Chapter 42

One week later.

Darren sat in the mess hall with a mug of coffee in his hand. He couldn't sleep again. The calm he'd expected to settle in once they'd successfully made it to the outer side of the Belt never came. Bea had hidden them and the ship on an abandoned mining asteroid no one would ever think to search, and yet he was still… anxious.

It wasn't to the point where he couldn't function, but it kept him up most nights, making sleep but a mirage in a desert of long-suppressed thoughts and memories. And sometimes, those things he didn't like to think about that only visited him when he was alone broke the rules and made a mess of his head, not caring if he was on a call, or briefing Bea or sipping coffee at three in the morning in the mess hall.

Though the last one was, perhaps, not so unusual.

In the week since they'd claimed this rock that drifted along the edge of the belt, he'd maybe slept properly only once. The rest had been restless naps and dozing throughout the day, enough to keep him going but also making him irritable and antsy. He could take pills, but pills didn't prevent the nightmares, and besides, he was afraid he would get addicted to them just like he had been in those first few years after his family's assassination.

Darren wrapped his fingers around the mug and just kept them there, warmth seeping through the porcelain into him. With each day that passed, he got a day closer to meeting her. After a lot longer than two years, he was going to face Sara's AI again in that world modeled after their childhood. He'd visited it sparsely after Liu had taken him in, stopping that altogether once the hideout had been set up at a location unknown to him. He liked it there, in the VR world, and he hated it at the same time because it looked and felt too real and yet wasn't.

Just like Sara.

Anticipation and dread fused together into a beast inside of Darren he could not fight or escape. It belonged to him alone, a side of him as true as the other, though he kept it locked inside, hidden, never really meant to manifest because it broke him every time it did. It was a part of his past, like all the hurtful things he didn't like to remember, but tonight it seemed more insistent to come out.

Darren lifted the mug to his lips and took a sip, closing his eyes. He focused on the liquid trickling down his throat, using it to ground himself so he could force the beast down with promises he would let it consume him in his dreams. That seemed to work at first, but this time the beast didn't seem inclined to leave, it too now more powerful because of the anxiety the upcoming meeting with Sara caused Darren's mind.

Could he let it run amok now and make it through?He wasn't sure, but it looked like he didn't really have a say in it as control was already slipping away from him, one frantic heartbeat at a time. He'd expected this to happen, but he'd hoped he'd be able to stave it off for a little longer, so he would be prepared to deal with it without losing his sanity.

Na?ve of him, clearly, and so now he was left with no other choice but to suffer a panic attack that could cost him his mind.

Just as the beast's first tendril coiled around Darren's heart, the chair across from him slid along the floor with a scraping sound. The sudden interruption as someone sat there was like a lifeline in a stormy sea, one his mind clung to instinctively until Darren was Darren again, here in the frigate's mess hall with a mug of lukewarm coffee in his hand and with a companion he didn't feel the need to engage in conversation just yet.

He internally thanked whoever was now sitting there, even if he didn't say it, and then the choice of whether or not the silence should carry on was taken away from him.

"Can't sleep?"

The deep tenor of Aiden Kesley surrounded Darren, the inability to see as he kept his eyes closed heightening his other senses and granting sound the ability to touch him. It was stern but careful in its caress as if Darren was something fragile—precious even—which Aiden didn't wish to damage any further.

Funny when he had been the one to hurt Aiden.

As silly as it was, it made Darren's heart yearn. It made the fading warmth from the mug still present in his fingers rekindle, blaze, and then spread through him anew. It made him want like he'd wanted on the night they'd shared together, though yet again it differed, not fueled by lust, but rather, something deeper. Something he had not allowed nor felt the need for no matter his bed partner, and something that drew him to Aiden Kesley like a moth to a speck of light in a world of abysmal darkness.

Darren opened his eyes and just held Aiden's gaze, not feeling like he needed to rush with a reply. He forgot all about his demons without even realizing it as he lost himself in the gold hazel of those eyes and Aiden simply allowed it, not pressing for anything but not leaving Darren alone either now that he was okay. Seemingly content to just sip his coffee, he let Darren be.

The comfortable silence dragged on, both of them watching each other nurse drinks until the mugs were empty. The whole thing was somehow monumental yet simultaneously anticlimactic, Aiden's quiet companionship ending up being just the thing Darren had needed without even knowing it. And Aiden… was the one who'd offered it to Darren—gifted it—without having to, without being asked to, seeming to do it just because he could. It was nice.

And then Aiden asked about Claudia's death. It was his right to know once and for all how she had died, so Darren told him. He owed it to Aiden and to himself to come clean, to give them both the closure and the chance to move forward from here on.

Aiden didn't shout. Didn't get angry, didn't accuse Darren, didn't say anything, keeping it all locked inside. He simply listened and stared at his hands, his mind somewhere where Darren couldn't reach it.

When no more questions came his way, Darren stood up and loaded his mug into the dishwasher. He straightened up just as Aiden bent down to place another glass inside and his shoulder bumped into Aiden's arm. The contact was electric despite its accidental nature and charged Darren with that bittersweet hum he could feel coming out of Aiden too in palpable waves of enticing tension.

Darren couldn't give into them though, not now and not after their conversation, so he moved out of the way, his heart pumping fast. He switched the coffee maker to standby mode and turned around to take a last peek at Aiden, finding the man leaning against the counter and already looking at him.

Jaw tightening slightly, Aiden fumbled with his sleeve. "Goodnight, Howe," he said softly and so quietly, Darren doubted he would've heard it if they hadn't been facing each other.

The words zapped him, shaking him to his core, as did the small but real smile Aiden offered, a hint of underlying sadness and understanding hiding in the curvature of his mouth.

Darren wasn't sure what to do to make his stomach cease fluttering, so he tucked his hands inside the pockets of his pants and mumbled back just as softly, "Goodnight, Kesley."

Then he walked off, rounded the bridge, and took the elevator to his quarters. He thought about the things to come, about the secrets of the legacy they were about to uncover the next time he met Sara. It was the first step to take now that he was old enough so Sara could pass it down to him, though he had no idea what it even was.

Did she know? Probably not since Darren was the key needed to unlock it, his biosignature tied to it just like Sara's had once been so that only a Valrais could access it.

Darren speculated for a while, thought about his past and future, and roamed the lower decks of the ship because he couldn't sleep. When he returned to his room, he lay in bed for hours, dreaming of Aiden Kesley standing next to him in the middle of Sara's unreal world.

Tonight too, Aiden found himself walking around the ship when he ought to be asleep. But sleep didn't come to him easily without his nasty meds, so sometimes he preferred to skip it altogether. Normally, he liked the lower decks, but he was craving coffee, so instead of the engine room or the hangar, he opted for the mess hall.

And there he ran into Darren.

He should've turned around, left before those feelings of hate and yearning he found so hard to control whenever he found himself in Darren Howe's company had managed to surface. But he didn't because just one look at Darren's slumped form told him where this was going. He himself had been there so many times, fighting to stay afloat when the world wanted to drown him.

He acted on impulse, not quite sure why he couldn't just watch—or let—Darren Howe hit the bottom, but his body needed no reason, making it over to the table and dragging out a chair loudly enough so Darren would know someone had joined him. And then he simply waited, taken aback by the vulnerability and the realness he was witnessing, both familiar and so very intimate. They didn't belong to him but to Darren only, yet he didn't feel like he was intruding.

It was in some sort of enthrallment that he watched Darren's body come down from the panic attack as whatever had hold of him subsided to the depths of his being.

Depths that Aiden wondered about as they looked at each other and sipped coffee.

"How did Claudia die?" he asked eventually, the question forcing its way out despite the pleasant silence.

Or perhaps because of it? Since it had no place here between them when Darren was the one who'd shattered Aiden's world. The question had been circling his mind since earlier and so he didn't even try to stop it, wanting to know so he could stop wondering about it when he couldn't sleep at night.

Darren's indigo gaze pinned him with its intensity, in it regret and apprehension. For a moment, it felt as though Darren wouldn't reply, but in the next, he sighed softly and his shoulders tensed up as his entire demeanor shifted to something more closed off than open.

"She came to the bar as expected. I watched her as she interacted with the patrons and asked questions about me. Paid one of them to send her my way once I confirmed who she was. I… wanted to talk to her. I had some money put aside, thought maybe I could pay her off and be done with Marcus chasing after me."

Except Claudia was Marcus' own daughter. Darren had known it, and yet he'd been willing to try and end things with no bloodshed.

The words broke Aiden's heart. Claudia's death and her lies. Both were equally painful, but he pushed on, needing to hear the rest of Darren's recount so at least he wouldn't obsess over all the possible scenarios. So he would know what kind of death Darren had given her.

"I lured her outside the bar. She had one of those tranquilizing guns on her and she spotted me almost immediately." Darren's voice was almost reverent then. Impressed. But also, a little regretful. "I tried to talk to her, but she… almost got me. I don't even know how she missed, but she did, and then I ran. Hid behind a dumpster and waited. When she found me, I tried to disarm her, but she was… good. Too good. I'd never encountered someone as good as her prior to then," Darren said, frowning as he shifted his attention to the viewport. "We fought and… I got rid of the tranquilizing gun, but she had a second one. A regular gun. I somehow got to it before she did and then I… shot her. I had to because she wasn't going to let me go. Kesley, I… It was her or me. I had no choice."

That familiar pain in Aiden's chest bubbled up, but it also brought all those questions that tortured him alongside it. Who was Claudia, really? Why had she lied to him? For how long? If Darren had managed to talk to her, would she still be alive? Would he have really let her go? Would she have told Aiden the truth then? Asked for his help?

Aiden looked at his hands, counting the folds and lines across his palms.

"It was a clean shot," Darren carried on, his voice quieter. "In the heart. I made sure of it. I intended to move her body somewhere where it would be easier to find, but I didn't have time. So I took her phone and ran and… You know the rest."

He did. And now he had this puzzle piece too, though it didn't hurt any less. He still wanted to punish Darren, to make him pay for it, but at the same time, that wouldn't change the new reality of his life. Claudia had lied to him, and Marcus wanted him dead. So, stifling the urge as far down as he could, he took a deep breath and let silence settle over them again. He let his thoughts drift to what lay ahead of them, but no matter how much he pondered, he didn't have a clue what the Valrais Legacy could be. Sara would reveal it to them the next time they visited her hideout, but until then, it was going to remain a secret.

Sometime later, Aiden was himself again. They cleared away the mugs and loaded the dishwasher, his arm brushing Darren's shoulder. The unintended contact lit him up, made him buzz and feel like a livewire, and so when he made it to his quarters, he had to remind himself of exactly who Darren Howe was. A murderer and a prince with a legacy they were about to uncover.

This time though, Aiden didn't make it through the entire list he'd made on his tablet that outlined Darren's life in a chronological order. Because he drifted off not halfway through as his thoughts turned into looping dreams of him catching Darren Howe sitting alone in the mess hall and sipping coffee at 3 a.m. while on the verge of a breakdown only Aiden could save him from.

Which Aiden did.

Every single time.