CHAPTER 16

I can’t even look at Mitchell. I spin my chair so I’m facing away from him and allow myself a secret freakout, kicking my feet and giving a silent scream of excitement before I swivel back, huge-ass grin wrangled into what I hope looks like a faint, disinterested smile.

“ You’re a fan of DJ Rollercoaster?”

“Dang.” He seems genuinely disappointed. “Thought I was going to introduce you to something new. He’s only been on the scene a few months.”

I arch an eyebrow and let just a tiny fraction of my smug-as-hell inner glee grace my lips. “ Nobody one-ups me when it comes to music. Not even you, Captain Perfect.” I lean toward him, placing an elbow on the arm of my chair and resting my chin in my palm. “But I’m interested. Tell me more about what you think of DJ Rollercoaster.”

Mitchell eyes me with the quizzical look that he seems to reserve specially for my antics, but he can’t resist waxing lyrical over the creative genius of his new favourite artist . DJ Rollercoaster’s music is intelligent , he says. DJ Rollercoaster is cutting edge and yet historically grounded. DJ Rollercoaster blows guys like RetroX out of the water .

Oh, Captain Perfect, how right you are. My grin grows along with my ego as he goes on about the greatness of my music.

But beneath the heady rush of the ego boost, my heart is filling with something strange. Something I’ve never experienced before.

I mean, I know I’m good.

I was considered a prodigy even before my mods.

Nobles fought tooth and nail for invitations to my violin performances, donating unfathomable amounts to charity for the chance to see me play.

But the wealthy who attended those performances knew my real name. Knew who my father was. They didn’t really appreciate my music. To them, I was just another gilded work of art on a pedestal. Something lovely to look at while they sipped champagne and rubbed elbows with the elite. As long as I glittered, it didn’t matter what was under the surface.

My audience in the Underground wasn’t exactly hard to please, either. They arrived high and they came to get higher, and I was just another dealer of the emotional ride they craved.

Now, here, sitting in front of me, is someone completely sober. Someone who has no motive to manipulate. He doesn’t know who I am or even that this is my music. And yet I feel laid bare. More than naked. Stripped of my skin. Like he’s seeing inside me. I’m not just a hollow object on display or a dealer of empty highs .

Somehow, though no one else has bothered to look for it, Mitchell has peeled back the gilding to see my frenetic, Delirium-stained soul.

And in it, he sees something real and worthwhile.

It’s terrifying and yet grounding. I’m not floating on lies or drifting on highs or scrambling for solid ground I’ll never find. For a moment I think I could see a different version of myself. See myself whole and not hollow. See myself standing on my own two feet and not just floating.

Bass vibrates deep in my chest as Mitchell leans toward me in his seat, like someone about to share a secret with a trusted friend. “But the thing I like most about DJ Rollercoaster is… You know how you said that with your mods it can be hard to get your mind off… unpleasant memories? And how music helps? It’s the same for me.”

His tone has gone from effusive to intense. Instead of crossing my arms, protecting both myself and him from the growing possibility of trust that could only break us both, I scoot toward him in my seat, helpless. Enthralled.

“I get these flashes sometimes,” he says. “From when I was on the front lines. Random details, stashed away like a pile of old snapshots. A severed arm in the rubble of an explosion. It’s blackened, but it’s wearing my buddy’s wedding ring… The face of a Noovian soldier standing with her gun pointed at me. Sh e would have killed me, but I fired first. The moment after I pulled the trigger, I realized she was pregnant… Pregnant.”

My soul is cracked open and I hurt for him, intense like it’s my own pain. Only I can’t condense Mitchell’s trauma into coal, ball it up and ignore it like I can my own dark memories. I want to help him. Heal him. Make music for him. I want to reach out and touch him, but it might break the spell.

Mitchell scrubs a palm across his eyes before he continues. “When it’s still and quiet, like now—when everyone’s asleep and I don’t have work or Sam’s schooling or cranky old Ballga to crowd out the memories—when it’s bad. Like today. Sam almost dying… you almost dying… That’s when I come here and listen to music, to distract myself. But there are times when the flashbacks are so persistent even music doesn’t help. Or it didn’t until DJ Rollercoaster’s stuff came out of the Underground. It’s like he gets it. The need to occupy every facet of the mind until you’re completely absorbed and there’s no space for anything else. No explosions, nobody dying at my hands or in my arms. Just… sound.”

I inhale, sharp and shaky, fully understanding, now. Mitchell doesn’t just see my music. He sees what it’s for. His trauma echoes mine and somehow my escape, my place of safety, of refuge inside rhythm and sound, has become a safe haven for him too. A hiding place against the onslaught of his own darkness .

Mitchell looks up. Our eyes meet. And there it is. All the sadness that lingers at the edges of his smile, all the pain that hides just under the surface, on full display in those green-brown suns… only now they’re not suns, they’re reflections of exploding bombs. They’re shrapnel bursting from his pupils and I…

I have no skin on. Nothing to protect me.

I’ve never been this terrified in my life, not even on that day.

I can’t, I just can’t.

I’ll be smashed.

I’ll be crushed to powder.

I’ll be dust.

I’m out of my chair. My heart pounds a frantic beat. My bare feet slap cold metal.

This is what I do. I run.

“Gemma, wait.” A hand catches my wrist as I step up out of the cockpit and into the passenger zone. Shame curdles my stomach because I know he can feel me trembling. My whole body’s fucking shaking like I’m back in Detox.

“I’m sorry.” Mitchell’s voice is too soft. Gentle. So gentle it’s going to kill me. He uncurls the hand from my wrist. “I didn’t mean to scare you. ”

As if he’s done anything wrong. The problem is he’s done everything right. So right I didn’t know what right looked like until tonight.

“God, I’m an idiot.” The regret in his voice is brutal self-loathing. It stabs me right in my foolish, unarmed heart.

I’d do anything not to face him right now. Not to let him see me unguarded and scared. Not to let him draw me in with his stupid perfect kindness for one more second. But I can’t let him blame himself. Not when he just showed me how much guilt he already carries.

I turn.

Standing on this step, I’m a little closer to Mitchell’s height, but I’m too much of a coward to look in his face, so I stare at his bare chest. Which is not much better because, while his eyes make me forget reality and believe in all sorts of dangerous lies like safety and family and… and trust, his body makes me want to reach out and touch. Slide my hands up his chest. Melt into him and drown in his pine scent. Suck it off his neck. Collarbone. Throat.

Oh God, I am totally and completely fucked.

Mitchell steps closer, the fool. “I shouldn’t have said those things about being on the front lines. About shooting people. I should have realized. Of course it would be frightening to hear that, especially for someone who’s obviously been hurt.” I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “But Gemma, I would never hurt you.”

I meant to tell him that it’s not his fault. But I can’t breathe. I can’t move. Can’t force words out.

“I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I know it must have been scary. I know you can’t have felt safe, to run away like you did.” Somehow, the feeling that he’s seen my soul through my music, even though he may not know it was mine, turns a statement that would otherwise feel judgemental into an insight that burns with something far harder to handle. My eyes shoot up to his and, damnit, I’m caught in his gaze again. “You’re safe here, Gemma. Safe on this ship. Safe with me.”

I want to run and I want to stay and drink the words off his lips, better this promise from his mouth than any Delirium-dusted kiss. This is honesty. This is an invitation to trust. This is an undiluted drug and it’s terrifying and tantalizing and I’m an addict on the verge of relapse.

I’m at a crossroads—run or accept his words. But I can’t do either.

So instead, because his pain is beautiful, because he saw inside me, because his goddamn soap smells good… I do the stupidest thing possible.

I stand on my tiptoes, reach my arms up so my fingers curl against his neck, and press my lips to his.

Mitchell stiffens.

The corded muscles at the nape of his neck go rock hard beneath my fingertips. His lips are as unresponsive as iron.

My stomach plummets.

Why would I think a guy like him would be into a girl like me? Just because we had a civil conversation? A spark of connection over music? Just because he said I was safe? Sure, he looked at my legs, but that doesn’t mean—

Mitchell’s tight shoulders slacken. His lips move against mine.

He’s kissing me back.

He raises a hand, slides it up my jaw to cup the side of my face. His other hand is at my waist, pulling my body against his. The press of his palm warms my skin through the thin cotton of my grandfather’s T-shirt. I’m drawing in Mitchell’s scent with each shaky, fragile-as-eggshells breath.

I’ve never been kissed like this before. Like I’m as delicate and beautiful as a porcelain idol and he’s worshipping me with his mouth. He trails feather soft kisses over my lips until I can’t stand the gentleness. Because it whispers that he feels the same kinds of idiotic emotions I’m feeling for him. And that would be… that would be… I would destroy him. And destroy myself in the process.

And I have zero willpower to stop.

So instead, I ignore the whispers, thread my fingers in his hair, and pull him into me hard. I force my tongue into his mouth, like it’s only sex I want from him and that’s all he wants from me. My tongue paints his mouth with gilded broken hearts. Making them oh-so-pretty like works of art.

Mitchell groans and starts kissing me with more force, like it is sex he wants after all. His tongue licks across the roof of my mouth, gilding me too. My fingertips slide through his hair, feel the rounded ridges of atlas plugs at the base of his skull.

I’m hooking a leg around his waist, trying to climb his body, and he’s lifting me so my other leg can wrap around him. His hands are everywhere I want them to be, and my nightshirt and his pyjama bottoms are way too much fabric between us.

I pull my mouth from his, panting in his ear, “Carry me to the chair.”

I suck on his earlobe and his jaw and his neck as he obeys, one arm scooped under my ass and the other wrapped around my back, holding my small body against his big one.

“Sit,” I order, lips brushing his neck.

He lowers himself into the chair, still holding me against him, so I end up in his lap. The worn upholstery squeaks as my knees dig in. I catch his lips with mine and we’re kissing again. My hips grind against his. Mitchell makes a gravelly sound into my mouth at the same time as a higher sound escapes my throat. Suddenly our kisses are as frenzied as the music that’s throbbing around us, and I think my heart rate matches the frantically climbing BPM and I don’t need to throw lust into any pheromisters because I’m sweating it out of every pore.

I pull away from our raging battle of tongue and teeth to pant out another command. “Take my shirt off.” It’s already ridden up to my waist. Mitchell’s hands slide obediently up my thighs and over my hips to the hem, sending a wave of shivers spidering down to my toes and up my spine, well beyond the path of his hands.

I straighten, stretching my arms over my head so he can lift off my shirt, but Mitchell hesitates, hands bunched in the fabric at my waist. The feel of his knuckles resting against my skin drives me insane with impatience.

“Hang on,” he pants.

I can’t handle his hesitation. I can’t pause. That would make time for thinking, for regret, for all the things I’m not equipped to handle. I grab my hem, yank my shirt over my head, chuck it wherever. Then I scoot lower onto Mitchell’s muscular thighs so I can tug at the knotted drawstring of his waistband.

“Hang on, Gemma.” Mitchell’s voice grates rough, almost hoarse, as if forcing the words out takes an inhuman amount of effort.

I ignore him and keep working at the goddamn most annoying knot in the history of knots. If I had my burn-blade, I’d cut his damn pants off .

“Gemma.” Mitchell’s big hands close over my narrow wrists, stilling my progress.

I look up and meet his eyes and he’s… his expression confuses me. There’s heat in his gaze, but his eyebrows are drawn together. Worry creases his forehead.

“Gemma, I can’t do this.”

I hear his words. But I don’t understand. He kissed me like he needed this as bad as I do. He’s hard. Large and hard. Clearly, he can do this.

I scoot forward and grind against his erection to prove just how wrong he is.

A rumbly sound purrs from his throat.

His hips rock against mine.

Mitchell releases my wrists, and I take that as a cue to continue ripping his pants off. He puts his big hands on the bare skin of my waist—God, they nearly encircle it entirely—and they’re so warm and rough and I’m loving the feeling of his skin on mine.

But then he lifts. He lifts me up out of his lap and sets me on the floor in front of him.

He’s so tall that we’re eye to eye even with him sitting and me standing. I stare at him, chest rising and falling. He’s breathing hard, too, and all the tension and worry that the music melted away is back in the usual places—bracketing his mouth and stiffening his shoulders .

And I understand.

I wanted so badly to believe my own lie. To believe he could want me back.

I always believe the lies.

Somehow I never see it coming.

Always fool myself until it’s too late and I’m left on the floor, bleeding tears in a pool of red, red truth I didn’t want to see.

My throat tightens.

“You don’t… you don’t want me.”

He was only being charitable. Only feeling pity for me. Only too polite to say no.

Suddenly I’m cold, standing here face-to-face with Captain Perfect in nothing but my bra and underwear, bare feet flat on stainless steel. I’m cold except where my cheeks burn with a fire of shame hot enough to consume me, and where the bare skin of my waist, still encircled by Mitchell’s hands, scalds hot, hot, hot with rejection.

Because he’s a god and I’m not worthy of his touch.

“It’s not…” Captain High-and-Mighty tries to work up some half-baked version of the tried and true it’s not you, it’s me bullshit, and I don’t want to hear it. “It’s—”

“No,” I cut him off. “It’s me. It’s okay. You don’t need to say it.” I hook my thumbs under his palms and remove his too-perfect-for-me hands from my waist. “I know what I am.”

My traitorous body shivers, and I’m doubly ashamed because I know he can hear the barely held-back tears in my voice and he can see the goosebumps all over my pale, too-exposed, flesh. I hug my ribs.

“God, Gemma, no. You don’t—” Mitchell glances down at my exposed body and does a double take, staring at my chest. “Is that…?”

I look down. The skin between my breasts glows like moonlight where my ever-present vial of Delirium has chosen the most inopportune moment of all time to peek up over the lacy trim of my bralette.

Mitchell reaches out to snatch it, lightning fast, but I step back even faster. “Don’t you dare touch me,” I say, voice raw, throat tight. Tears glisten in the corners of my vision, but I refuse to let them fall.

I turn, ducking to snag my shirt from the floor with one finger as I flee the room.

“Gemma—wait!”

I hope the stupid automatic door slams shut in Mitchell’s stupid perfect face.