?”

“Out.”

“Right, I’m going.” And he does.

I dress in black because it suits my mood. At least short hair means I don’t have to style it. Looks the same no matter what I do. I pocket 245, who still hasn’t forgiven me for cutting her off back in the hangar. Maybe this will cheer her up.

Determined to get some value out of this downtime, I head for Vel’s room. He said he had research to do, but I’m supposed to be tapping him as my resource on Ithtorian culture and customs. To date, I haven’t been taking my role seriously, and no matter what the Syndicate wants, I can’t become another Karl Fitzwilliam. Not even to save my mother’s life.

Unlike me, Vel was smart enough to secure his room right away. I tap the panel and say, “It’s Jax. Can I come in?”

His disembodied voice responds, “A moment please.”