ANKE
Anke couldn’t sleep that night. Totally normal, reasonable reaction to almost dying in a fiery explosion, she told herself, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating to lie on her borrowed bed in some borrowed pajamas, staring up at the ceiling of a borrowed room with its constellations of string lights winding along the bow-curved walls.
Fatigue wasn’t the problem. She had plenty of that. Loads of it, oodles, waiting in the wings when all that fizzy, sparkly adrenaline faded. It’d seeped into her bones, turned them spongy and squishy and roughly, oh, thirty-seven times heavier than they were supposed to be. No. Fatigue wasn’t the problem.
Brain chemistry. That’s the problem, she thought. Brain chemistry made her hyperaware of every wrinkle in the soft sheets and every rustle of fibers in the too-flat pillows she’d piled on top of each other when she’d still had some hope of getting some sleep. Brain chemistry that turned the mottled, coppery paint on the metal walls to eyes watching her from the dark, mocking her for failing at such a basic biological function as sleep. Babies could sleep. Insects could sleep.
But Anke … Anke with her dodgy old brain chemistry, she closed her eyes and let herself listen, let herself drift and hear the faint hum of the engines churning in the belly of the ship, the whoosh of the life support systems …
The beep of the battery warning, counting down to zero percent …
The pounding of fists on the rockhopper’s cargo door, muffled gunshots and shouting and Open this door, you bitch! Open the fucking—
Bit tricky to sleep, with one of the worst moments of her life stuck on a loop inside her wonderful, terrible, uncooperative brain. Maybe a handful of hours after Nash showed her to her room—Nash’s room, technically, but she didn’t use it; said it didn’t have the right energy for her—Anke gave up trying.
“Message received,” she announced to the twinkling string lights. With a huff, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, only to yank them back up again when her bare feet touched cold floor. “Socks. Socks, socks, socks.” She had some of those, fortunately, in her go-bag. All freshly laundered, courtesy of Captain Eoan, though she still swore she caught whiffs of ammonia as she tugged the thick-knit wool over her feet. What a vision she must’ve been, she thought, as she threw her coat on over a long-sleeve shirt borrowed from Saint, and jogger bottoms borrowed from Nash, who was probably a very nice person, but had absolutely no hips to speak of. You’re not looking to impress anyone, weirdo. Just get out of the stupid room.
She hadn’t known the hall was down there; would’ve missed the hatch and the ladder from the main hallway, if Nash hadn’t led her down it after dinner. Not much to it, just Nash’s quarters, a hydroponics room for the sorts of produce and leafy greens that didn’t store well, and one last bunk room at the very end of the hall, where Jal stayed.
She hadn’t planned to go all the way down the hall. Probably would’ve gone back up the ladder, rustled around in the galley until she found something tasty to stress-munch. Good choices were for daytime.
As she neared the ladder, though, she heard a sound. Voices—one high, childlike, then a deeper one. Didn’t know the Guild had a kindergarten, she thought, drawn toward the sound. Blame her pesky brain. Probably, what, the basal ganglia? Impulsive curiosity, couldn’t be helped.
Which was why she found herself standing outside Jal’s door, listening to a conversation she knew was none of her business. “—to hold still, wiggle worm. Got to get these laces done up right.”
“Well, hurry up, Uncle Jal.” The little girl’s voice, again. Anke didn’t have much experience with children; she hadn’t even been very good with them when she’d been one. So she couldn’t have guessed at the girl’s age, or anything else about her, except that she was definitely fed up with waiting. “The ice is melting!”
A low chuckle, barely audible through the metal door. “Ice ain’t goin’ anywhere, Bitsie, and neither are you, ’til you let me tie these damned skates,” the man drawled. His voice sounded closer, though it echoed strangely. “Need a degree in engineering to do these things up. Gonna have to call your mama out here.”
“They’re just laces,” the girl complained.
“Tiny laces,” he replied. “How d’you get around on such little feet?”
“Maybe your hands are just too big.”
“Oh, now my hands are too big? Are they too big for this?”
Anke meant what she’d said about not knowing children. Didn’t know what they sounded like, and she didn’t know a scream from a laugh until she’d already waved the door open and taken her first step inside.
Peals of giggles greeted her in the dark room, lit only by the projection of a video on the far wall. The man in the video had the little girl in his arms, tickling her sides mercilessly as she flailed her ice skates and wriggled and twisted. “Uncle!” she cried.
“What?” said the man, and Anke realized the reason for that strange echo: the voice came at once from the room’s speakers and from the figure on the floor. Jal sat against the foot of the bed, back to her and arms slung loose around his knees. He looked … different, in that light. In the rockhopper, he’d seemed like a giant, but here? He was just a man. White T-shirt on its last legs, hair loose around his shoulders. Feet bare and jeans a bit too short.
“No,” cried the little girl in the video. “Uncle! I give up! Uncle, uncle, uncle.”
“Oh,” said both versions of Jal. His hair was shorter in the video. Not even to his ears, and flat to his scalp like it’d been tucked under something—probably, she thought, the watch cap swallowing the little girl’s head. She barely came up to his knees when he stood her up, dusting snow off her shoulders and checking the zipper on her bubble coat. “All right, then. We’ll call it a draw, then, why don’t we? Now let’s get you out on that ice ’fore it melts.”
“But you said—”
“You sleepwalkin’ or something?”
It took Anke a second to realize the question came from Jal-on-the-floor, not Jal-in-the-video, his voice rougher and quieter than the short-haired version marching little Bitsie out onto the frozen lake. When her brain caught up, she startled back so hard she bumped her elbow into the doorway and nearly twisted herself around toward the hall.
“Oh!” she yelped, covering her eyes like she’d just walked in on him in the shower or something, then jerking her hand back down when she realized that reaction made zero sense at all. Please, could we not be awkward for once?
She cleared her throat, suddenly painfully aware of her ill-fitting pajamas and too-fluffy socks, never mind the fact that she’d been creeping in his room for the better part of a minute without so much as a my bad, mate. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean—it’s just, I heard voices, plural, and I got curious, and the door just sort of … opened … after I waved my hand in front of the thingy.”
Jal’s shoulders twitched. Was it a laugh? She really couldn’t tell. Her eyes couldn’t seem to decide where they wanted to stay—on the video, where Uncle Jal was leading little Bitsie around the ice by her hand as she figured out how to keep her skates under her, murmuring encouragement in that low drawl of his while she giggled and wobbled; or on Ex-Ranger Jal, looking small and tired at the foot of the bed.
“Pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to work,” he told her.
“I know. I just—I’m sorry. I wasn’t spying on you or anything.”
This time she interpreted the hitch in his shoulders as a shrug. Very expressive shoulders. “Don’t have to stand there,” he muttered, as Jal-in-the-video gave little Bitsie a gentle push forward out onto the ice. “Sit, if you want.”
Right. An invitation. The thing she probably should’ve gotten before she came in; bit too late for it now. She took him up on it, sliding forward on her cushy-thick socks until she could just make out his face in the light of the screen.
His eyes. Red-rimmed and crystalline black, catching every bit of light from the projection and shining with it. “You’re a mu—” she started to say.
“Look!” The little girl skated past Jal in the video, blonde braids trailing out behind her, arms spread like wings. “I’m doing it, Uncle Jal! Look, I’m doing it!” And Jal turned back toward the projection, as if she’d really called him. As if he was really looking, really watching his niece skate across the ice for the first time.
“Look at you go, Bitsie,” Jal said, tone a near match for the one from the speakers. Sadder, though. Wistful.
“How many times have you watched this, exactly?” She winced. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
He waved his hand again. Shoulders and hands. Not too big on words, and then there was Anke, who could’ve stood to use fewer of them. “Few times. Mentioned it to Saint when we got back to the ship,” he said. “Turned out he still had the vid.”
“Saint. That’s the serious bloke who likes to cook?”
A slow smile crooked Jal’s lips. “Serious bloke.” Not the best attempt at her accent, but then, she wouldn’t have liked to hear herself try his. “Yeah, that’s him. He took it.”
“The video?” Seemed at least one other person had to be there. She just hadn’t expected it would be Saint.
But Jal nodded. “Long time ago. Lifetime, feels like.”
“You’re, what, thirty?”
“I look thirty?”
Oops. “No, I mean. Of course you don’t. Unless you are?” He stared at her with those black eyes of his. “No, of course you’re not. More like, what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? Wait.” She narrowed her eyes as the corner of his mouth quirked just a fraction higher. “Are you messing with me?”
“No, ma’am,” he replied, seriously, but that smile said otherwise.
“You are. You’re messing with me.” She feigned a gasp and was delighted to see that lopsided smile go broader, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Oh no, he’s hiding a personality under all that hair.” She probably should’ve waited for an invitation—again—before she dropped down beside him at the foot of the bed, but why start now? “So, you’re an uncle,” she said. “You and Saint go back, and you can hold your breath for a very long time, and you like saving strangers from certain death.” And you have scars on your ankles from a monitor, and you cry a little when you watch old videos of your family in the dark. She swallowed hard against an ache in her throat. Anke was the reigning champ of positive mental attitudes, but she … well, she knew a sad soul when she saw one. Just because Jal’s scars were a bit different to hers, didn’t mean they weren’t the same where it mattered. “You’re a curious man.”
“You’re a curious woman,” he replied, but she got the sense he meant it the other way.
She shrugged. “Inquisitive mind.”
“I can see that.”
Her cheeks warmed. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“You did.” Matter-of-fact, and then, “I don’t mind. It’s a good memory.” He reached back behind him and tapped the GLASS sitting propped on the still-made bed. “Guess that’s why he kept it.” As the recording stopped and became just a square of soft light on the wall, he turned to look at her properly. “You all right?”
“What?” She faltered, feeling … scrutinized wasn’t the right word, no. Wasn’t like he was looking for something when he looked at her. Just … seen, maybe. Like she had his entire attention, and as someone used to being half–listened to at best, she didn’t quite know what to do with it. “Oh, er, yes.” She fidgeted with the cuffs of her coat. “Bit of a headache, I guess, but I’ll live. Thanks to you lot.” She nudged him with an elbow, then immediately wondered if that was too forward, then made the conscious decision to try not to overthink it. “You? I know you were short on air for a while.”
“I can hold my breath,” he said, shrugging.
“Right. And lift half a cockpit with your bare hands.”
“Just the plenum,” he muttered.
“And cross an entire shipping compound in, what, thirty seconds? Is there anything you can’t do?” she teased, bumping her glasses higher up her nose.
He arched an eyebrow. “See with the lights on?”
Ah, right. Eyes like that, she supposed not.
“Not much for guitaring, neither. Or shoelaces.” He held out his hands, and even with only the gray screen for light, she could make out the scars and calluses and the bend of broken fingers poorly mended. She winced in sympathy, but he must’ve misread it. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked, then frowned. “You, uh. You don’t have to keep sitting in the floor, if it ain’t comfortable. I forget, sometimes.”
“How to be comfortable?” Anke asked, without really meaning to, and he dipped his head. Oh. “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. This is fine.” Would she have moved their little getting-to-know-you chat to comfier climes? Gladly. But Jal had said more to her in the past few minutes than he’d said since the rockhopper, and a numb tailbone was a small price to pay.
Jal looked unconvinced, but he didn’t argue. He reached one of his long arms back and dragged the blanket down off the bed instead, pushing it toward her like he’d done the towel in the galley. It was … sweet. Clumsy and fumbling, like he’d forgotten how to be anything but guarded; but genuinely, earnestly trying.
Of course, she took the blanket, tucking one edge underneath her and wrapping the other around her shoulders in a little coder cocoon. “So,” she said, nudging him again, “does this mean you’re not the one behind all those cute little knitted creatures?”
“Can’t take the credit, sorry to say.”
She laughed quietly. Didn’t seem like the space for raucous and bubbly, but he was funny, in an understated sort of way. Still, for all the sweetness and the low-key humor, there was something not quite right about him. Nothing she could point to, nothing she could name, but something kept her wary.
Or maybe that was just brain chemistry, too.
“She’s not dead, right?”
Jal gave her a startled look. “What?”
“The girl in the video,” Anke explained, picking at a loose thread on the blanket. “Only, you seemed awfully blue just now, watching the video, and reading between the lines, it seems like something happened with you and Saint. I just thought maybe … maybe that’d be enough to make someone give up his oxygen tank in dead air and stay behind with a bunch of bombs.”
That startled look turned confused, then incredulous. Really, it was a bit fascinating to watch all the shapes, the expressions, move across Jal’s face. She’d thought his shoulders and hands did most of his talking, but it turned out his eyes carried half the conversation. Shame he had to keep them behind specs most of the time.
“She’s fine,” he said, with a scrunch of his face that fell somewhere between offended and perplexed. “Just haven’t seen her in a while’s all. Her mama, either.”
“Your sister?”
“Half,” he said. “Her old man was gone before mine came into the picture.”
“And your old man?”
“Gone before I came into the picture.”
Not an uncommon story. She filed it away and, with a deep breath, mustered the nerve to ask, “Was it them?”
“Was what them?”
“The reason you stayed behind in the rockhopper.” She’d started down the path; might as well see where it led. “At first I thought you were just being valiant. No, you take the oxygen. But the tank has two ports, so either you totally blanked on how tanks work, or you wanted us to split off. You wanted to stay behind.”
Jal stared straight ahead at the blank projection on the wall. “You think so?”
“Mm-hm.” She pretended to pick dirt from under her fingernails, because two could play the I’m not looking at you game. “What I couldn’t figure was why.”
“Past tense?”
“You’re sharper than you look.”
He snorted. “Don’t worry, none taken.”
“You know what I meant.” If he didn’t, well. Whatever. She had a point to get to, before her superhuman ability to test people’s patience kicked in and got her kicked out. “I know what you were doing back there.” Wow, okay, maybe a little more direct than she’d planned. Roll with it, Ahlstrom. “Don’t worry,” she added, when she caught his stare flickering toward the ceiling. “Privacy protocols—occupied crew quarters are off-limits unless there’s some kind of emergency. Been a while since you had shipmates?” It was one of those things people just took for granted. Ship life didn’t work without it. Spend enough time off a ship, though, and she guessed you could forget.
“Been a while since I had privacy,” he replied.
“Huh.” Unexpected. “Sorry, I guess I just thought, with the whole desertion thing, you’d been on your own for a bit.”
He lifted a shoulder, more a dismissal than a shrug. “Lots of people been thinking lots of things about me. Don’t make it all true.” That was all he seemed to care to say about that. In possibly the least subtle subject change in history, he said, “You know what I was doing on the rockhopper, huh?”
She nodded. “I was still connected to the rockhopper’s computer when the bombs went off, trying to buy you some time to get out, and I get a notification that there’s been a portable drive connected to the computer.”
His black-mirror eyes didn’t so much as blink, but she could’ve sworn they got just a shade wider. Shadows played across his jaw, darkening and lightening as the structures beneath tanned skin moved. Clenching, unclenching. “What’d you see?”
A loaded question, if ever she’d heard one. Not a threat, not a challenge, but heavy with implications unknown and unsettled. Somehow that was worse.
She shook her head. “Nothing.” Then, because nobody ever heard nothing and believed it, she explained, “It was encrypted. Keyed for Guild computers only, but then I’m thinking you knew that. Why else would you risk your ass in an explosion just for a little alone time with a rockhopper console?”
“I’ve been told I’m not very bright.”
“Sounds like they weren’t paying attention.”
Finally, he turned to her. “I ain’t,” he said, decisively. “But you are. You’re good with that sort of thing, right? The computers and shit.” She could practically hear the steam starting to build behind the words. “Could you decrypt it?”
“I don’t have the key on my GLASS. But Captain Eoan—”
He shook his head. “No. Can’t take this to them.”
“Why?” She worried her lip between her teeth. Oh, she had a very bad feeling about this. “What’s in that drive, Jal?”
He glanced back to the screen, and though it was still the same blank gray, she almost got the feeling he was watching that video all over again. In his mind’s eye, maybe. He knew all the words. He must’ve been playing it since they turned in. He must miss them so terribly. She wasn’t sure why—she didn’t know him from Adam, really; she certainly didn’t know his family—but the thought still brought a prickle to her eyes.
He said, after a moment, “It’s my way back to them. Or,” he sighed, “it’s not a goddamn thing.”
“You don’t know?”
“Can’t know. Not ’til I see what’s on it.”
“And you can’t just ask the captain to help you because?” She squinted at him. “You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?”
He actually laughed, staccato and airy like she’d surprised it out of him. “Yeah,” he said, a wide grin on his face and a terrible worry lining the corner of his eyes. “Some kind of trouble. And they got no business being in it with me, any of them.”
Now if that wasn’t a story half-told, she didn’t know what was. She scoffed, plucking her glasses off to wipe them on her shirt hem. “Oh, but me, that’s different,” she said. “Your trouble’s totally my business.”
“Won’t be any trouble for you if you don’t tell anybody about it.” And he must’ve figured out how it sounded, because he swore before she could even finish putting her glasses back to side-eye him properly. “That’s not—that wasn’t a threat. I just mean, they could make a real mess of things, if they knew what’s on that drive. What I think’s on that drive,” he corrected. “But whatever you find, I know you’ll keep it between us. I trust you.”
“Why?” she said. “You barely know me.”
“You barely knew me back in the hangar,” he replied. “Why didn’t you shoot me?”
Seemed like sort of an obvious question. “I didn’t have a choice. You were my only way out.” But it was only when he spread his hands, a there you have it sort of gesture, that she understood: he was stuck, too. Trapped in his own way, by his own problems, and he needed a way out. She was it.
No pressure. She tried to laugh, but it fell flat. “You know, I’m actually a pretty terrible shot.”
Jal arched an eyebrow. “I don’t know,” he said. “I reckon you did all right with Riesen.”
Anke blanched so hard, she made herself dizzy. “What do you—?”
“Two shots,” Jal said, holding up two fingers. “The one in Riesen’s leg didn’t match the one in his chest. Too little for the agitators’ rifles, but just about right for that little peashooter of yours. I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t those agitators who got the first shot off, was it?”
Her stomach plunged, sickeningly. He knows. He knows. He knows. And in the absence of a more believable lie, all she could hold on to was the truth. “He was going to shoot me,” she admitted. She could still see it, when she closed her eyes. The glint of the barrel, and the steely determination on Riesen’s weathered face that said he wouldn’t hesitate to squeeze that trigger. “I shot him first. Just—just enough to get away. I shut the cargo door behind me, closed it up with straps and stuff so he couldn’t just key it open.”
“Attagirl.”
Which … really wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. “Wait.” Something struck her then. “You didn’t say anything, back in the galley. You knew what I did, but you didn’t say. Why would you do that?”
“You did what you had to do. Telling them would’ve just made things more confusing.”
She’d thought the same thing, though she had an inkling there was more to it than that. “That, and you need my help, right?”
“That too.” He sighed, stretching his legs out in front of him. Seriously, how did someone with legs that long even live on a ship? It was a wonder he didn’t have a permanent doorframe-shaped dent on his forehead. “Don’t get me wrong: if I could do it myself, I’d ask you to forget all about it and let that be the end of things, but that rockhopper was as far as I knew how to get.”
She relaxed a little, forcing a breath past the vise in her chest. He knew about Riesen and her rainy-day pistol. That wasn’t ideal. On the other hand, he didn’t seem inclined to do anything about it, and keeping her out of hot water worked in his favor, too. Could’ve been worse. “What? You mean you don’t crack high-level encryptions in your spare time?”
Another laugh, quieter than the last one. A low, breathy rumble in the quiet room. “You know, I was thinking of taking it up. Just can’t seem to get around to it.”
“Too busy rescuing strangers from bomb-ridden death traps? Uh-huh, I’ve heard that before.” She’d found her smile again, by the end of it. She’d missed this—conversation with something that actually talked back. Computers were great and all, but not exactly banging out the witty repartee, and Riesen hadn’t been the bantering type. It’d been a long few weeks on that rockhopper, even before he tried to kill her.
“So,” Jal started, hope so tentative in his voice that it plucked every heartstring she had and even a few she hadn’t known about. Didn’t seem like he was trying; he was just … golden. Hard to see it at first, through all the dents and dirt he’d picked up along the way, but in the little moments, in the small kindnesses and the breakthrough smiles, it shined. “Will you?”
“Deceive the captain and crew who graciously agreed to join my quest to save the universe from multiplanetary geocide?” She tried to keep the good mood going, but it was really hard to sugarcoat that kind of gamble. Captain Eoan and their crew were Anke’s only ticket to Noether and to finishing what she’d started, and her mission was too important to jeopardize for one man. Even if that man had saved her life, and was depending on her to get back to his family and did have the kind of smile a girl could lose herself in and impossible strength and dimples that could launch a thousand—
Off topic. God. It got worse when she didn’t sleep, her ping-ponging brain. Yes, it was a risk. Helping him, lying for him, would endanger the mission she and others had sacrificed everything for. She knew what they would say, the people who stood with her. They’d say it wasn’t her place, and that so many more people counted on her to do her job. They’d tell her not to risk it, when they’d entrusted so much to her.
But they weren’t there. They hadn’t been pinned in that rockhopper, watching the backup power tick down to zero; and they hadn’t seen the love, the loss, the longing in Jal’s eyes as he’d watched that snowy little memory play out on the screen. It wasn’t their choice. It was hers.
So she made the only one that she could live with.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
Not great at reading between the lines. That was fine; he was pretty exceptional at lifting heavy objects off of trapped Guild programmers. She could appreciate the skill sets he did have. “Okay, I’ll help. Or, I’ll try. Not sure how much of the drive I was able to clone before the ship went boom, and assuming I got the lion’s share, I’ve got to munch my way through a few layers of spicy, spicy encryption to get to the prize inside. Which is to say, if it’s humanly possible, I’m your girl. I mean”—she caught herself—“I’m not your girl. I’m the girl. For the job, that is. Oh my God, I’m going to stop talking, now. I swear, I’m not normally this bad.” Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“I don’t mind,” Jal said, smile returned to its former dimply glory. It wasn’t even that big of a smile, soft and a little crooked; the dimples just happened. So not fair.
“You’re just saying that because I agreed to aid and abet your criminal conspiracy.”
“Never said it was criminal.”
“Never said it wasn’t,” she pointed out, cheerfully. Lo and behold, she even had to smother a yawn as all that restless nervousness finally started to loosen its grip. How long had it been since she’d had a proper night’s sleep? She couldn’t even remember, but her eyelids got heavier just thinking about it. She held up a finger to her lips. “But shh, I’m clinging to every shred of plausible deniability I can get. Just so you know, if this all goes sideways, I’m telling them you coerced me.”
“You do that.”
She nodded, decisively. “You held a gun to my head,” she told him, sinking back a little against the foot of the bed. Her shoulder knocked his, not by any design but sheer, sleepy clumsiness, but he didn’t shake her loose or scoot away. “No, that’s not really your style. You’re subtler than that. A real man of distinction.”
“That so?” he asked, looking a little drowsy himself. She got the sense that if it weren’t for her, he’d have turned the screen off already and let the room go dark. Given only one of them had nocturnal eyes, though, and the other had a penchant for finding solid objects with her shins at the mere suggestion of dim lighting, it was nice of him to leave it on. “How d’you reckon I’d do it, then?”
She turned her head, studying him in the soft glow. Such an honest face, sun-touched and lined with good years and bad. “You wouldn’t,” she said, softly, and with the blanket snug around her shoulders, she stood.
He glanced up at her. “Calling it a night?”
That was the plan, if only to get out of his hair. Though the thought of going back to that room, with the too-thin pillows and the hum of the engines, the warning beep of the battery and the pounding fists and furious shouts—“Can I sleep with you tonight?” she blurted.
Jal looked completely flummoxed for the, oh, five seconds it took her to realize what she’d said. Or, rather, how it must’ve sounded.
“Oh! Oh, no.” She buried her face in her hands, willing the heat to recede from her cheeks. Couldn’t even blame that one on brain chemistry, just a taste for shoe leather and the uncanny ability to say totally normal things in totally abnormal ways. “Not with you, with you. In the room. Which still sounds super weird, now that I’m saying it out loud. It’s just … I’m having a hard time shutting off? I close my eyes and I start to drift, and then…” She trailed off, helplessly.
Man of few words Jal might’ve been, but he seemed to have the right ones for this situation. “Then you’re back there,” he said, with a deep, effortless understanding. “All right, then,” he said, rising from the foot of the bed to shuffle to the closet.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
He turned back with a stack of blankets and a couple pillows balanced on his arm. “Bed’s yours.”
“Oh, no, I can’t—”
“Ain’t big enough for the both of us.” If there was any mercy in the world, even his keen eyes wouldn’t pick up the flush on her cheeks. “And I can’t let you sleep on the floor.”
“Because I’m a girl?”
“The girl, I think you said.” He spread out one of the blankets and dropped the pillows at the head of it with a shrug. “But if it makes you feel any better, we can say it’s ’cause you had the worse day.”
“Not sure that’s a competition I want to win.”
“Shitty trophy,” he agreed, settling down on the blanket. He made a point of reaching up to the bed and yanking back the remaining covers. “Sleep.”
She would’ve argued, she told herself. If she weren’t so tired and wrung out and sore, she would’ve made a real stink about it. She was all of those things, though, and even a few more, and so all she said as she wrapped her blanket tighter around herself and flopped onto the mattress was “Flip you for it tomorrow.”
If she wasn’t asleep before her head hit the pillow, then it was a very near thing.