Cress

Thorne propped his feet on the control panel again and tilted back until his face was turned up to the ceiling. She hadn’t seen his eyes in days, but they were as blue as ever.

Cress placed a hand on his brow to steady herself and his cheek twitched. “Here goes,” she murmured, squeezing the dropper. He instinctively flinched and blinked, pushing the drops like tears down his temples. Cress brushed them away, unable to resist smoothing a strand of hair off his forehead. Her attention caught on his lips, and suddenly self-conscious, she pulled her fingertips away. “How does that feel?”

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Like I have water in my eyes.” Then he chuckled wryly, opening them again. “Maybe the solution is just water, and the doctor was playing a practical joke on me.”

“That would be awful!” she said, twisting the cap back onto the solution. “He wouldn’t have done that.”

“No, you’re right. Not after what we went through to get it.” He lifted his head from the back of the chair, tugging at the bandanna knotted around his neck. “Though he did make it pretty clear that he didn’t think too highly of me.”

“If that’s true, it’s only because he didn’t know you well enough yet.”

“True. I would have charmed him eventually.”

She smiled. “Of course you would have, in addition to showing him your many other fine qualities,” she said, blushing as she set a reminder on the portscreen to go off four times a day. But when she looked at Thorne again, his expression had become serious. “Captain?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. Sitting up straighter, Thorne rubbed his palms together. “I have to tell you something.”

“Oh?” Hope skittered through her veins as she claimed the pilot’s seat again. The luxurious dress poufed around her.

The rooftop. The kiss.

Had he realized how much he loved her?

“What is it?”

Thorne pulled his feet off the control panel. “Remember when we were in the desert … and I said I didn’t want to hurt you? Because you were wrong about me?”

She knotted her fingers together. “When you tried to deny how much of a hero you really are?” She tried to put a hint of teasing into the statement, but her nerves were so jittery it came out as more of a frightened squeak.

“A hero. Exactly.” Thorne rubbed a finger between the blindfold and his throat, loosening it. “Here’s the thing. That girl that I stood up for when those jerks took her portscreen?”

“Kate Fallow.”

“Right, Kate Fallow. Well, she was really good at math. And, at the time, I was failing.”

The anticipation fluttering through her body turned to ice. Wait—was this his confession? Something to do with … Kate Fallow?

He cleared his throat when she didn’t say anything. “I lost the fight and all, but she still let me copy her homework for a month. That’s why I did it. Not out of a misplaced desire to be heroic.”

“But you said you had a crush on her.”

“Cress.” He smiled, but it looked strained. “I had a crush on every girl. Believe me, it wasn’t a big motivator.”

She squeezed back against the chair and pulled her knees to her chest. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“I couldn’t before. You were so certain that I was this other person, and I kind of liked that you saw me differently than anyone else. Part of me kept thinking that maybe you’ve been right all along, and it’s everyone else who’s been wrong about me. That even I’ve been wrong about me.” He shrugged. “But even that was just my ego talking, wasn’t it? And you deserve to know the truth.”

“And you think my entire opinion of you was based on one incident that happened when you were thirteen years old?”

His brow knitted. “I thought I’d done a pretty good job of clarifying all those other incidents, but if you have more, by all means, let me ruin those for you too.”

She bit her lip.

The rooftop. The kiss. He’d kept his promise. He’d given her a kiss worth waiting for because she was about to die—they were both about to die. She knew it had been a risk, and probably a stupid one. And that was the choice he’d made rather than let her die without experiencing that one perfect moment.

She could think of nothing more heroic.

So why wouldn’t he mention it?

Perhaps more important, why couldn’t she?

“No,” she whispered finally. “I guess I can’t think of anything else.”

He nodded, though his expression was disappointed. “So given all this new information, you, uh, probably don’t think you’re still in love with me. Do you?”

She shrank into her chair, sure that if he could see her now, he would know. The truth would be evident in every angle of her face.

She loved him more than ever.

And not because she’d scoured file after file of reports and summaries and data and photographs. Not because he was the dreamy, untouchable Carswell Thorne that she’d imagined kissing on the banks of a starlit river while fireworks exploded overhead and violins played in the background.