High Reward

by Brenna Aubrey

  “Gray,” he started with a quiet voice, “I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”

  I blinked, but thankfully the tears stayed safely behind my eyeballs, prickling to get out. “It doesn’t have to be.”

  Without another word, he pulled me into a tight hug. I buried my face in his shirt, inhaling him. He kissed my hair, and my heart hurt with every beat. We’d found something here. Something precious in each other. We’d connected and touched hearts.

  How could it have led to this moment? To us saying goodbye? Again.

  He was kissing me, my temple, my cheek, my ear. “Gray,” his arms tightened instinctively, “I need to tell you… I lo—”

  But I pushed back from him, laying two fingers across his mouth. Now the tears were dotting my eyelids. He frowned at me in confusion.

  I shook my head. “Don’t say it. Don’t. Please.”

  With my fingers across his mouth, he could hardly answer, but he looked from one of my eyes to the other then slowly nodded.

  My hand fell away, and I cleared my throat and endeavored to speak through the tears. I’d say my piece, then I’d walk away. I’d spent the entire time on the plane getting up the courage to express what was inside, searching for and finding the perfect words.

  “This hurts. It does. I won’t lie. But you know, hurting is a part of living. And not taking risks isn’t living. Before this I hadn’t really been living. But with you, I took the risk. I gave you my heart, and I don’t regret it. You’ll always have a piece of it. Always.”

  He swallowed and looked away, but did not speak.

  I put my hand on his chest to draw his attention back to me. “Ryan, promise me. Promise me you’ll fight to forgive yourself. I can’t stand to see you suffering from these self-inflicted wounds. The guilt and the shame. It has to end. You are keeping poison in your soul, and you’ll never heal as long as it is there.” I took a deep breath and swallowed. “You need to be whole. You need to live your life for yourself.”

  His hand came up and wrapped around my hand that rested on his chest. “You’ve been a bright ray of sunlight in my life…” His voice faded, as if overcome with emotion. I bit my lip to prevent a new onslaught of tears. They stung and injured me like thousands of tiny needles. Harmless and unseen by themselves, but together, they evoked agony.

  “Keep that light from the sunshine,” I whispered. “Don’t let the darkness take over.” I met his gaze and held it. “You were right. I do need to stand up to my dad. I do need to fight for what I want and not be afraid to show him—or the world, for that matter—what I’m feeling. I will. I’m going to do better. I need for you to do better, too.”

  He closed his eyes, took my hand and kissed it. I brushed his whiskered cheek with the back of my hand. Then I pulled away.

  Maybe this was the stage of grief that brought acceptance. This backing away to the car, holding his eyes, refusing to actually say the word goodbye.

  Maybe acceptance was knowing that he was right. He didn’t deserve me. Not until he pulled himself out of that dark pit and forgave himself. Only he could extricate himself from what haunted him. Only he could fix himself.

  I turned my back and walked to the car, getting in without looking over my shoulder.

  Hopefully the river of tears I cried on the way home would help bathe the wounds. I would not call this weekend a success—at least not in the way that Keely had intended it with her dubious scheme.

  But there had been closure. And disclosure.

  And once the wounds were less raw and painful, I’d be ready to move on.

  Chapter 20

  Ryan

  It wasn’t easy to watch Gray get into the car at the airport after our weekend together and saying goodbye without knowing when and where I’d see her again was worse. It took every bit of control I had not to run to my own car and follow her home.

  It was like tearing a fresh wound in my soul.

  But I ignored those instincts and watched her go, feeling hollow, with only those parting words to keep.

  I spent my forty-five-minute drive thinking only of that conversation, replaying it over and over in my mind, her words, the way she said them, the look on her face, the way she’d felt in my arms. Over and over again, as if trying to imprint it in my mind. Feeling the finality of it.

  And I arrived home tired, dirty and badly in need of a shave.

  But I washed up quickly, and after checking on AJ, who was sleeping peacefully, thank God, I went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer. Karen was sitting at the counter, so I took the stool beside her.

  “We missed you.”

  “Did the kiddo have lots of fun with the guys?”

  She smiled, nodding. “Tons. He wore them all out.”

  I leaned my head back to take a long pull from the bottle. When I straightened and swallowed, Karen was staring at my collar.

  “What the hell did you do to your neck? Did you cut yourself shaving or is that—” She leaned closer. “It’s a bite mark.”

  I reached a hand up and rubbed it, perhaps the only existing reminder of some of the hottest sex I’d ever had. Then I flicked my gaze back to Karen, who was frowning at me. I took a long breath and let it go. Earlier in the day, I’d decided that Gray had deserved to know about Karen. Well the reverse was also true.

  “I thought you said your romance with Keely Dawson was fake?”

  “This, uh,” I dropped my hand. “This wasn’t Keely.”

  Her brows twitched up. She reached for her glass of wine, staring at me expectantly. How honest should I be with her? If I told her too much, would she back away from my plan?

  Then another side of my thoughts questioned, would that be such a bad thing? The image of that kid sleeping peacefully, content under my roof was incentive enough to go through with my plan to marry Karen.

  “Before you came out to California, I broke up with someone I’d been seeing—for real, not fake like with Keely.”

  She waited on me to catch my breath, her face completely neutral, so I trudged on. “She was there this weekend, and we had a short-lived relapse.”

  She looked away then back at the mark on my neck and gave a little laugh. “Damn, I’m kind of jealous. Remembering the hot kind of sex that gets you marks like that is… Ah, well I miss sex, and it’s been months since I had any.”

  I commiserated. And I’d only gone weeks without sex after having broken up with Gray the month before. And wait, what? Did she say months? Wouldn’t it have been over a year? I sent her a brief glance and then looked away. It really wasn’t any of my business.

  Besides if she had found comfort with someone else in the interim since losing her husband, who the hell was I to judge?

  She swirled the wine around in her glass and studied it. “Are you in love with her?”

  I reached out and started peeling the moist label off the front of my beer bottle. I could lie, yes. I could give her a safe answer that would make her feel better.

  But I didn’t want to. Because every time I thought of Gray, every time her name popped up in my mind or there was a smell or texture or scrap of memory that reminded me of her, every damn time, a pang of longing cut right through me like a razor-thin blade. There was no disguising it. No denying it. No eradicating it.

  I gave her the simplest, most honest response I could. “I am.”

  “So then, why aren’t you together? Does she not feel the same way?”

  “She’s not…available to me. It can’t happen, for reasons I can’t go into now, mostly because it’s a long-ass and depressing story. I promise I’ll explain it all to you soon but…”

  The other part of the reason I didn’t want to elaborate was because I knew Karen’s romantic side well enough to know that she’d be bolstered by hearts in her eyes and the airy-fairy romance behind the story. The star-crossed lovers of it all.

  Karen expelled a quick breath and practically leapt off her stool. “Oh, Ty! Damn it. I’m so sorry.” She wrapped her arms around me,
squeezing tight, and I took one of her arms in my hand, holding her there in her awkward sideways hug.

  She pressed her cheek to my back, and when she spoke, it was in a voice full of her own emotion. “I’m sorry. Why does love have to hurt so much?”

  “I guess that’s why people write songs and poetry and books about it.”

  I leaned back and wrapped my arm around Karen’s waist and pulled her in for a proper hug. Karen was a hugger. I’d known that since we’d first met, and while I used to make a game of avoiding her hugs when we were in college, I’d realized long ago that letting her hug me was letting her express herself. So I’d grown to tolerate it when she initiated them.

  But this time I initiated, and she seemed shocked.

  “This doesn’t change anything, okay? I still want to take care of you and AJ. And you know what? You can take care of me, too.”

  She blinked, frowning, and avoided my gaze. Uh oh. Not a great sign.

  “How the hell could it not change anything? If you love her, you should be with her.”

  I let out a huge sigh and stepped back. “I can’t. And she can’t. I—”

  Now she looked even more confused. “So it was mutual?”

  More or less. If those words she’d spoken at the airport were any indication. “She understands. I told her about you. That I wanted us to be a family.”

  Her jaw dropped, and she stared at me like I was a crazy person. “Ty, what the hell are you doing? I don’t need you to take care of me. And as for being in our lives, we don’t have to be married or even seeing each other romantically in order to do that. Just be there for him like you have over the past three weeks.”

  “But AJ needs a dad. I want to be his dad. I don’t want him to have to go through what I went through. You know I lost my dad when I was a kid—”

  She held up a hand. “AJ is still going to grow up without his dad whether or not I get married again.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She sank back down on her stool, staring at me with a troubled look. “How long is it until your test flight?”

  “Just over a month. But Karen—”

  She held up a hand. “Hold the phone, okay? This is all becoming clearer to me now. You came up with this plan on the rebound.”

  I plopped onto my stool in front of her and ran a hand through my hair. “Settling…we agreed that it was settling. But it would be comfortable. We’re friends. We’ve known each other for almost half our lives. I’ve known that kid since his birth. I’m ready to settle with you and AJ.”

  She shook her head. “You just broke up with someone you’re in love with. You’re in pain. Good God, Ty, stop putting all this out there. There’s plenty of time down the line to maybe explore something later. But not now. Now let’s just be close friends. Confide in me.”

  I swallowed. “Yes, I can do that.”

  Lies. Liar.

  Does she know about Xander’s tether? Did you tell her that her husband defied orders and released his tether so he could get to you and help you?

  I could tell Karen right now. I could confide in her about that.

  I could make that choice, summon that courage.

  But there was nothing to summon, because I was a coward. A coward who had turned his back on Karen and AJ for months during the hardest part of their grief.

  Taking her hand, I leaned forward and looked into her eyes. “Xander…” My voice faded, and my gaze seemed trapped by her dark brown eyes.

  She nodded, encouraging me to continue.

  But I swallowed, the words stuck in my throat. She would hate me if she knew. She’d scream and cry. And worse, she’d hate Xander for the decision he’d made. The decision to leave his wife a widow and his son fatherless, all to save a worthless human being, friend or no.

  I couldn’t.

  She shook her head again. “I don’t understand. What about Xander?”

  I cleared my throat. “Xander would want me to watch over you. And being with the two of you makes me feel close to him. It makes me happy, Kare.”

  She smiled sadly. “This isn’t something you do out of obligation. And it’s definitely not something you dive into, and we certainly shouldn’t. You need time to get over your heartbreak. And honestly, I’m not over my own heartbreak.”

  I took her hand in mine. “Then we do it together.”

  Her smile grew as she met my gaze. “Maybe. But that’s not a decision we can make now, okay?”

  My mind scrambled to find something else to say to convince her to change her mind. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder why I was so desperate to lock this up now. Maybe because if I were committed elsewhere, I wouldn’t be pulled back to Gray?

  That seemed a futile hope.

  Karen broke the silence with a long sigh. “You must be exhausted, and I’ve also had a long day.” She pulled back. “I think we should turn in.”

  She pushed up on tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. “Night.”

  Then she turned and was gone. I watched her go and ran a hand through my hair again. She’d certainly tried her best to stir up my doubt, but I closed my eyes and squeezed a fist, determined that this would be a step in the right direction of making things right.

  I’d dedicate my entire life to it, if that was possible.

  That was the plan, anyway.

  The following Wednesday, my fellow astronauts and I boarded a small plane for Florida for launchpad tests and to watch the last unmanned rocket launch carrying the twin of the capsule that I would be riding in next month. An uncrewed full-systems test. I sat across from Noah. He leafed through a technical manual while I did some work on my tablet to pass the time.

  We were the only passengers who didn’t sleep on the flight.

  I threw a look over at our snoozing colleagues. “I guess the pilots have to sleep if they’re not the ones flying the plane.”

  He laughed, and then there was an awkward pause where we both stared out our respective windows.

  “How’s Karen?” he asked once he pulled his gaze away from the window and looked across the small table at me.

  I set down my tablet and clicked it off. I’d been studying the new checklist that had been pushed through to us from operations. Suppressing a frown at his puzzling question, I wondered why he’d ask since he and the other two had spent the weekend with Karen and AJ. He already knew the answer to his own question.

  And Noah was never one to force idle conversation.

  “Good,” I adjusted my seat and glanced out the window. We were over the Gulf of Mexico, where astronauts usually ran maneuvers in their T38 training jets. I pointed out some of our familiar haunts to Noah.

  Like me, Noah was not a pilot astronaut, though we had both been taught to fly our trainer jets. Noah had also come to NASA from the special forces, though he’d started out as an Army Ranger so we’d had that familiar Army-Navy rivalry. And we’d been AS CANs—our nickname for an Astronaut Candidate—together.

  Most importantly, throughout all the many hours and days of grueling training for our job, we’d once been good friends.

  Until ISS Expedition 53. The fateful mission that had changed all our lives.

  “You and Karen seem…close.” Noah said after sitting back, throwing me a speculative glance.

  I nodded. “We’ve been close. And we’re getting there again.”

  He once again glanced out the window, but he seemed tense, his fist clenched into a knot in his lap. I frowned. Something about this upset him. Maybe Karen had confided in him about my proposal?

  That would make way too many people who knew.

  “Are you taking her to the dinner reception?” he asked.

  I thought for a minute and then scratched my jaw. “Oh, you mean that private dinner that Adam Drake’s putting on for us next weekend? I have to take Keely. But damn, Karen shouldn’t go alone. Why don’t you be her date?”

  Noah seemed to pale under his tan and flicked me another unreadable look. “I
’ll do it. But only if you ask her if that would be all right first.”

  I laughed. “Why wouldn’t it be all right? She knows you, it’s all—”

  He shook his head. “Ask her first, and then if she doesn’t have a problem with it, I’ll do it.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  Another long, awkward silence stretched out, and I snatched up my tablet again. Noah interrupted me by clearing his throat. My eyes flicked to him as I settled the tablet in my lap.

  “I owe you an apology about riding you so hard on the lights-out test. Thanks for getting it done.”

  I nodded. It had gone smoothly. I’d spent a lot of time preparing for it, and the fact that the duration of the test itself was short had helped. I’d ticked off the time left in my head to keep the panic at bay.

  “I’m sorry I kept putting it off. Just didn’t seem as important an issue as some of the other things we had going—and still have going. But it didn’t take nearly as much time as I thought it would.”

  Noah rubbed his jaw and studied me, tilting his head. “Was that the only reason? I mean, it just seems…” He shrugged.

  I paused for a moment to allow him to find the words. When he didn’t, I was tempted to drop it and pick up my tablet. Instead, for some stupid reason, I prompted him. “Seems like what?”

  “Like there’s something you’re not telling me. Well not just me. All of the rest of us.”

  My shoulders tensed, but I did not change my posture. “Listen, I know you’ve blamed me since the accident—”

  He shook his head. “You’re wrong. I don’t blame you. But I feel you’re not being one hundred percent honest.”

  “Well,” I said, raising my hand to get the attention of our in-flight attendant to ask for a drink, “last I checked, you didn’t have mind-reading powers or a way to innately detect lying.”

  He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “I know you’re not a liar. But I wish you’d just be more open with all that’s going on with you.” My eyes flicked down to the way his hands gripped the armrests. Admirable, really, considering our past, that we weren’t shouting at each other or coming to blows.