Page 66 of Hold On to Me
"Hey."
"Hey."
He eats. I eat. The staff mess clatters around us in its usual lunchtime chaos. Then he says, without preamble, without buildup, in the voice of a person who's been carrying something for twenty-four hours and can't carry it anymore:
"I got switched to the Almazov sessions."
My fork pauses over my plate.
"Green reassigned them yesterday. Tuesdays and Thursdays." Curtis doesn't glance at me while he says it. He's focused on his plate, pushing a piece of chicken around with his fork, and his voice is the same easy tone he uses for everything except it's not, quite. There's a care in it. A gentleness that's costing him his usual lightness, and I can see what it's doing to him, the effort of being the bearer of this particular news to this particular person, and I want to tell him it's fine but the word "fine" has been so overworked this week I'm afraid it'll disintegrate if I use it again. "I didn't ask for them."
"I know."
"He didn't say anything during the session. Not a word. Same as before. Brick wall." Curtis picks up his water. Drinks. Sets it down. "He asked about you, though. At the end."
My chest does something I refuse to name. It's not on the planner. It's not filed. It's not an approved sensation. It's a wild, animal thing that rises from somewhere below my ribs and lodges in my throat and I am NOT going to let it show on my face because I'm in the staff mess and people are eating and I'm a professional.
"Asked if you were all right. If you'd been reassigned to other clients." Curtis meets my eyes now, and his are careful, and kind, and sorry. "I told him you were fine. Professional as ever. Highest client ratings on the ship."
I pick up my fork. "That's accurate."
"Star."
"That's accurate, Curtis."
He holds my gaze for a beat. He's looking for the crack. He's looking for the place where the composure meets the grief and one of them gives way, and I don't give him the satisfaction because if I give it to Curtis I'll give it to everyone and if I give it to everyone it becomes real in a way I'm not prepared for it to be real.
He nods. Picks up his tray. And as he passes he squeezes my shoulder, his hand landing on the curve of muscle between my neck and my arm, the trapezius, and I know exactly how much pressure he's using because I've been trained to know, and it's kind. It's a kind touch from a kind person and it sits on my shoulder like a warm, uncomplicated thing and I let it be there because uncomplicated is something I need right now more than oxygen.
I finish my lunch. I bus my tray. I go back to work.
Artem
THE BOY'S HAND IS ONher shoulder.
I'm on the mezzanine above the staff mess, the maintenance walkway that runs along the Deck 3 bulkhead, a place I have no reason to be. I came here because the gallery felt like a coffin and the upper deck felt like a crime scene and the engine room sounds like her sayingit sounds like a heartbeatand there is nowhere on this ship that isn't her. She's in every deck and every corridor and every frequency. She's in the cedarwood and the heated floors and the Tiffany glass and the sixty-two hertz, and I've been walking this ship for two weeks trying to find a room that doesn't contain her and I can't, because she didn't just walk through these rooms. She touched them. She pressed her palms to the surfaces and her fingerprints are on everything and I can feel them like she felt my scars.
The staff mess is below me, through the metal grating of the walkway floor. Loud, crowded, trays and conversation. And at the far end of the long table, two people. Star. Curtis. He's standing, his tray in one hand, and his other hand is on her shoulder, squeezing, and she doesn't flinch and she doesn't lean away.
She lets him touch her.
My hands close on the railing. The metal bites into my palms.
Curtis walks away. Star sits alone. She picks up her fork. She eats. She buses her tray. She stands and walks toward thecorridor and I can see her face from above, through the grating, and her face is the thing that breaks me.
She isn't crying. She isn't angry. She's composed and professional and her chin is level and her shoulders are square and she's doing exactly what I told her to do. She's being a professional. She's being twenty years old on a ship that doesn't belong to her, eating alone at the end of a long table, letting a boy with a good heart touch her shoulder because a man with a ruined one closed a door in her face.
I told Mila it didn't feel decent.
It doesn't. It feels like the worst thing I've ever done, and I've done terrible things. Eleven years of military service. Three years of Bratva enforcement. Things that keep me on upper decks at midnight and in engine rooms at dawn. And none of them sit in my chest the way this does, because none of them were a choice I made to hurt someone who came to my door and askedwhat did I doand the answer was nothing. She did nothing. She held a handkerchief and said it should be touched and made me smile and fell asleep against my arm in an engine room and she did nothing wrong and I let her believe she had.
Mila's voice:She'll recover. She'll be a story she tells her friends.
The boy touched her shoulder and she let him. She let him because his hands are uncomplicated and his touch is kind and he doesn't bring coffee in ceramic mugs or track her laughter from doorways or say her name like he's tasting something. He just puts his hand on her shoulder and it means exactly what it means and nothing more and she needs that right now because I took everything that was more and slammed a door on it.
The calculation I've been running for two weeks, the one where I weigh her safety against my need for her and my need loses because it should lose, because she matters more than what I want: the calculation is wrong.
The calculation was always wrong. I wasn't protecting her. I was protecting myself from the terror of loving someone in a world that kills the people I love. I took every true thing Mila told me and I used it as a wall and the wall was for me, not for Star, because Star was already on the other side of it, standing in the light, and I left her there.
