Escape Velocity

by Jess Anastasi

  When he’d come to med-level to share lunch with her, she’d gotten one of the nurses to tell him she was too busy today. Now there were only a handful of things left for her to do before she ended her shift to face Kai and who-knew-what kind of fallout from the night before.

  She frowned as she pulled a datapad out of the top drawer before clicking it into place, just above the inset touch-screen keyboard on the surface of the desk. As she waited for her files to load, she propped her elbow on the desk and set her heavy head against her palm.

  A knock brought her attention up. Macaulay stood in the doorway, one hand braced against the doorjamb.

  “The reports for Commander Yang have been amalgamated into one file. I’m available to confer if you want a second pair of eyes on it.”

  An automatic refusal landed on her tongue, but she swallowed down the words as doubt, and another lance of guilt, ran through her. Usually the higher ranking doctors each handled the ongoing care of POW cases alone, and technically Kai had been her patient. Except she’d gone and let their relationship sink into very personal realms. What if her emotions got in the way and she missed some critical piece of information? She’d probably already done more than enough damage last night; instead she had to do everything in her power to make sure he got the first-class treatment he needed and deserved.

  “Actually, I was just about to review my case files, and I would appreciate a back up on Commander Yang’s situation. There’re going to be a lot of people watching his recovery very closely, and if there are two doctors signing off on everything, the findings will be less likely to be called into question.”

  Macaulay nodded and stepped into her office. “Good point. Might as well beat the bureaucrats at their own game.”

  As she brought up Kai’s file, he sat in the chair on the opposite side of her desk.

  “Just give me a minute to read the psychologist’s report, and then we’ll discuss care options for him.” She tabbed through until she found the report, but got distracted by Macaulay shifting in his seat. She brought her head up to see the other doctor had a troubled expression on his face. “Something wrong?”

  “I had an ulterior motive for coming to speak with you.”

  She sat back from the datapad, a barbed stream of guilt and trepidation rushing through her. Had Macaulay somehow found out about—? But no, that would be impossible. She and Kai were literally the only two people who knew what had happened the night before.

  “So, spit it out, you know how I prefer to have things laid out straight.”

  Macaulay rubbed a hand over his jaw. “It’s just that I heard Commander Yang is still staying with you.”

  A prickly wall of defense sprung up within her as her shoulders tensed, making her neck ache. “He didn’t have anywhere else to stay—”

  Macaulay held up a hand. “I don’t have a problem with it, Sacha. I know you and Commander Yang were friends long before either of you started serving on the Valiant Knox. But you can’t tell me there’s not a conflict of interest here. Besides that, you know that the next few weeks are going to be critical for Yang’s successful recovery. I just want to state that I think you need to make a choice. You’re either acting as his doctor and keeping a professional distance, or you’re there as his friend, in which case, you can’t be the one overseeing his continued care. And if you do decide to continue from here out as his friend, then we both know that there are certain emotional landmines you need to avoid.”

  Sacha cut her gaze away from him, wrapping her hands around the armrests of the chair until her knuckles started aching.

  Damn it. He was right. God, she shouldn’t have slept with Kai last night. She’d gone and stepped on about twenty of those emotional landmines in a few short hours.

  Emotionally, Kai was vulnerable and fragile, though he’d never admit to it. Things would get harder for him before they got better.

  Are you ten kinds of idiot or what, Dalton?

  She couldn’t be his friend, she didn’t know how, and last night had only proven that. Where her feelings and Kai were concerned, she obviously had self-control issues. Which meant if she truly wanted to help him get through the darkest time in his life, then she couldn’t give him anything except her professional care, until he was physically and emotionally in the process of moving on.

  “You’re right, Macaulay. I want to make sure Commander Yang has the best chance of getting past his time as a POW with as little fallout from PTSD as possible.”

  “Good, I had a feeling you’d say that.” He stood. “I’ve got a surgery. Take your time reading the reports, and we’ll confer in the morning.”

  She murmured a good-bye as he left her office, and she turned her attention to Kai’s file. A dull ache throbbed in the middle of her chest in time with the sluggish beat of her heart. Part of her hated the realization she’d come to, and part of her really hated the weakness that had led her into this trouble in the first place.

  She would do whatever it took to get Kai through the coming weeks and months, even if she had to hurt him in the process by detaching.

  …

  Something wasn’t right. Kai set down the knife he’d been using to chop the tomatoes and ran a check over the ingredients laid out across Sacha’s bench. Something was missing, but he couldn’t work out what. And stupidly, he’d taken far longer cutting up the vegetables than he needed to, because he couldn’t remember exactly what order to cook everything.

  He stepped back from the bench and dragged a hand over his face, forcing his thoughts to slow and settle. His mind was racing, too many snatches of random things careening around in his head. Much more of that, and it felt like his mind was about to go into meltdown. All over trying to cook a simple goddamn meal.

  Before he’d been captured, he’d enjoyed cooking, and this wasn’t the first time he’d prepared a meal in this kitchen. Although, in the past it’d usually been with Elliot, trying to pass on some culinary skills to his friend, who could hardly cook eggs without burning something.

  Making a nice meal for Sacha had seemed like the perfect way to greet her when she got home from her shift on med-level, but somewhere around the onions, it’d started turning into a disaster.

  A tremor shot through his arms, down to his hands, and he braced his clenched fists against the edge of the bench, blowing out a long breath.

  He should be able to do this with his eyes closed; this recipe had been one of his favorites, the process of making it stamped into his subconscious. So why the hell was it so hard? How could he have forgotten something so simple?

  The tremor in his arms spilled into his shoulders and tripped down his spine, causing a cold sweat to bloom over his skin. The jumble of his thoughts got louder, faster, more intense, flashes of images surfacing from the shadows of his mind.

  His heart thumped hard, and his next lungful of air came too short. What the hell was this? Some kind of panic attack? He clenched his fists harder, locking down every muscle in his body. No. This was not happening. He refused to give any more energy to the CSS and their goddamn Enlightening Camp. He’d escaped. It was in the past. He had better things to do with his life than dwell on his time there.

  Except a tidal wave of guilt followed in the wake of his momentary stubborn determination to move on. Yeah, he’d escaped, but Amos had been there with him every day. And Amos hadn’t escaped. Amos was still there. Confusion sloshed through his mind, numbing some of the roiling emotions. Amos was still there, but he was dead. Blood filled his vision. Cold seeped through his veins, along with pain and sickness. And he was hacking that alloy rod free from a dead friend’s arm, and then the CSS guards were falling, and the blood crept closer.

  Something clamped onto his shoulder and he spun with a guttural shout of fury. He had to escape. Escape or die. He refused to spend another day in that cesspool of misery and torment.

  He slammed his attacker up against the wall, gasping for his last breath, because this CS Soldier would kill him to
o easily—

  “Kai. Kai!”

  He shook his head, the sweat dripping down his forehead stinging in his eyes. The scent of summer acacia laced his next breath, jamming him back into reality, where he was standing in Sacha’s kitchen, with her shoved up against the wall—

  Jesus, he had a blade at her throat. His hand went weak at the sight, and the knife he’d been using to cut up the vegetables clattered to the floor in the heavy silence.

  “Oh, god.” He stumbled back a step, but his bad knee gave out and he slipped down to the floor next to the bench. Nausea churned his guts, sending bile burning up the back of his throat. He’d almost killed her, almost shoved a knife into Sacha’s throat. What the hell was wrong with him?

  “Kai, it’s all right, we’re fine. Just breathe.” She crouched down in front of him, but he couldn’t look directly at her, his brain was still fritzing like a ship in a tailspin, about to crash into oblivion.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice grated out thick and awkward.

  “It’s okay, I shouldn’t have come up behind you, but I thought you’d heard me come in. It’s not your fault. Just take a minute to get your bearings.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, an illogical surge of anger burning away some of the confusion. Why did she have to be so damn understanding? Couldn’t she see how close he’d come to losing it right then? If he’d hurt her—

  His chest constricted, cutting off his ragged breathing and putting pressure on his heart, until a pulsing ache shuddered through his entire body. He yanked at the collar of his shirt.

  “You’re having a panic attack, Kai, so you need to breathe deeply, okay?”

  He looked up, finding her smoky blue gaze fixed on him with concerned intent.

  “I’m not having a goddamn panic attack, so stop telling me to breathe.”

  Her lips twitched as she reached out to grasp his hand. “Okay, you’re not having a panic attack.”

  At her touch, relief broke up the hard sensations tearing through him. On blind instinct alone, he wrapped his arms around her, dragging her closer to bury his face in her neck.

  Now he could breathe. The hard pounding of his heart slowed, and sweet lassitude chased the tension out of his muscles.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured against the sweet-scented skin of her neck. This time his words had more substance. “That shouldn’t have happened. I’ll be more careful next time.”

  She eased back from him, but he tightened his grip on her, since even that slight movement let some of the apprehension return. He couldn’t let her go yet, not until he’d gotten a handle on whatever that had been. This woman was the balm to his soul, making the tattered edges easier to hold together.

  “It’s not about being careful, Kai. And what happened just now was no one’s fault. PTSD is a complex—”

  “I don’t have PTSD.” As soon as he snapped the words, he heard how stupid they sounded.

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Is that your professional opinion, Commander Yang?”

  He closed his eyes for a long moment, huffing out a deep sigh. “I’m sorry, I don’t have experience with this sort of thing. I mean, I read the reports of other soldiers under my command who suffered from it, but I never thought—”

  “No one ever thinks it’s going to happen to them, until it happens to them. And then they’re left with no idea of how to pick up the pieces.”

  He breathed in slowly, trying to get his mind to accept what his body already knew. Stubborn pride wouldn’t help him heal. PTSD… It could haunt him for years if he didn’t accept what his time as a POW had done to him. “So how do I beat this?”

  Sacha moved back out of his hold and stood. “Well, for a start, we can finish cooking dinner.”

  Kai levered himself up using the kitchen bench, tentative when he put his weight back on his bad leg, but thankfully, it held, returning to the dull ache he’d tolerated since they’d taken the BMC off him.

  The urge to feel her against him raked through him like the deepest craving. Dinner could wait, because food wasn’t the sustenance his body and soul required in that moment.

  She walked over and picked up the knife, then dropped it into the sink. A cold flush made icicles prickle beneath his skin, but he refocused on the desire he’d been feeling a moment ago. Sacha. He just needed her, needed to find salvation in her.

  As she stepped closer to him, probably to inspect his over-chopped vegetables, he hooked an arm around her waist, tugging her up against him.

  “Never mind dinner, we’ll finish up later, or call for some takeout.”

  She braced her hands against his chest, her expression guarded. That wasn’t what he wanted. He needed to see the same soul-deep emotion they’d shared last night in her gaze.

  He lowered his head, but she ducked his kiss, sending his heart rate plummeting. And when she twisted out of his grasp…the cold within him returned, freezing his blood in his veins.

  “Kai, we need to talk.” Her words were heavy with regret, tinged with ominous sobriety.

  “Talking isn’t what we need.” His response didn’t sound quite as flippant as he’d wanted it to… Maybe she hadn’t noticed the hint of desperation. With a short step, he tried to close the distance between them once more, but Sacha dodged his movements.

  “I’m serious, Kai, and I mean that as your doctor, not as a friend.”

  He stepped back to brace himself against the bench, feeling too unsteady. This wasn’t how he’d planned the night to unfold; everything was literally falling apart around him. “Okay, so let’s talk, because I thought I’d be entertaining Sacha tonight, not Doctor Dalton.”

  She sent him an unimpressed frown before turning to the coldstore and retrieving a bottle of white wine. “I’m going to need this first.”

  He watched as she poured a glass, but halted her from getting a second glass out for him. His brain already felt like slush, the last thing he needed was to add alcohol to that.

  She pushed a few loose tendrils of hair back, before taking a gulp from her wineglass. She set the drink back down on the bench and then turned to him with a decisive movement.

  “I’ve tried to think of a hundred different ways to start this conversation, and none of them seem right. So, I just want you to listen and try to understand.”

  He nodded and swallowed, because when a conversation started out like that, it never boded well. However, he could guess where she was going with this. She felt guilty over last night. Whether the ghost of Elliot still stood between them, or something else had sent her into a deep hole of doubt, well, he’d find some way to get them around it. Because he needed her like he’d never needed another person. He’d been his own man since he’d left home at twelve to board at the pre-mil training school. Yet in this second, he couldn’t imagine how he would get through the next hour without her, let alone the next day, or week, or month.

  She crossed her arms as she regarded him. “Last night was amazing and wonderful. I wouldn’t change it for anything. But it shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

  “It takes two. Don’t forget I’m half of the responsible party.” He sent her a strained smile, trying to keep the mood light, but the panic was pushing at the edges of his control, mixing with a subtle sense of helplessness that blended perfectly to create acidic anger. “Whatever reason you think it shouldn’t have happened, you’re wrong. This thing between us, you, it’s exactly what I need right now.”

  “No it’s not.” She closed her hand around the stem of the wineglass, but didn’t pick it up, her gaze focused downward. “I’m sorry, because allowing that to happen has confused things between us. I’m your doctor, the person in charge of your ongoing care as a former POW. You know as well as I do how many rules we broke by being together last night.”

  The blending anger started burning hotter within him. “Screw the rules. Get someone else assigned to my case. I don’t need you to be my doctor; I need you to be my friend. More than my fri
end. I don’t know what that makes us, but what happened between us last night was right. It made me forget. I need to be able to lose myself in you. It’s the only way I can get through this.”

  She brought her head up, a shadow of sadness and self-recrimination in her gaze. “What you’re telling me only confirms my decision. Using me as a distraction is not a healthy way of recovering, and I won’t let you do it. Facing what happened to you in the CSS camp is almost going to be harder than when you lived through it. And while I’m here for you—I’ll always be here for you—I can’t, in good conscience, let you use me as a crutch.”

  Every word she said hammered into his chest, like a nail sunk one strike at a time. “I’m not trying to use you as a crutch. Is it so wrong that I care about you? Don’t tell me you didn’t feel anything last night.”

  Her expression tensed. “Of course I care.”

  Kai rubbed the back of his neck where his muscles were aching. “I know you’re only trying to do what you think is best for me, but don’t I get a say? What if this is exactly what I need?”

  She shook her head and dropped her gaze again. “I’m sorry. It’s just not.”

  “So that’s it, then?” The anger he’d been holding in slipped a notch, getting closer to the surface of his calm. “You decide how I’m going to get through this, and that’s the end of the story?”

  “I’ve overseen the care of more than a few POWs, so yes, I’m telling you in my professional opinion, this is how it’s going to be. At least until you’ve started making progress on moving past everything.”

  “So I’m just supposed to wait around like a lapdog until Doctor Dalton decides I’m well enough to be in her bed again. How fortunate for me.” Heat throbbed in his chest and he turned to stare at the vegetables he’d been chopping because he couldn’t look at Sacha any longer; it hurt too damn much. How could she do this to him right when he needed her the most?