Blake
“Finally, we’re alone,” Lizzie pushes me into her room and closes the door behind us. “It’s about damn time.” She walks swiftly toward me, shoves me against the wall, and starts to touch me.
I should be excited.
I should be happy, turned on.
I should be aroused, but I’m not.
This all feels wrong. It feels forced, and I don’t like feeling forced. I could lie to myself and to Lizzie and say I’m just tired. I could say I’m not in the mood. The truth is that I’m just standing here thinking of Sarah, and I know that I’m not going to be able to do anything with Lizzie – or any other woman – until I get Sarah out of my head.
I need to clear my thoughts.
The problem is that a month away should have given me a chance to work through my feelings about her. One month is a long time and I should have been able to come back and deal with my emotions and our relationship like a grown-ass man, but I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
“Blake?” Lizzie looks up at me with a confused look on her face. “Is something wrong, baby?” She asks sweetly, but when I look at her, all I’m thinking about is the fact that she isn’t Sarah. She’s not that woman.
Lizzie is great, but she’s not the one who had the guts to kiss me. She’s not the one who had the balls to wear her heart on her sleeve. She’s not the one who was afraid to be brave.
That was me.
I was scared.
“I’m sorry,” I say, pushing her away gently. “I just need a second.”
“What’s the matter?” She asks sweetly, looking up at me. “Blake? I thought we were going to…you know,” she giggles. “The mission is over now, so you don’t have to worry about being distracted.”
Oh, how wrong she is.
“I’m…Lizzie, I’m sorry, I’m just really tired right now,” I lie. I couldn’t be more awake. I wish I was tired enough to sleep, but I know that if I go lie down, I’m going to be staring at the ceiling and thinking of her.
I’m going to be thinking of Sarah.
“Well, why don’t we go lay down?” Lizzie says, motioning toward her bedroom. “I’ll go pour us some petal juice and we can drink it while you rest.”
“I appreciate it,” I tell her honestly. “But I think I need to be alone right now.”
“Why?” Lizzie’s eyes narrow. “Blake, we’ve been dancing around this thing for a month, and you promised me that when we got back, we could be together. For real. Now, the first chance we have to be alone, you’re getting weird on me. What gives?”
She crosses her arms, and I realize there’s no way in hell that Lizzie is going to let this go, and the truth is that I don’t really know what to say to her. I can’t tell her I’m thinking of another woman. I can’t tell her that I’m doubting whether I actually want to be with her. None of that is appropriate for this moment in time, so with a sigh, I finally nod.
“Some petal juice sounds nice,” I say, and I follow her into her bedroom.
I make myself comfortable on the bed and, as promised, Lizzie brings in two glasses of petal juice.
“Here you go, my darling,” she says, handing me a glass.
“Thank you,” I take the petal juice and allow the alcohol to permeate my system. Petal juice is strong stuff, which is good. I need it. We all do. After spending a month on a practically uninhabitable planet, I think I deserve a drink. Hell, I think I deserve twelve.
“Do you want to talk about the mission?” Lizzie asks sweetly, joining me on the bed.
“I suppose it was harder for you than it was for me,” I tell her. “You were the one who found the ship.”
That was the entire purpose of the mission. A small group of Extrinsic operatives crash-landed on Eola. It’s one of the few planets we haven’t extensively explored, and we knew we needed to hurry and get there. We needed to get those people out. There were two men and one woman aboard the ship, but by the time we hiked deep enough into the forest to find them, it was too late. They were dead, probably upon landing, and we were out of luck.
“They died painlessly,” Lizzie says. Is she trying to comfort me? We both know it’s a lie. There’s no such thing as a painless death. Even if you don’t experience physical pain, there’s a pain inflicted upon everyone left behind that never disappears.
“They never should have crashed,” I sigh. “How did their tracking equipment malfunction so terribly?” I shake my head. “There has to be an explanation for what happened.”
“No, Blake. Sometimes there isn’t an explanation. Sometimes these things just happen. Sometimes you can do everything right, and a ship still has a problem.”
“The equipment should have been good. They never should have crashed. They had enough fuel to make it to Sapphira unharmed.”
I shake my head because this just gets me. I can’t pinpoint exactly why it bothers me so much. That ship never should have crashed. Those people never should have died. They had their entire lives ahead of them and one wrong turn into an oncoming storm caused them to crash land on an unknown planet.
They deserved better than that.
They didn’t deserve to die.
“We spent an entire month on that planet just searching for them and trying to salvage what we could,” I tell her. “And for what? So we could bring them back and have a proper funeral? It’s not fair to them or anyone else. I don’t know how you seem to be okay with everything that happened.”
“I’m not okay with it,” she says quickly. “But I’m realistic, Blake. What happened is over. Done. We went and did our best to save them. We were too late. Besides, it’s in the past now.” She reaches for my arm and touches it gently, stroking me. The gesture should arouse me, but it doesn’t. Nothing does right now. I haven’t been hard in a month. Not since Sarah kissed me, and that thought terrifies me.
Why did she have such an effect on me?
Why Sarah?
And why did I react so terribly?
I know that reasonably, rationally, I made the right move. Sarah and me? We’d never work. She’s a doctor and I’m a boots-on-the-ground kinda man. I’m gone for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. Would she be willing to wait around for me to come back?
Somehow, I know in my heart that she would. Sarah would wait until the ends of the Earth because in Sarah there is a loyalty so deep nothing can break it. I know she’ll never stop caring about me, never stop loving me, never stop hoping for me.
I thought pushing her away and being a huge dick to her was the way to save our friendship, for some reason, but I was wrong. A true friend would have responded with kindness and dignity. I didn’t do that.
Shaking my head, I try to push thoughts of Sarah from my head. I have got to get it together. No more drifting off. No more thinking of her. This isn’t about her. It’s about Lila and Timothy and Lou. It’s about the people we lost. It’s about them.
“It’s not in the past for me,” I say.
“Seriously?” Lizzie glares at me, not for the first time, but it’s the first time I distinctly notice her looking a little bit malicious. What the hell? “You’re hung up on people you didn’t even know or care about?”
“We’ve worked together before, Lizzie. All of us have. You’ve worked with them, too. They were all good, honest, hardworking people.”
“Yeah, right!” Lizzie scoffs. “Lila was having an affair, Timothy was a huge dick, and Lou was a raging klepto.”
“We all have our problems,” I tell her.
“Yeah, right,” she rolls her eyes. “Forgive me if I’m not feeling that sympathetic over losing people who weren’t that great to begin with.”
Now it’s my turn to be stunned.
Seriously?
Who is this woman, and what have I done?
Lizzie continues ranting about the sins of the dead, and I just stare at her as I realize Max was completely right about me.
I’m being a complete asshole.
It’s obvious that Lizzie and I have nothing in common: not our personalities, not our goals. Nothing. So why did I start to pursue something with her? Was it really just to get over Sarah? And why would I choose someone who was so terrible? Lizzie is acting like it’s better that our fallen comrades are dead and that basically sacrifices the entire purpose of our mission.
At Extrinsic, we do a lot of different things. We hunt down artifacts that have been stolen. We rescue people who are lost. We chase bad guys to different planets and transport them home so they can be prosecuted. We do a lot, but we always bring our people home, and that’s what this latest mission was about.
Only now, I’m wondering if there’s a reason it took us nearly a month to find the bodies.
I’m wondering if there’s a reason it took us so long to locate Lila, Timothy, and Lou. It shouldn’t have taken us more than a week, realistically. Somehow, though, things kept going wrong, and the mission was extended to the point where we almost just left, but Max and I both pushed to stay. We both knew we needed to stay.
“Lizzie?” I interrupt her ranting, and she stops pacing and turns to me.
“What?”
“Did you sabotage our mission so we had to stay on Eola longer?”
Her silence speaks volumes.
Standing, I turn to leave.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving, Lizzie.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” She screeches.
“Lizzie, are you fucking kidding me right now? I have to go report this.”
“Report what?” She asks, and I notice that she looks a little crazy now. Her eyes are wide and despite the fact that she’s perfected the gentle lamb look, all I see now is burning hatred.
How could I have missed it for so long?
“Report the fact that you delayed our mission on purpose, Lizzie. All of the things we had go wrong: the misread transmissions, the missing holograms, the fucking map? All of that was your fault. Admit it! You wanted us stranded there for some reason. Why? Was it so we could be together?”
“We needed it,” she says, suddenly softening her voice. “Admit it, Blake. You and I needed to be together. It was the only way I could make sure you saw our true potential without that evil bat watching over us.”
“Evil bat?”
“The doctor.”
“Sarah? This is all about her?”
“Oh, Blake, admit it. You’ve known for ages we were meant to be together. I’ve known it, too. You and I are incredible as a couple. Together, we could do anything, go anywhere. It’s you and me.”
“You and me?” My heart sinks as I realize how I was tricked: duped like some little kid. Memories of my teenage years wash over me: the fighting, the horrors, the choices. My brothers were not the best folks to be spending time with. I won’t call them evil, but they blamed me for many of their poor choices. I even spent time in prison as a result, and Orchidian prisons are not for the weak.
The second I was out of prison, I joined Extrinsic, bringing Max with me.
I’ve never looked back until now.
Now?
Now I’m wondering where I fucked up so badly that I allowed myself to be completely tricked by a woman I barely know.
“I can’t believe you orchestrated this entire thing,” I tell her.
“You should be thanking me,” Lizzie screeches, moving in front of the door. Is she trying to block me in? Has she forgotten that I’m more than two feet taller than her?
“Lizzie, move out of the way.”
“I had to do it, Blake,” she insists. “That woman…she tricked you! You thought you were so in love with her, but you didn’t know the truth about her. She’s a bitch: an evil, terrible bitch, Blake. How can you not see it?”
“Why do you hate Sarah so much? What did she ever do to you?”
“This!” Lizzie holds up her hand, pointing to a small, almost completely indiscernible scar. “This is why I hate her, Blake! She did this to me.”
“Gave you a scar? Are you trying to tell me Sarah attacked you?”
“Worse than that,” she shakes her head. “She refused to heal me, Blake. She gave me the scar on purpose. She could have used healing salve, but she didn’t. She insisted on stitches and now I’m completely maimed.”
“Lizzie,” I sigh. “Move out of the way.”
“No!”
“Lizzie, this is over. This thing between us? Done. I’m gone. Now get out of the way before I pick you up and move you myself.”
She glares at me, but eventually moves, mumbling something about what a complete dickhead I am, and I know that she’s right. I’m a real jerk. I leave her room and head down the hallway to my own living quarters. It’s about a ten minute walk to the wing where I live, and I think about Sarah the entire time.
How could I not have realized Lizzie was such a bitch?
Max seemed to see right through her bullshit, but me? I was too busy trying to prove I didn’t need anyone. By the time I reach my door, my buzz has completely worn off and I’m tired and ready to go to sleep. I head into my unit, lock the door, and strip down.
When I toss my clothes onto the floor, something slides from my pants pocket.
The package Sarah dropped.
I reach for it and open it, confused.
When I see what’s inside, I realize I’m an even bigger idiot than I thought.