Most of the time, when life throws shit at me, I can handle it. I’ve handled my abduction and my enslavement. I’ve handled my freedom and the resulting loneliness. I’ve handled my farm even though I knew nothing about farming when I started and no one would help me. I handle—every day—being human in a universe that thinks we’re dogs. But sometimes it gets to me. I know I can handle this. I’ll figure a way out of things.
Right now, though, it feels good to cry.
So I let myself weep as I finish cleaning the door and toss the towel into the laundry. I keep weeping as I grab my tools and work on replacing the lock. I have no idea how it fits on the door, but I’ll figure it out.
I always figure something out.
“Piper?” Vordigar’s sleepy voice makes my skin prickle with awareness. “You coming back to bed?”
I swallow hard, trying to steady my voice as I swipe tears from my face. “Soon.” Please just stay in bed. I don’t want to have to answer questions about this. Please just—
The bedroom door opens wider and I hear Vordigar’s feet on the floor behind me. “What’s going on?”
I get up from the door and slide the lock behind my hand. “Nothing. I’m coming back. I promise.” It’s dark enough that I hope he doesn’t notice my red eyes or my faltering smile.
His gaze pierces right through me, though. He watches me with narrowed eyes and then approaches me, then pulls my hand back and I’m forced to show him the broken lock.
“It’s nothing—”
“Why does it smell like praxiian here?” His nostrils flare and he moves toward the door. Inwardly I wince as he sees the deep furrows and scratches around where the lock used to be. He looks at me in surprise. “He tried to break in?”
I shrug.
Vordigar looks at the lock in his hand, as if he’s just now realizing what I was doing. That I was quietly repairing it in the middle of the night. “You weren’t going to tell me?”
“I didn’t want to burden you with my problems,” I say in a small voice. “It’s fine. I can handle it.”
His jaw clenches. He tosses the lock down and moves to my side. When I try to duck my head, he puts a finger under my chin and gazes at my face, studying my swollen eyes and leaky nose. “It’s fine, is it?”
I pull away from him. “Once I get a new husband, it’ll stop. I just—”
I watch in confusion as Vordigar storms out of the room. Curious, I follow him toward the bedroom and watch from the doorway as he picks up his communicator. I can see it flashing with unread messages, and he dials someone with a grim look on his face. There’s no answer—it’s the middle of the night here—and so he leaves a short, terse message. “I can’t make it. Head on out without me.”
He hangs up before I can protest.
“Vordigar,” I begin, uncomfortable. “I don’t want you to feel pressured to stay. This isn’t your problem.”
“Isn’t my problem?” The big, horned alien looks at me as if I’ve grown another head. “You think I’m going to just walk away when some keffing praxiian is harassing you? When he’s making you feel unsafe? You think I could let that happen to you?” His jaw clenches as I take a step backward. “You don’t belong to him.”
On that, we agree. “I don’t belong to anyone,” I tell him in a shaky voice.
Vordigar just gazes down at me, an intense look in his eyes. “I want you to belong to me.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say that I want that, too, but I can’t let my hopes get up. I shake my head, but he scoops me up in his arms and hauls me back to the bedroom. He kicks the door shut behind us and carries me to the bed, then gently lays me back. I watch as he moves over me, his big arms caging me underneath him on the mattress, but I don’t feel trapped or frightened. I feel safe.
“What do you mean?” I ask him in the barest of whispers.
“I mean I’m staying.” His gaze meets mine. “I’m not leaving. I’ll be your husband. I’ll be the father of your kit.”
A knot of emotional hope forms in my throat. “Why?”
Vordigar frowns. “What do you mean, why? I’m staying to protect you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
It was before I knew him. It was everything I wanted. But now it feels vaguely unfair. “I don’t want you to stay because you feel sorry for me. I don’t want you to feel like I’ve trapped you here.”
He shakes his head, then grabs my hands and brings them to his lips, pressing them to his mouth in the closest approximation to a kiss that he’s given me. “I’m not staying out of a sense of responsibility. Kef me, woman. I do feel responsible, but that’s not why I’m staying. I’m staying because I want to be with you. Because you deserve a home and I want to be the one to give it to you. Because you look at me like I created the stars instead of the nobody station trash that I am.” He rubs his jaw against my fingers, and for a moment, he looks as vulnerable and intensely needy as I feel. “The bounty hunting—it doesn’t feel right. Not after just being picked up by bounty hunters myself. Maybe others out there are just trying to start over. Maybe they’re tired of the price on their heads and just want to farm. Maybe they’ve settled down with a pretty human and want to make babies with her. How can I go and do that when everything I ever wanted is right here?”