“My family,” he says immediately. “Then they’ll probably hose me down and interrogate me for a few weeks. The military will, I mean. Not my parents.”

“Gosh.” Now I’m trying to banish the mental image of someone hosing Tarver down. At least I’m not thinking about my birthday anymore. “I hope nobody tries that with me.”

That earns me a laugh, my head jumping a little as Tarver’s body quakes beneath my cheek. “I doubt anyone will try any such thing with you. It’s pretty much just soldiers and criminals who get the high-pressure hose.”

Even in the realm of imagination, we’re already separated. Him, in his interrogations and debriefings—me, presumably taken somewhere for coddling and polishing. My heart twinges painfully, its beat rapid and strong against Tarver’s ribs.

It’s not that I don’t want to be rescued. I do. I want to see my father again—and more than that, I want Tarver to find his family again, keep them from losing another son. But I had begun to imagine a life here, with him and me. A hungry, cold, barely-surviving-each-week kind of life—but a life together.

Before I can stop myself, the words come tumbling out. “What about me?”

“What about you?” Tarver echoes, one shoulder moving in a shrug. “Your family will scoop you up and quiz you on whether I compromised your virtue and whisk you off to strap you into one of those extraordinary dresses, and it’ll be like this never happened.”

My mouth is dry, my tongue heavy. Why doesn’t he understand what I’m asking? If we’re to be rescued, I don’t want it to happen before we figure out whatever’s happening here between us. I may not have many more opportunities.

I take a deep breath and lift myself up on one elbow. It’s dark, but I can still make out his features through the gloom.

“You mean we’ll never see each other again.”

For a moment he just looks at me, unreadable as ever. The mirror-moon lights his face, silver on his skin, in his eyes. My heart threatens to slam its way out of my chest.

“Maybe not.” There’s a softer, less certain note in his voice.

The idea that someone will swoop down and take him away from me, off to fight some distant war in some distant system, makes me feel like my lungs are filling with water. I don’t know how to reach him, how to make him see how I feel. I don’t know what’s going on behind the brown eyes I’ve come to know so well. I don’t know what he’s thinking as he looks at me.

But suddenly I do know that I’ll never live with myself if we get rescued before I can make him understand.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I whisper.

I lean down, my hair falling forward around his face, and let my lips find his.

For an instant I feel him reach for me, and all I want is to lean against him, let him wrap me up, keep me close. All I want is for no one to take him away.

“What did you hope to gain by making for the structure?”

“Better shelter, at least. Some method of communication, at most.”

“With whom did you wish to communicate?”

“Is that a trick question?”

“All our questions are extremely serious, Major.”

“Anybody who could hear us. I had Lilac LaRoux with me. I knew her father would stage a retrieval at any cost, if he knew where we were.”

“It was on your mind that you were with Monsieur LaRoux’s daughter.”

“It could hardly escape me.”

“Just the two of you, alone.”

“I noticed that too.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

TARVER

I WANT TO SURGE UP AGAINST HER, tangle my fingers through her hair, pull her down to meet me—and for a moment I find myself reaching for her, unable to resist. How long have I been wanting to touch her like this? A charge runs from her fingertips and into my skin, and all my careful self-control starts crashing down as I feel the heat of her near me. I want to lose myself in her, let this moment take me over completely.

My fingers find the edge of her shirt, and she makes a quiet sound as my hand curves against the small of her back. She shifts, and I realize it’s my bandaged hand in the same instant that a white-hot line of pain runs up my arm. A groan tears out of me as I tense, pushing her away with my good hand.

We’re left gasping, staring at each other—she, confused, uncertain why I stopped; me, trying to breathe, pushing away the need coursing through me despite the ache in my hand.

I know what this is. I recognize that desperate longing in her expression—I’ve seen it before, in the field. Lilac was very nearly left alone on this planet, and she’s mistaking her relief for something else.

A girl like her would never look at a guy like me in other circumstances. If that building on the horizon is our ticket home, I’m not sure I could stand to see her waltz off into her old life and leave me behind. Not if I let myself—no.

I can’t afford to show her how badly I want her.

Not when it isn’t really me she wants.

Her expression is shifting with every moment I keep her at arm’s length, eyes darkening, the confusion turning to doubt.

A treacherous part of me doesn’t care that she’s confused, desperately wants to kiss her anyway. Maybe one moment would be worth it, even if afterward it all dissolved into mist, like our trail of purple flowers.

I could be wrong. Maybe she does want—maybe—

I’m drawing breath again when she pulls away sharply, climbing to her feet to stalk off into the darkness. There’s anger in her jerky movements, in the tense line of her shoulders.