Tommy went on to explain the rest of his plan. He was going to take back Sandler space. One planet at a time. The people had long been under his father’s thumb and lived in abject squalor because of it. Yet the remained loyal to the Sandler brand. They wanted a Sandler in charge. This was Sandler space. Tommy would give them one—well four—other options. But he couldn’t do it alone, and the only place with a garrison of ships and military people around to help with the battle was Earth.

Hands down. The only option.

He needed help, and he was going to ask Earth for it.

Melissa sighed and sat down in her seat. “Earth is complicated. We hated it there when we first came through the black hole, and arguably, my family is powerful. My father is a minister, and my uncles hold cabinet positions. The prime minister owes them all favors. And yet… it’s pay to play and I’d seen enough of that on the other side of the galaxy. We’ve had some things come our way because we were in charge here, but I have never—and I mean never—left anyone desperate here because they didn’t have either political clout or money. That being said, my father loves me. He hates my husbands. But he loves me. And he loves my children.”

C.J. spoke up. “Paloma’s family is there. Your sister married into the Chen family. They’re water barons. Not political, per se, except when it comes to their personal interests. But they’re there.”

I held up my hand. The truth of what I was about to say weighed on me, but this was a meeting that required hard spoken words, whether I wanted to say them or not. If Melissa could speak about her past, and years ago Diana had told me Melissa almost never did, then I could too.

“My father wanted to be in charge here. He wanted to be with all of you. He thought having two daughters would be his buy-in, so to speak. Pay to play. I like that description. Um, I embarrassed him enough that he paid for me to go to the Sisterhood, and he paid every month after to keep me there. I only knew Amber got married because Diana told me. I haven’t had one single communication from them, not even from my mother or my sister, since I left. I think my connection to my father will only hurt our cause.”

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t lying. Every single utterance was true. Yet sometimes, it was easier to not speak about things I couldn’t manage. My family would always be something I couldn’t manage.

“Your mother packed up when your father left with you.” Melissa’s eyes watered, and she wiped the tears away. “We didn’t even know what was happening. Not to speak out of turn, of course we knew about Rocky. The whole station knew what that boy did.” She took a deep breath, and I looked anywhere but at her. Clay pulled me against him, and his warmth helped. Silly as it may be, I’d been made to feel small and wrong for having done what I did. It was now exacerbated by the fact that my best friend’s mother was talking about it in a room full of people. Still, she continued. “They ran off in the middle of the night on a transport to Earth. I didn’t know they were gone until the next morning. Paloma, I made a mistake earlier when I said I never let down anyone without any power. That’s not true. I did. I didn’t protect you. I’m sorry.”

“I…” Her words shut me down. I wasn’t even sure what to say. All eyes were on me, and I had to come up with something. Truth worked. “There were times, over the years, when I wondered why you didn’t intercede on my behalf. I’m not going to lie. I did.” I stole the wording from her. “There were other times I wondered why the universe didn’t pick me and swallow me whole. There was a lot of time, alone at night, to wonder about a lot of things. Here’s the truth. I was, and am, their daughter. I belonged to them. He was within his legal right to do as he pleased with me, even on Mars Station where, thanks to you, women are better off than a lot of places.” I shrugged my shoulders. “What were you going to do?”

She stood so fast she knocked her chair over. “Kidnap you. I’m dead serious. Vanish you away. As I was saying before, once upon a time, I was a rebel. I don’t follow rules by nature. I’ve had to force myself into this box, into being this person. Paloma, I failed you, hands down. Please accept my apology for what can’t be undone.”

“I do, even though I don’t think one is necessary. Truly, in my heart I forgive you, but I’d ask you to consider that there never was any apology needed.” I really did feel that way. I couldn’t imagine her vanishing me away because whatever had happened, it had brought Clay Sandler to the Sisterhood and then he and his brothers to my side. I wouldn’t change one damn moment, not now that I knew what loving them was like.

Nolan cleared his throat. “Are you going to contact him?”

At first, I thought he meant my father, but he looked at Melissa. He meant her father. She picked up her chair. “I don’t dare contact him directly with things the way they are, even when Keith gets the system up so we can use their communication. I worry about whoever is on the other end of that getting it with him. My father has… bad taste in women, and my aunt is as power hungry as they come. I won’t even start with the truth about her. I’m going to give Tommy a tablet. One of you Sandlers can give it to my father. He’ll see you. You’re Sandlers. Showing up on Earth? That will get his attention. He’ll see you if you call on him.” She picked a tablet off a counter and started entering something into it. “Give him this. And good luck.”

So we were doing this.

* * *

I had to quit my job. I’d known it would happen when I’d taken it. I hadn’t known that after I did it I’d cry the whole way back to the transporter. By the time I got to the suite, I’d wiped my eyes enough that I hoped my husbands wouldn’t notice my tears.

My husbands, of course, noticed. I was quickly whisked onto Quinn’s lap with Tommy and Keith on both sides of me. Clay stood a distance apart. He was the one who spoke. “Say the word, and we won’t do this. Say the word.”

“Seriously, P. He’s right.”

I wiped my eyes. “I’m not crying because we’re going to Earth. I’m crying because I quit my job. I like my job. Let’s go kick ass. Let’s go get your father. Let’s go to Earth. Woohoo Earth. I just never get to keep my jobs.”

Tommy drew my chin toward him so we had eye contact. “I promise there will come a day when you can make your dreams come true. I’m going to applaud you from the sidelines. Trust me.”

“I do.” That wasn’t the problem. “I’m whining. Be mean to me. Make me stop.”

“Actually”—Keith stood—“I love that you’re doing this. It means you’re finally confident enough in this, in us, that you’re not worried we’re about to run off if you step out of line. Cry away, baby.”

His words made me laugh. “Actually, I’ve got two things to do before I can leave.”

Tommy shot me a side-eyed glance. “We’re leaving in the morning.”

I got up. “Then we have no time to waste. Quinn and I are getting inked, and I’m saying goodbye to Diana.”

Quinn stood up behind me, his hand on my arm. “I’m what now?”

“We need the scorpion on us. I’ll explain on the way.”

He squinted at me. “Are you some kind of imposter? Have you done something to my wife?”

I grabbed his arm. “Scorpion time. It’ll stop chasing me once I own it.”

I hoped.

* * *

Some people, the tattoo artist told me, liked pain with their ink. It was part of the experience for them. I decided very quickly it wasn’t going to be for me. I hated painkillers—they made me throw up—but I’d take the vomiting over the way I felt the first time the needle touched me. Quinn was stoic. He didn’t even seem to mind the discomfort. In fact, he chatted away with his artist while they inked his wrist as though nothing in the world was happening to him.

I made mine rub numbing agent on me and give me a shot so that I felt nothing at all. I didn’t want the scorpions chasing me anymore, but I didn’t feel like I needed to suffer for making myself more emotionally stable.

I would own the scorpion. After I stopped throwing up from the painkillers.

* * *

The next morning on the shuttle I wondered if I’d made a huge mistake. Diana had been nowhere to be found, and not surprisingly, Ari was also missing. They weren’t around to say goodbye, so I sent them both messages. My leg burned and my stomach turned, but Tommy would not be put off. He was leaving for Earth before six in the morning, and there was nothing to be done about it.

Not even my evening with my head over the toilet dissuaded him.

I lay on my bed on the shuttle. Keith had done a lot of work on it while we were on Mars Station. It was now outfitted to phase better. I rolled onto my stomach and groaned. What I really wanted to do was watch us leave. When I’d been on the ship with my father, he hadn’t let me.

Keith popped his head in the room. “You okay?”

“Can we put on the view screen?”

“For sure.” He pressed a button before he sat on the bed with me. I rolled back over until I could sit up to watch. There was Mars Station. She was beautiful. I’d forgotten. On the way in, we’d pulled up with only radar. But there was the only place that had ever been home to me. She got steadily smaller while we flew through space. Her red, green, and silver design was illuminated through the windows, showing off light from inside the station.

“You okay?” Keith nudged me, watching my face and not the space station.

I nodded. “That’s the only home I’ve ever known. That being said, I think we can probably make lots of homes in our lives. I’m looking forward to the next one with you guys.”

“We’ll have one someday. I promise.”

They were all making me so many beautiful promises. What could I offer them? I’d love them forever. I’d always take care of them. I wouldn’t fail.

I had never been on Earth. It didn’t take long to get there. Shuttles went back and forth in half a day from Mars Station. But other transports didn’t get to go quite as straight through. We had to stop through checkpoints before we could continue on to the Earth itself. The planet was so blue. Tommy grinned at me when I pressed against the view window on the control room to watch. Once he’d found out I watched Mars disappear, he’d insisted I watch the Earth approach.

“Where we all come from, originally. There have been so many changes to it since then, but wow, look at it.” I sounded star struck or, in this case, Earth struck.

Keith walked up next to me. “It certainly knows how to survive. I’ve been here before. Some of my schooling was here. I taught at universities in Sandler space, but I spent some time on Earth. There are more people in one area here than you can find on entire planets in Sandler space.”

Quinn swung around in his seat. “I haven’t been here. We’ll be Earth virgins together, P.”

“I know Clay was here practicing law but Tommy?” I turned to wink at him. “Why you?”

Tommy pressed some buttons on his control panel, managing the descent. “I picked up Clay when we went to get Quinn and Keith. And there might have been a few nights that I don’t quite remember before that. On and off. Earth has some serious party zones.”

Clay picked up where Tommy left off. “After the nuclear wars, when humans had to take to the skies and eventually through the black hole, most people thought Earth was done. The few who stayed survived incredibly rough circumstances. Hundreds upon hundreds of years. I don’t know how they did it. Earth came back. With a few exceptions, like your parents and Diana’s grandparents, the people running things come from those folks. They’re made of the kind of backbone that says nothing is over until I say it is over. The prime minister is one of those descendants. Your sister’s husbands are, too. Earth still controls most everything. Commerce. Trade. Law. Art. Entertainment. That’s why my father wants it. That’s why it’s the final stop. You don’t really control anything if you don’t control Earth.”

After that, there really wasn’t anything more to say. I wasn’t surprised Clay could speak so eloquently about Earth. This was where he’d been a lawyer, trying cases for his father. Sandler space had two suns and it was light years from where we were, yet when colonization had happened, everything belonged to Earth. Even a part of space most people from Earth would never see.

My husband had used his power of speech and his knowledge of galactic law light years from where he was born to make his father’s cases. Over and over.

This would be more his domain than anyone else’s.

Only the Dark Planets didn’t belong to Earth. The thought jarred me and I turned around. “I’m looking for your uncles. That’s how I’m going to contribute: information gathering on your dad. No one objects, right?”

Tommy nodded. “Have at it. That would be really helpful. As for me, well us, we’re all Sandlers again. I want them to know who we are. Dad can’t get us here. I want the notoriety to open some doors. I’m going to cut my hair. Well, Paloma, I was hoping you would, and then I’m going to put on something red. Not the full regalia, but I want to look like I used to look.”

I walked over to him and ran my hands through his hair. It wasn’t long, but it was thick with the slightest curl to the blond ends. “How short are we talking?”

“Buzz it. I think the rest of you should, too.”

Quinn groaned. “That sucks.”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “Trust me, I know.”

The first thing I noticed about Earth was the noise. Everything seemed to have sound, like the whole planet was electrified and moving. Of course, we were in Oceania, the capital of the planet, quite a bit down beneath the ocean. The idea had been, according to the information that had appeared on my tablet the second I’d stepped outside, that not all cities should be on the Earth’s surface lest another tragedy take place.

To get to Oceania, we’d had to land the shuttle, wait for inspection—where they once again didn’t find the Sandlers’ hidden stashes of things; it seemed no security force would—and then wait as a transporter formed around the edges of our shuttle to then drag us down below the Earth’s surface.

My ears hurt from the rapid change in descent. I wasn’t the only one. All of my husbands were rubbing their heads.

“It’ll stop,” Clay reassured me.

But now I had an Earth document on my tablet to help me manage what could be, to quote, “a strange new experience on Oceania.” I stared upwards at the encased sky. A giant plastic dome kept the ocean from toppling down at us and maintained consistent weather.

Tommy took my arm. “We’re here because this is where the center of government is. I doubt very much that my mother lives here. If she’s been able to hide herself this long then she isn’t here making waves in Oceania. People only live here if they’re important or want to be.”

That was right. I was going to, probably at some point, meet my mother-in-law.

“I’d like to take her to North America. It’s beautiful country. Sometimes you can even see the remains of buildings that were once there. Of course, we’ll have to make sure she’s properly vaccinated for the radiation. There are still some spikes,” Keith added. “One of my classes was up there.”

All of it was exciting, but I had to remember I wasn’t here for fun. We had a mission. “Do my parents live in Oceania? I could have looked. I just… didn’t.” I wasn’t going to explain it more than that. I’d not wanted to know since I had no intention of seeing them. Yet now that I was here, if there was a possibility of running into my mother on the street, I needed to know.

There were some things in life I simply had to prepare for. That was one of them.

“They do. They live here,” Quinn confirmed. “I looked it up. Also, according to the gossip net, your sister and her husbands are here, staying with your parents while her husbands work out a deal for water distribution. They hold all the cards. Oceania wants to pay less. But your brothers-in-law not only control water above ground, they hold the patents for the salt remover that Oceania uses to manage things here. Lots of shady business going on.”

Pay to play.

My husbands all looked so straight and narrow with their shaved heads and their neat clothing. They were quite different from the four men who had stood on top of a metal fence and offered to help me.

Those guys had looked like they didn’t want anyone near them. These four might help old women cross streets and pet dogs.

Clay stopped moving. “I’m going to the courthouse. I need to register that I’m here and see my client face-to-face. Since we’re here, I need to make things right where I can.”

He wasn’t asking permission. This was something Clay had to do, and I understood that because I got him. Completely. He kissed me lightly on the mouth. “I love you. See you later. I have the coordinates in my tablet of our residence here. Pretty steep credit charge every day.”

“Only the best in Oceania.” Tommy shook his head. “See you later,” he finally said to Clay. I watched as Clay walked until he was out of sight.

A thought dawned on me. “How is he going to get there?”

“There are trains, cars, public scooters. He’ll be fine.” Tommy took my hand, and I let him lead me away towards wherever we were going. Behind us, the shuttle stayed, powering down and locking. There were rows and rows of them. So different than Mars Station where every space vehicle got its own hanger.

When we arrived at our residence, it turned out to be one of the hundreds and hundreds of tall apartment buildings that filled the distance as far as I could see. They hadn’t been interested in making the landscape interesting when they’d designed Oceania.

I’d seen some green spaces here and there. Other than that, everything was very uninteresting. Grey. Tall. Commercial looking even when it was residential. I sighed. I don’t know why I’d thought it would be beautiful. The ocean was blue, surrounding the whole area, but I could see how in places it was murky.

Earth wasn’t beautiful, not in Oceania.

Our apartment was on the fiftieth floor. It was four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. The view was of other apartment buildings. I decided right then and there I hated it.

“I thought it would be pretty.” I smiled. “Guess I’m expecting too much.”

Tommy grinned. “It is beautiful. Not here. Other places. We’re in the temporary stay area. They don’t care how it looks. This is district X. If we were in districts A through N, you’d be singing a different tune. Oceania is huge. You can’t ever see all of it from one location. Beautiful places are just a train ride away. Hey, can I talk to you for a moment?”

His abrupt shift startled me. I nodded and followed him into one of the bedrooms. We hadn’t yet determined who had what room. I was easy. I didn’t care.

“What’s going on?”

He scooped me up and set me down on the bed. “Nothing much. I just want to make love to you on Earth. I’ve gotten to make love to you on Mars Station. Now I want Earth. I basically want to hit all the known planets and discover some new ones to make love to you on.”

I giggled. “Make love to me, Tommy. Make love to me everywhere.”

His mouth met mine. I ran my hand through his almost nonexistent hair and felt him shudder beneath my touch. He moved on top of me, repositioning his hips until they were in the right spot. I knew I’d feel every jolt of his body deep in my core.

We breathed against each other when we had to; otherwise it was all about his kissing me. I chased him, barely catching up. Tommy was driven. He wanted me with an intensity I’d come to know from him and understood spoke of the need Tommy had to control his universe. If he could be in charge, he could keep me safe.

I appreciated his love for me, and I wanted it like I needed oxygen.

There was always an urgency to Tommy’s lovemaking. I wouldn’t hold him back. Not today, with so much at stake. He barely had a leash on his hunger.

“Paloma, it’s going to be fast. I need you.”

I nodded, pulling back from him a bit. I loved to be needed like this. I stripped my clothes off, holding his eye contact the whole time. I knew one thing to be true—in Tommy’s eyes I was sexy as hell. I’d never question it, I’d never wonder.

He loved me with every fiber of his being. For however long forever turned out to be.