I SNAPPED AWAKE––covered in sweat, gasping.

Strong arms held me, winding around me, holding me tight to a muscular chest.

Both of us were naked, but for once it wasn’t him that was generating most of the heat.

I writhed in his hold at first, trying to get free out of instinct. Then, when he continued to blow his light over mine, calming me without words, holding me almost lightly now as he stroked my belly and hair, I sank into him instead, still fighting to breathe.

Tears ran down my cheeks.

I didn’t know what they were at first.

I had no idea what they meant.

“You were screaming,” he murmured in my ear. “You were screaming, Miri.” He kissed my face, pressing his cheek to mine. “Why were you screaming, honey?”

I lay there against him, still fighting to get air.

I put intention into every breath, into every inhale and exhale, fighting to think past the choking, tense feeling in my chest.

I tried to think, to remember, but my mind was completely blank.

“Bad dream?” he said.

“I don’t know.” I bit down on my tongue briefly, shaking my head. “I can’t see it. I can’t see anything, Black.”

I couldn’t.

When I closed my eyes, trying to remember, I saw nothing.

I saw only darkness there.

Normally seeing darkness behind my eyes didn’t bother me. I liked it.

Since I’d been a kid, images, feelings, meanings, presences, and voices from outside of me filled my mind. That dark, calm silence was a reprieve from all of that. It reminded me of meditation, of times I was able to quiet all the voices, both inside and out, to make them all, however briefly, go silent.

I spent years learning to meditate for that very reason.

Truthfully, for a lot of years, that was the only thing that kept me sane.

That wasn’t true now.

Now, instead of stillness, instead of calm, that darkness filled me with fear.

Black’s arms wrapped around me tighter.

Now that I wasn’t fighting him, he pulled me deeper against him, snuggling me up against the length of his body, pulling my hips and legs back to curl around his. Despite the heat coming off us both, I found every inch of his skin a relief. For the first time since I’d opened my eyes, I took a full breath, letting it fill my lungs completely before I let it out.

“You don’t remember?” he said, soft.

I shook my head, wiping my face with my fingers. “No. What was I screaming?”

“It was just a scream,” he said. “It was fucking loud, though. I’m surprised security hasn’t broken down the door… or at least checked in, to make sure we’re both okay.”

There was a silence.

In it, he massaged the front of my body, kissing my shoulder and neck. I felt worry on him. I felt his muscles tensing behind me, like some part of him was still on high alert.

I also felt thoughts on him––more thoughts than he’d shared with me.

“Where did you go?” he said. “Earlier, Miri.”

I frowned. “Go?”

“Did you go outside? I couldn’t find you.”

My frown deepened. I fought to think, to answer his question, staring out through the window at the lit skyline of the city.

Both Black and I liked leaving the drapes open at night.

I liked being able to see out at the world, especially now that I lived so high up. I liked being woken by the sun. I liked having my first view of the day be of the sky, of the clouds, of birds winging by, of the reflections of sun and sky on the tops of the city. I liked that glimpse of the rising sun being the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.

Up here, we really didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing in.

“What do you mean?” I said, after another beat.

I turned my head, shifting on the bed so I could see his face. I looked up and back at him in the dim light from the window.

“I didn’t go anywhere,” I told him.

His lips quirked in a faint smirk.

I didn’t feel even a whisper of humor on him, but he kept his voice carefully light.

“Either you wandered off for at least an hour tonight, or I’m losing my marbles,” he said. “That, or I had one hell of an elaborate dream.”

I turned over, so that I was facing him. I wrapped my arms and legs around him as I did, snuggling deeper into his chest and body. I felt like I couldn’t get close enough to him. Even with how much I was sweating, with how hot I was probably making him, I was frustrated that I couldn’t get closer to him.

“An hour?” I said. “I didn’t go anywhere for an hour, Quentin.”

He kissed my throat once I faced him, using light in his tongue and lips.

Pulling on me, he wrapped more of his light into mine, wrapping into me with those structures he had below his feet, pulling me further into him, enough that he must have felt my frustration with wanting to get closer to him. Coiling his arm around my waist, he gripped my ass in his hand, yanking me up against him, where I could feel he was already hard.

“I woke up,” he said, lifting his eyes back to mine. “You were gone. I went looking for you, Miri. You weren’t in the penthouse. I went to the offices, but they were dark… no one was there.” Pulling me tighter against him, he closed his eyes, a plume of pain leaving his light, right before he looked at me. “I even went down to the lobby. I asked the security guys if they’d seen you leave. They all looked at me like I was nuts.”

I stared at him, more awake now.

I was also confused, turned on… and bewildered.

“Seriously?” I said. “I don’t remember any of that, Black.”

“You didn’t answer when I tried to ping your light,” he said. “You didn’t have your phone with you. I tried calling it, and it rang in here.”

Shifting more to my side, I wriggled free of him enough to prop my head up on my palm propped up by my elbow, looking down at him as he shifted to his back. I just stared at him for a moment while his words sank in.

Somehow, the reality that he’d been worried enough to try and call me made the whole thing inescapably real.

“What?” I said. “You were really looking for me? For an hour?”

He smiled, nodding.

The smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Rather, I felt a whisper of the worry he was trying to hide from me. Now that I’d noticed it, now that I knew it was real, it was all I could feel.

“All I can think is, you must have gone to the roof,” he said. “I came back in here, ready to call my security guys and look for you for real… and there you were, curled up in bed, like nothing happened.”

He grunted, running his fingers through his hair.

“I almost woke you up,” he added, gruff. “I was sorely tempted to wake you up with a good, hard spanking for scaring the shit out of me.”

I let out a laugh, in spite of myself.

Even so, I found I couldn’t stop staring at him.

I couldn’t stop turning over his words.

“Maybe you were the one sleep-walking?” I suggested after another beat. “Maybe I was here the whole time, Black.”

He quirked a dark eyebrow at me, clicking softly.

“We could check the security tape,” he said.

Looking down at him, I realized he would have done that already.

“What did the tape show?”

“Nothing,” he said, his mouth a touch harder now. “I don’t have anything in here, but I have cameras in the hallway outside the offices. The cameras didn’t show you leaving the penthouse. You never entered the elevator. You were never on the staircase up to the roof. You were never in the lobby.”

“Maybe I was in one of the closets?” I suggested, quirking an eyebrow.

He gave me a faint smile.

I felt the edge behind it now, even though I also felt him trying his damnedest to acknowledge my humor, to let me reassure him. I could practically feel the skepticism on him, though. He didn’t think I’d been in a closet, which told me he’d searched the penthouse pretty thoroughly. He didn’t think I’d been on the roof, either.

He didn’t say anything though, so I didn’t know what he thought precisely.

I didn’t know why he’d mentioned the roof in particular, or why he found it at all likely I’d wander up there on my own, when security cameras would have definitely picked up images of me climbing the stairs.

He had a helipad up there.

“I’ll get the system checked tomorrow,” he said finally.

I nodded, still looking down at him, studying his light.

“Sorry?” I said, not sure what else to say. “I really don’t remember any of that.”

He looked over at me, his gold eyes reflecting in the street lights from below.

I felt the worry on him. I felt him working to let it go.

“Well,” he said after a pause, grunting as he wrapped his arms back around me, pulling me tight to his chest. “Apparently scaring the hell out of me once in one night wasn’t enough for you. You felt the need to do it to me again like two hours later… screaming your lungs out like someone was murdering you right next to me.”

Looking at him, I realized that despite his low, teasing tone, he wasn’t entirely kidding about the scream, either. It unnerved him. Ribbons of reaction still ran through his light, sparking visibly as he consciously seemed to be calming himself down. His aleimi felt almost like it was in military mode, like he was ready to hurt someone with his bare hands.

Sinking back into him, I lay on his chest and stomach, stroking his hair.

“Gaos, Black,” I murmured. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

He let out a half-laugh.

“Am I okay?”

“Well… yeah.” Sliding up his body, so I was astride his lap, I shrugged, still stroking his face and hair, now pulsing my light into his. “I’m fine. I don’t remember any of it.”

He let out a low laugh, like he couldn’t help himself.

I still felt that tension on him, though.

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything, but I felt his light in mine. I felt the probing there, even as he tried to decide if he should say more.

I was about to break the silence, to ask him, when he spoke.

“It’s about Nick,” he said. “This is about Nick, isn’t it?”

I tensed.

I didn’t feel caught. It was more that hearing Nick’s name right then managed to jar me, and to remind me. Immediately, that darkness wrapped itself back around my light.

For the first time, it really sank in that the darkness I’d been feeling had something to do with him, with Nick.

Some of it was grief.

I knew that wasn’t all of it, though.

“What can I do, Miri?” Black murmured, stroking my hair, cupping my face where I hung down over him. “Do you want to talk about it? About whoever or whatever you think called Nick’s mom? Do you want to go back to Europe?”

I frowned.

We’d had surveillance on Nick’s family for weeks now.

We’d tapped the line at his parents’ house, along with both of their mobile phones. We tapped his sister Numi’s phones, along with his sister Maya’s in Seattle, and his younger sister, Naomi’s in Los Angeles. We even tapped the lines of several of his uncles and aunts, mostly the ones who lived in the Bay Area, the ones Nick was particularly close to.

Black called contacts he still had in the Pentagon that first day we’d gone running and gotten waffles. In the end, he pulled everything he could get on Nick’s mother’s phone, and on Nick’s own phones, anything he could find with Nick or his family’s name attached.

That one phone call to Yumi Tanaka was the only one we found after Koh Mangaan.

I must have read that transcript about a hundred times by now.

I listened to the raw audio even more times than that.

I read and listened to every word, looking for Nick’s voice, quirks in Nick’s speech, looking for his humor, his light, his presence, even his anger. I looked for hints that he was who he said he was; I looked for hints that he wasn’t. I rewound particular parts of the conversation and listened to them over and over again. I looked for him there, anywhere I could find him.

I found shadows of him instead. I found that darkness.

I felt him, but I couldn’t make up my mind that it was him.

I couldn’t get past that feeling of grief, anger, guilt, and just wrongness.

Black’s contacts traced the call back to a payphone in Paris.

There was traffic in the background––cars, foot traffic, the sounds of an outdoor café nearby, the sounds of music from a club or storefront further away.

There was also laughter in the background, close enough that he’d likely been with other people. In the recording I listened to over and over, a woman’s laughter was audible specifically. I heard her speak to someone, maybe even to him.

I had the recording cleaned.

I listened to it again, trying to pick up what she said to him.

The only word I heard was his name.

Not Nick––she didn’t call him Nick.

She called him Naoko.

Naoko… I heard, amidst her laughter. Naoko… Naoko…

Black stroked my back, his fingers massaging my skin.

It snapped me back to the room, back to where I sat, naked, in his lap.

Coming back from wherever my mind had gone, I realized I’d never really answered his question. I supposed by then, I didn’t need to.

“You love him,” Black said, soft.

I flinched, looking down.

Frowning in puzzlement, I gripped his hair in my fingers, tugging on it lightly.

“Of course I love him,” I said, faintly chiding. “He’s my oldest friend, Black.”

He shook his head, lips taut. “That’s not what I meant, Miriam.”

I stared at him.

I blinked, then frowned, staring at him in the dim light.

“Black. What in the hell are you saying? After everything––”

“After everything,” he growled, his voice holding a faint warning. “I should know. I’ve known from the beginning how you felt about Nick, Miri.”

When I just sat there, staring at him in utter disbelief, he grunted.

“Why the hell do you think I was so threatened by him?” Turning his head, he looked out the window. His eyes narrowed at the lit structure of the Bay Bridge. “Miri, if I hadn’t shown up in your life, you probably would have ended up married to Nick.”

But that was too much.

I let out a disbelieving snort.

“If you hadn’t shown up in my life, I would have ended up dead,” I scoffed. “That, or married to Ian the serial killer.” I scowled. “Probably both. He probably would have married me then killed me. That, or I’d be one of my uncle’s lap dogs by now, after Ian spent however-long indoctrinating me in Charles’ crazy religious bullshit.”

Black shook his head slowly.

He didn’t want to fight with me, I could feel that, but I felt his disagreement all the same.

“You and Ian would’ve never lasted,” he said, matter-of-fact. “However that came out, you and he wouldn’t have stayed together. As your sight opened, you would have seen him for what he was.” He met my gaze, his gold eyes glowing. “You would have seen Nick, too, Miri. You would have seen him for who he was. Some part of you always knew. But I think you two would have found your way to one another eventually.”

I stared at him.

Now I was verging on angry.

“What the hell are you saying, Black?” I said. “That Nick’s mom was right? That I should have married Nick, instead of you?”

Grimacing, he shook his head. A plume of heat left his light, even as his arm circled my hips, yanking me closer to him.

“No,” he said, his voice harder, and thicker. “Fuck no, Miri. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying… you love him. More than you ever admitted to yourself. More than you ever admitted to each other. I’m trying my damnedest not to feel threatened by that, but it doesn’t change how I see it. I think him being gone is forcing you to face that. It’s why it’s hitting you so hard.”

“Or maybe it’s hitting me so hard because he’s my oldest friend, Black,” I said, my voice louder, caught somewhere between fury and disbelief. “Maybe it’s hitting me so hard because he was one of my best fucking friends, Black, someone I’ve been close to since my early twenties. Maybe it’s because he saved my fucking life more times than I can count. Or because he and Angel are the closest I had to a family after my sister died––”

“Hey.” He gripped me tighter, shaking me a little. Pulsing heat at me, he coiled his arm further around my waist and back, pulling me against him. “Hey… doc. This isn’t an accusation. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing at all. I’m trying to help. You’re still not facing it. I’m trying to help you see it.”

“See what?” I snapped. “That I was secretly in love with Nick?”

“Yes,” he said, exasperated. “That you had unresolved feelings. Both of you did.”

I shook my head, still fighting anger. “He was head over heels for Kiko. I was the furthest thing from his mind at Koh Mangaan. I had been for months.”

Black rolled his eyes.

I saw it even in the dark of the room.

“That thing with Kiko was bullshit, doc,” he said. “That was just him trying to deal with you and me. He was trying to move on. It was pure rebound. One hundred percent.”

I shook my head.

Before I could speak, Black went on, his voice dropping to a mutter.

“…Fucking Kiko’s been the rebound target lately.”

I stared at him. “Meaning what?”

Black glanced up, scowling.

“You asked me about Jem,” he said. “You asked me why I was so pissed off at him. Well, Kiko’s one of my oldest friends, doc… at least who’s still alive. Jem didn’t approach that thing with Kiko right. I’m beginning to think it wasn’t conscious on his part, so I’m not as angry as I was, but it’s still fucked up. I can’t help but be a little mad at him, especially given how he ended it.”

“Kiko?” I said, bewildered. “Jem? What does that have to do with––”

“Let’s just say you aren’t the only one who had unresolved feelings about Nick,” Black growled, glaring up at me.

I stared at him.

I honestly had no idea what he was talking about.

Walking back the last few things he’d said in my mind, I felt my frown deepen.

“Jem?” I said, confusion in my voice. “Jem and Nick?”

Black grunted. Propping his upper body up on one arm and hand, he continued to hold me tightly around the waist, keeping me flush against him.

“Yes, Jem.” Seeing the confusion on my face, he grunted again. “Jem had a thing for Nick. It wasn’t a small thing, either,” Black added, his voice gruff. “It was some kind of light thing, and Jem was trying to hide it from all of us… but especially from Nick. I can’t believe I missed it, truthfully, but it flew right past me. I take it you didn’t notice, either.”

He met my gaze, his jaw hard. Lifting his hand briefly off the mattress, he made the seer motion for crazy by one of his ears.

“He’s fucked in the head. Jem,” he added. “Something about Old Earth. Someone fucked him over, broke his heart… something.”

I nodded, frowning slowly.

I had known about that.

Jem told me about it.

Black scowled up at me. “Of course he did.”

Exhaling, I sat back on his thighs. “Black, he didn’t tell you because your cousin was involved. On Old Earth. He was in love with your cousin… and his wife. One after the other, or maybe both of them at the same time. Something. But your cousin was definitely involved. It was a big messy love triangle, from what he told me.”

Black’s eyebrows went up.

I felt a flicker of surprise off his light, then a more thoughtful whisper, one that held a lot more understanding.

Then he seemed to shrug it off.

“Well, whatever it was, it screwed him up. He started having feelings for Nick, and he ran like hell. I think it scared the shit out of him. He seduced Kiko instead… maybe partly out of jealousy, knowing Nick had a crush on her. Maybe it was completely subconscious, like I said. It might even have been a way of trying to get closer to Nick. He must have known Nick was straight. Whatever it was, it wasn’t cool to Kiko. It wasn’t cool to Nick either, of course… but it was seriously not cool to Kiko.”

Grunting, he adjusted his weight on his palm, his voice a low growl.

“I was kind of pissed at both of them, to be honest… Nick and Jem. But with Nick, I really think he meant to make something work with Kiko. It was Kiko who saw through it. She told me she knew Nick wasn’t really interested in her… not really. She didn’t come out and say why she thought that, but I knew what she meant, and I agreed with her. I was honestly relieved she intuited that, and didn’t go along with it.”

Scowling, he glanced up at me.

“Kiko wasn’t able to have that kind of clarity with Jem. For a lot of reasons. He’s a fucking seer, for one, and she’d never been with a seer before. Humans don’t exactly find our kind easy to read, and Jem’s ex-Adhipan for fuck’s sake… and probably well over three hundred years old. Kiko wouldn’t have been used to the light component of sex. Humans can get addicted to that, just like seers… he probably blew her doors off, sex-wise. She couldn’t see him clearly because of that, not to mention just being kind of overpowered by his light.”

Hearing the real anger in his voice somehow calmed my own.

I was still frowning, but I found myself thinking about his words.

Jem had a thing for Nick?

Weirdly, it almost made sense.

I hadn’t seen it at all at the time, of course.

I’d seen Dalejem look at Nick here and there, but a lot of seers did that, just stared at people, I mean, especially seers who’d recently come from Old Earth. It was one of the hardest habits to break them of, when it came to assimilation. Seers, in general, had a tendency to stare in ways that freaked a lot of humans out.

“Jem definitely wanted Nick,” Black grunted. “Believe me. I accidentally tapped into one of his fantasy sessions about it… it was explicit. Technicolor explicit. He might have even been borderline fixated on him, from what I saw. I’m actually surprised he didn’t act on it, whether Nick was straight or not. After I saw that, I was worried I was going to have a problem with him… as in, he might use his light to try and get Nick to sleep with him anyway.”

Wincing a little at the unwelcome images, I smacked Black’s chest.

“Okay,” I said, grimacing. “I get the point.”

He looked up at me, his brow furrowed.

“I don’t think you should have married Nick,” he growled, his anger rising. “Jesus Christ, Miri. Nothing like voicing my worst fucking fears aloud. I just think you feel what could have been there, and a part of you feels guilty about it. Not only for Nick, but because you know it would have worked, in a different world.”

Gripping me tighter, he yanked me up against him, pressing his erection against me.

“A world I’m not in, doc,” he said. “I’m in this one.”

I let out an involuntary laugh, curling my hands around his shoulders.

“I’m very aware of that,” I said.

“You’d better not forget it,” he growled. “You better not forget I would have fought him to the death for you, doc, if it came to that. I like Nick. More than liked him. I really cared about the son of a bitch by the end, but…”

Falling silent briefly, he clenched his jaw, looking out the window.

When I wrapped my arms tighter around his neck, he looked over at me.

“I’m sorry, doc,” he said, gruff. “I’m really sorry about Nick.”

Fighting a tightening in my throat, I nodded. “I know. I know you are.”

His arm squeezed me tighter against him.

He looked up almost apologetically. Pain wafted off him as he did, even as he pressed deeper against me.

“I really want to fuck,” he said. “I wanted to fuck when I came back in here and found you here. You scared the shit out of me.”

Coiling my arms and legs around him tighter, I leaned into his chest.

I’d definitely noticed our sex urges hadn’t lessened any, since we left Thailand.

Apparently that wasn’t part of the whole “completing the bond” thing.

Black grunted, clearly hearing me.

“Did you think it would be?” he said.

I shrugged. “I didn’t know. But yeah… if I had to guess, I thought it would have calmed us both down some on that front.”

“Nope,” he said.

He still sounded distracted, despite the pain I now felt twisting through both of our light. He was still looking out the window, frowning, when I nudged him.

“What?” I said. “You want to ask me something. What is it?”

He looked over, and I saw worry skate across his expression.

For the first time, I really noticed that I could see him better. The sky was lightening outside the window. When I glanced over, I saw pink and gold streaks brightening at the horizon just past the Bay Bridge.

“I know you and Nick… you had a connection,” he said, his voice hesitant.

Feeling me react, tensing in his arms, he shook me a little again, his voice lowering back to a growl.

“Fuck, Miri… I’m not saying anything about that. Not like you think. I’m just saying… the screaming. The disappearing in the middle of the night. That ‘darkness’ you’ve been feeling. Do you think you’re feeling him? Nick?”

I thought about his words.

My jaw hardened enough to hurt, but I tried to think, to give him a real answer. Turning, I gazed out over the pre-dawn sky of San Francisco. I tried to reconcile what I’d felt, the pit of dread in my gut when I woke up, the panic, the darkness. I tried to wrap my head around the screaming Black heard, what Black said about me disappearing in the middle of the night.

Still staring sightlessly at the brightening sky, I frowned.

“I fucking hope not,” I said finally, turning to look at him.

Still frowning as I studied his gold eyes, I felt that pain in my chest and gut worsen. “I really fucking hope none of what I’ve been feeling is Nick, Black. I hope he’s alive. More than anything, I hope he’s alive… but I don’t think that’s what I’ve been feeling.”

Black frowned back at me, his face tightening at my words.

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t even nod.

He didn’t emit anything with his light, or change expression, but somehow, I felt him wince at what I’d said anyway. I could feel he had his own opinion around all of that, somewhere in the back of his mind. I even had a pretty good idea of what that opinion was by now, although I didn’t let myself think about it very deeply, or for very long.

Whatever it was, Black wasn’t ready to share it with me.

More likely, he knew I wasn’t ready to hear it.

I wanted to disagree with him.

I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that he could just tell me, whatever it was.

I wanted to tell him I could handle it.

The problem is, I was pretty sure he was right.

I was pretty sure, whatever it was, I couldn’t handle it.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.