Darker Space (7 page)

His truth hung between us starkly. Tension vibrated in the air between us, then shattered.

And
my
truth—that I hated him less for his part in that than I did for the fact that he’d been Cam’s boyfriend first—slunk away with its tail between its legs.

“You want out of here?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said and shrugged. I tried to keep my attitude locked down for once. “Yeah, okay. I do.”

He studied me silently, as though he was looking for the lie. There wasn’t one. I missed Cam and I missed Lucy, and I was sick of sleeping in a concrete cell with nothing but my nightmares for company.

“Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll get you out.”

I didn’t ask what it would cost me.

Should have.

* * * *

“Brady!” Lucy was in my arms before I’d even managed to step inside the door. She squeezed me so hard I thought I felt a rib crack. “I got a B in my art project, and I made you a bracelet, and yesterday we had ice cream without you, and Cam’s making pasta and you have to tell him not to put carrots in mine!”

“I’ll tell him,” I said, picking her up to swing her around. “But he probably won’t listen.”

She squealed and, when I put her down, raced off toward her bedroom. “I’ll get you your bracelet!”

I wondered if it matched the one that was on her wrist: pink and yellow glittery beads. Because that wouldn’t get me laughed at in public. Didn’t mean I wouldn’t wear it, though.

Cam appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. “Brady?”

“Got out early,” I told him.

A frown settled across his forehead. “How?”

“Chris Varro.”

His frown deepened. “Chris?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged, like it was no big deal.

He stepped forward to meet me. Our arms went around each other. Then Cam stepped back. He caught my hand in his and rubbed his thumb over the tape on my knuckles. “What’s this?”

“Oh, that.” I squirmed a little under his scrutiny. “I may have punched a wall.”

“Why?”

“Bored,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I don’t know.”

Bored and frustrated, and angry at myself for being in the stockade. And wanting to punish myself for that, even though it wouldn’t really be punishment because the pain in my hand would distract me from feeling miserable about missing Cam and Lucy. Punching that wall had felt good.

“You have anger-management issues,”
Stockade Sam had told me as he’d taped my hand.
“Sort your shit out, kid.”

“I really missed you,” I said, and this time my voice did crack.

Cam tugged me closer and put his arms around me again. Bowed his head so our foreheads touched. Gave us a moment of quiet and peace right there in the kitchen doorway.

The tension bled out of me.

Did he know how much I needed that?

Our hearts beat in counterpoint.

Once, they’d beaten together.

Then Lucy was back with us, grabbing at my hand and worming between us. Tugging an elastic band threaded with blue and green beads over my hand and onto my wrist.

“Thanks, Lucy.”

“Do you love it?” she asked proudly.

“Yeah.” I squeezed her hard. “’Course I fucking do.”

Cam raised his eyebrows at me.

Right. Language. My three days in the stockade had not done great things for my manners.

“Go on,” Cam said. “Go and help Lucy with her homework, and I’ll finish getting dinner ready.”

“You sure?”

He smiled. “I’ll call you when it’s done.”

* * * *

Sometimes, I figured I was still stuck in that fucking pod, and this life wasn’t real. This was just the fucking dream Kai-Ren’s pod played to me to stop me from fighting. That pod gave me everything I wanted, like an insidious drug swimming in my bloodstream now, that owned me. Maybe I didn’t even know I was a prisoner still. Maybe I was like those guys chained in the cave in that old story, watching a shadow play on the wall without ever being able to turn around and see the real thing.

Back when I was stuck in a tin can in the black, I’d read a lot of books from Doc’s bookshelf. He didn’t just have medical books. He had a lot of stuff that mostly I didn’t get, but sometimes I got a glimpse of what the pages were trying to tell me. Like the guys in the cave, or the guy who had to push the rock up the hill every single day.

Life is meaningless, I think that book said. Life is absurd. And a part of me laughed to read that, because it was so fucking true, but a part of me was scared as well, like the ground had just dropped out from underneath me and I was falling with no way to catch myself.

Now, with my feet back on Earth, with Cam and Lucy, I didn’t trust I wasn’t still falling.

“The blue is for the sea,” Lucy told me. She lay on her stomach on the floor, her legs bent at the knees and her ankles crossed. She chewed on the end of a plait while she colored in her map. “You can do the yellow if you want.”

“What’s yellow for?”

She jabbed her finger on her map. “For the gulf. For Kopa.”

“Kopa was red.”

“I know that,” Lucy said, huffing. “But on the map you do it in yellow.”

I took the pencil, and we colored the map together.

If Kopa was yellow on her map, I didn’t care. If she didn’t remember a thing about it in a year or two, I didn’t care. If I had a way to do it, I’d wipe Kopa right off the map myself.

We colored until Cam called us for dinner. Then we ate around the small table while Cam and Lucy caught me up on their week. We had ice cream for dessert. Lucy complained because we were out of chocolate.

“I can have vanilla,” she said with a put-upon sigh. “I suppose.”

“Well, I don’t want to force you or anything,” Cam teased.

She rolled her eyes.

She was getting spoiled.

Lucy Garrett, a reffo kid from Kopa, moaning about the wrong flavor of ice cream.

Unbelievable.

It should have felt fucking incredible, but right on the heels of that euphoria came something else, something that was maybe pride but was wrapped in thick layers of regret. I thought of my dad. Thought of how he’d worked himself into an early grave for us, his lungs rotting away until he choked on his last wet, sucking breath. I’d done what I’d always promised him—I’d looked after Lucy—but I wished he could have seen it, because I knew he must have died thinking she’d be next.

Thinking that I’d failed.

He must have died brokenhearted.

I watched Lucy shovel ice cream in her mouth and tried to believe that this was real, that this moment was even possible.

“Hey.” Cam was looking at me worriedly. “What’s up?”

I drew a deep breath. “Nothing. Just tired.”

Cam raised his brows.

“Brady.”

His lips didn’t move, but I heard it clear as fucking day.

His voice in my head.

Fear spiked through me. My heart forgot to beat.

“Brady,” he said, reaching out to curl his fingers around my wrist. “Shit. You’ve gone white. Are you okay?”

“You said my name,” I said. I couldn’t hear anything now over the sound of my blood rushing in my skull.

Cam frowned. “Yeah. I asked if you’re okay.”

“Before that. You said it before that.”

He looked confused. “What? When?”

“I heard it,” I whispered, half-afraid to say it aloud and make it true. “In my head.”

“No,” Cam said firmly. “No. You’re tired. You’re imagining things.”

I held his gaze.

“Are you sure, Cam? Promise me it isn’t real.”

Nothing but silence between us.

Nothing but my solitary, panicked heartbeat.

Cam’s gaze, his touch, anchoring me. Cam’s fingers pressing into the pulse in my wrist.

“Brady?” Lucy asked. “Are you sick?”

I flashed her a smile I didn’t feel. “I’m just tired. Must’ve worked too hard on your homework, hey?”

“You didn’t even stay in the lines, so I won’t get an A.”

“Well, a cheater never prospers.”

I wondered if she remembered Dad saying that. I never understood the saying. In Kopa, you might as well have been a cheater, since nobody there fucking prospered anyway.

Cam looked at his watch. “Bedtime, Lucy. We’ll come and tuck you in soon, okay?”

“Okay.” She took her plate to the sink, then skipped off toward the bathroom to brush her teeth.

I fell back into our routine like I’d never been gone.

I made Lucy’s sandwich for the next day while Cam packed her a juice box, an apple, carrot sticks, and oat biscuits. Had to make up for all that ice cream with healthy shit, right?

I washed the dishes while Cam dried them and put them away.

We put Lucy to bed.

Cam leaned in the doorway and listened while I read the story she picked out.

Then we sat on the couch and watched TV for a while.

Cam put his arm around me, and I leaned into him. He smelled so good. He smelled like warmth and comfort and home, and I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand and told myself I wasn’t going to break down and cry about how much I’d missed him, how much I’d missed this, and how much it hurt to have it because this wasn’t how the universe worked. The universe fucked Brady Garrett over every which way from Sunday, just because it could.

Because it was meaningless.

Because it was absurd.

Because if some unlucky fucker didn’t push that same rock up that same hill every single day, or get his guts ripped out by eagles, then how would everyone else figure out that everything was futile?

Doc once told me I’d missed the point of that story.

Cam put a finger under my chin and lifted my face. “You okay?”

“I don’t even fucking know.”

He kissed me gently, his lips barely brushing mine. “I’m sorry I couldn’t visit you more.”

“Don’t be. You had Lucy to look after.”

“Missed you,” he said.

“Missed you too.” This time I kissed him, a little more aggressively than I’d intended, but what the hell? Before he had time to respond, I was straddling his lap, my knees sinking into the couch cushions on either side of him. I ran my hands through his hair—it was longer than my enlisted man’s buzz cut, but shorter than it had been when we’d first met. There was enough on top to grip, though, so I made a fist in his hair until he moaned, and then I pushed my tongue inside his mouth.

He drew back and nipped at my lower lip. Caught it between his teeth and tugged it, sending a jolt of arousal straight down into my balls. I squirmed on his lap, my dick already hard.

He released my lip, then kissed his way up toward my ear. “Bedroom?”

“Yeah. Fuck, yeah.”

* * * *

The ceiling fan spun lazily above us as Cam lowered himself on top of me. I liked it like this, when we did this face-to-face. It was slower and gentler, and sometimes that was exactly what I wanted. Tonight it was. Cam ran his hands up the insides of my thighs, pushing my legs apart. Then, instead of paying any attention at all to my aching dick, he leaned over me and pressed his mouth to my stomach. He laid a soft trail of kisses on the skin there, each of them prickling briefly with cold when he moved his mouth away.

“Don’t tease me, asshole.”

He hardened his gaze. “Don’t disrespect me, Crewman Garrett.”

Oh, so that was his game.

I was so fucking good at this game.

I licked my lips and narrowed my eyes at him. “What are you gonna do about it, sir?”

Cam leaned back. He reached down and grabbed my balls, not tight enough to actually hurt, but tight enough that I sure thought twice about trying to pull away. “Don’t test me, Garrett.”

“No, sir. Wouldn’t dream of it, Lieutenant Rushton, sir.”

“I’d hate to write you up,” he said.

“I’ve got a pretty bad record already,” I whispered, almost jackknifing off the bed when his other hand closed around my cock. “Oh, Jesus.”

“I know you do. They warned me about you, Garrett. Said you were a smart-ass kid with a bad attitude. Know what I told them?”

I moaned as he stroked my dick. “LT!”

“I told them I could whip your ass into line.”

“Pretty sure you could do whatever the fuck you want to my ass,” I agreed. “Sir.”

Cam’s mouth twitched as he fought a smile. “Is that so?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. The game wasn’t real, but my rising desperation to get fucked was. “Please, sir!”

“Okay, okay, Brady,” he said, and I knew we were done with the game for the night. Sometimes we played it different, a little harder, but not tonight. I’d missed Cam, and he’d missed me, and I think maybe we wanted to be ourselves again before we were other people. I didn’t want Lieutenant Rushton to order me around tonight, and see how far we could push each other. I just wanted Cam, skin on skin, with nothing between us.

He leaned over me, the air a thick, hot layer between us, to grab the lube from the bedside table. He squirted some on his fingers, and I grinned at the noise it made, like a fart. Cam rolled his eyes, then wiped the dumb smile right off my face when he slid two fingers inside me.

“Little warning!” I gasped, arching off the bed.

“Wanted to see you jump.” He curled over me and pressed his mouth against my chest. Tugged at a nipple with his teeth.

“Fuck,” I moaned. “Jesus.”

He opened me up gently after that, moving his fingers slowly, crooking them so they rubbed against my prostate and sent a bolt of electricity through me. By the time he’d worked up to three fingers, my cock was leaking all over my abdomen, my balls were already drawn up tight, and I was wavering right on the sharp edge of coming. I almost did when he finally got his dick in me. Don’t even know how I stopped myself.

Jesus, the fucking stretch and burn. So good. Cam knew just how to do me right. He bottomed out and panted against my throat for a moment, until I squirmed underneath him and hooked my legs around his ass. The sudden shift changed the angle of penetration, and we both groaned.

“Come on,” I urged him, turning my head to lick a stripe up his jaw. “Come on, fuck me.”

He rocked into me. “Love you,” he whispered. “I fucking love you.”

“Love you,” I echoed, digging furrows down his back with my fingertips. “Cam, I missed you.”