Page 213 of Red Scale Daddy
She looks back, furious. “What now?”
“Say it.”
“Dux, I swear?—”
“Say you’re coming with us. Not sending us ahead. Not buying time. Not finding some clever little loophole where technically you didn’t lie.”
Pally squeezes through beside us and glances down the new passage. “I hate to rush the couple’s counseling, but whatever’s behind us just opened the maintenance hatch.”
A heavy clang rolls through the corridor we left behind.
Roma’s eyes flick past me.
I don’t let go.
“Say it,” I repeat.
Her wrist is warm under my fingers. Her pulse hammers hard, fast, alive. I don’t know why that nearly undoes me, but it does. Maybe because so much of her tries to pretend she’s made of steel and strategy, but right here, under my thumb, she’s blood and fear and stubborn breath.
“I already said no one gets left,” she says.
“That’s policy. I want choice.”
Her brows draw together.
I lean in, voice rougher than I mean it to be. “Choose it. Choose living. Choose walking out with us even if it’s messy and inefficient and scares the hell out of you.”
Her lips part.
The ship bucks again, harder, throwing Pally into the opposite wall. He curses as a pipe bursts overhead, spraying a hot mist across the passage. Roma jerks instinctively toward him, and I release her so she can move.
She catches Pally by the front of his jacket before he slides, hauling him upright with a strength that makes him wheeze.
“You okay?” she asks.
“No,” he says. “But I’m upright, which is my current standard for thriving.”
Another clang.
Closer.
Roma looks between us. Her face is pale under the red light, but her eyes are clear. Too clear. Like she’s standing at the edge of a bridge and deciding whether the drop deserves her.
I hate that look.
I hate knowing it.
Finally, she says, “I choose survival.”
The words come out clipped. Angry. Almost resentful.
I’ll take them.
“Again,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t push your luck.”
“Roma.”
