Page 241 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

She goes utterly still.

The truth of it settles over us. I had not intended to say it so plainly, but perhaps plainness is the point. I have mistaken quiet for peace before. Exhaustion for peace. The numbness after battle for peace. The ritual calm of old shrines for peace. This is different. This is not the absence of danger, because danger remains everywhere outside this room. It is not certainty, because certainty has lost its throne. It is the presence of chosen meaning beside me, breathing, teasing, loving, and willing to argue the future into a better shape.

Anita touches my face with both hands. “I’m glad.”

The words are simple. Her voice is not. She says them like she wants to guard them, like peace is a fragile creature that has wandered into the room and must not be startled.

I turn my head and kiss her palm. “You gave it no command.”

“No?”

“No. You did not fix me. You did not argue me into it.”

“I’m trying very hard not to be offended by how impressive that is.”

“You sat with me.”

“That was the whole strategy.”

“It worked.”

She gives me a watery smile. “I should publish a paper. Sitting Quietly Near Emotionally Devastated Vakutan Warriors: Preliminary Results.”

“Peer review may be complicated.”

“Brakk will object to the title.”

“Brakk objects to existence before breakfast.”

“True.”

We settle back together, her body fitted against my uninjured side. The intimacy remains tender and unhurried. Her fingers move over my hand, tracing scars, knuckles, claws, old calluses from weapons I no longer wish to carry as my only proof of purpose. I let her look. Let her learn. Let myself be touched without becoming a wall.

After a while, she says, “What do you want when this is over?”

“The investigation?”

“The investigation. The review boards. The officials pretending they aren’t all trying to steal the shard politely. The slow academic knife fight. Rolaev maybe becoming our worst pen pal. All of it.”

I breathe in slowly. “A home.”

Her fingers pause.

I continue before old caution can take the words back. “Not only quarters assigned by an institution. Not only a ship cabin between emergencies. A place chosen.”

“With sunlight?”

“Yes.”

“And unstable piles of notes?”

“Regrettably.”

“Rude.”

“And a shrine that is not inherited whole.”

She looks up. “One you build?”