Fight or Flight (12 page)

“Did you mean it?”

He nodded.

Oh God. What was she going to do now? She panicked for a moment. How dare he lay this on her now? The anger rose in her at the unfairness of it all. Her nose stung with unshed tears, and her heart thudded angrily.

“Why now, Zeke?” she asked, a stony edge to her voice. “The night before I’m going to be attempting to steer an elephant through the eye of a needle?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry my timing stinks, but I’m not sorry I fell in love with you.”

“Don’t do this, Zeke. We said uncomplicated. We said no strings.”

“Actually, we never said that. You said that, but we never actually agreed that was what we both wanted or expected.” He sat, and she followed, both kneeling on the bed, glaring at each other.

“God, every time I look at you my heart breaks a little because I know you’re leaving,” he exploded. “What am I supposed to do with all this untidy emotion? Ignore it? Pretend it isn’t there? I’m not that guy, Tirzah.”

“Who the fuck are you then?” she shouted. “Who is Zeke Lucassen? You say you love me, and you’ve got all these untidy emotions, but I don’t even know who you really are. I know
nothing
about you before the day you walked into that conference room and arraigned me.”

His eyes closed and he winced, and she knew she was right; he’d held himself back. She’d given him everything, made herself vulnerable, but he’d held back.

“I can see it in your eyes, you know?” She stroked his cheek with her hand. “You’re haunted by something. Maybe not anything as severe as the disaster that was my marriage, but something follows you and it’s eating you.”

“Stop.”

“What is it, Zeke? I spill all my secrets so you can hold me in your arms and feel like a hero, but you can’t tell me what’s eating you alive?”

“Please, stop,” he repeated, his eyes closing.

Oh, but Tirzah was on a roll now.

“You know what, I can’t do this right now. Get hold of your untidy emotions, Zeke. I have work to do,” she said, reaching for her clothes. He grabbed her wrist, stopping her. She stared at his large hand restraining her, and she felt a frisson of fear.
It’s Zeke, not Walter
.

“Let go of me.”

He did.

She dressed in silence, and he remained on his knees on the bed, his head bowed.

He was still there when she let herself out of his quarters.

Chapter 21

The captain’s chair on the bridge did not have controls to steer the ship. Those were at the helm, and most of the time the job was done on automatic. But crossing the nebula took finesse and reflexes that the computer couldn’t handle. It took a trained pilot able to react when the gravity wells tugged at the ship or a burst flared from a star. It was a treacherous passage, and not many pilots could handle it. Tirzah had flown it many times in a fighter, but this would be the first time she’d cross it in an old-school colony ship, a big, ungainly vessel. Most just went around it, but that added too much time to the trip.

As she sat at the helm, she took the controls in her hands and did a few maneuvers, feinting and rolling. Ah yes. Claudia had certainly made some
very
effective changes. She’d have to give the woman some kind of promotion when they got out of here. Clau had finessed every bit of juice out of the engine, and it handled like a dream. The first part of the passage would take about seven hours, and then she could tuck into the asteroid belt and rest for a bit. There was no time like the present, so she took a deep breath and squeezed the controls.

“Come to Mama,” she whispered as she pulled the ship back and began the crossing.

The first seven hours passed without incident, and the crossing kept her mind off Zeke’s troublesome declaration the night before and the fight that had ensued. When she finally let go of the controls, Josiah was at her side, pressing a glass of water into her hand and asking if she was okay.

Looking around, she saw various members of the crew standing nearby, so she gave him a smile and said, “I’m fine, Beckett, thank you.”

“You’re doing great.” He smiled. “Something for you—it arrived just after you started, and I couldn’t interrupt.” He handed her a wrapped gift.

She peeled the paper away and found a small holo-print of Andrew Howat’s painting of Hannibal crossing the Alps. She turned it over and read the inscription on the back.

Pixie, may the crossing be uneventful and quick, because I have so much I need to tell you. I love you, and hope you can forgive me for terrible timing. Yours, Zeke.

She felt a flutter of a smile as she took a deep breath and handed the painting to Josiah. He read the inscription and smiled, looking at her with an uncharacteristic tenderness in his eyes.

“That’s something.”

She nodded. “Yeah, it sure is.” Standing, she stretched and rolled her shoulders. “I need a little snack, and then I’ll be ready to continue.”

“You don’t want to wait a bit? To have a nap? The rest of the crossing is going to take a good ten hours.” Josiah looked worried, bless him. She smiled and shook her head.

“No, adrenaline will see me through the rest of the trip. I’ll be fine. I’ve been through worse.”

After eating some fruit and a protein bar, she settled back in at the helm, Commander Campbell ready to take over if she flagged. She steered the ship steadily, maneuvering past obstacles with a steely nerve as her officers watched with fascination.

A gravity well tugged at the ship, and she tugged back.

A bit of space debris loomed in the path; she ducked it.

She played the controls with the mastery of a child at his favorite vid game, but this was no game.

When she finally saw dark space ahead, everyone was on the edge of their seats. With the last bit of debris behind them and the shimmering nebula no longer an obstacle course to be crossed, the people gathered on the bridge erupted in applause. Tirzah sat back in her seat in relief and exhaustion.

Commander Campbell took the helm, bringing automatic steering functions back online; Josiah waited patiently as Tirzah stood, stretching stiff muscles. He reached to steady her, but she shook her head, and he fell into step beside her.

As he palmed open the security door that led off the bridge, she mumbled something about sleeping. He laughed, shushed her, and kept walking, holding a hand ready to catch her if she stumbled.

“I don’t want you to be alone,” Josiah said, steering her toward Zeke’s quarters. Too exhausted to argue, she nodded her agreement as he knocked on the door.

The door opened and Zeke looked tenderly at her. “Pixie.” He looked curiously at Josiah.

“Take care of her. She’s exhausted, but fine. She’ll be out of it for a few hours at least. Make sure she eats something.”

Zeke nodded. “Thank you.”

“I can talk for myself, you know,” she grumbled, pushing past Zeke and into his quarters. Josiah muttered something, Zeke laughed, and then the door swung shut and they were alone.

“We’ll talk tomorrow. Do you want to eat first? Or sleep first?”

“Sleep.”

Away from the crowded bridge and the eyes of her crew, she felt suddenly very small and tired. She let him lead her to the bed and tuck her in, and oblivion claimed her quickly.

* * * *

Zeke watched his lady sleep for ten hours. He memorized every freckle on her face, every eyelash, every sigh and mumble. He lay beside her and wrapped his arms around her waist, whispering words of love as she slept. When she finally awoke, he was there to press a kiss to her forehead and whisper his congratulations on steering the ship through the treacherous passage.

“Zeke…” she mumbled, and he held her close.

“I love you,” he told her again. “I’m going to get us some breakfast. I want you to eat, and then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

She sat at the table in one of his undershirts and devoured the pancakes and bacon he put in front of her. All synth-generated, but she didn’t seem to mind. He placed a cup of coffee in her hand, and set a glass of water on the table. When she finished the pancakes, he gave her a plate of fruit. She ate as though she hadn’t eaten in weeks. When he was satisfied she had eaten enough to make up for the strain of the day before, he simply waited until she was ready.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“It’s a long story, pixie. We should get comfortable.” He took her hand and led her back to the chaise. When she was settled in, he spoke.

“I was married once.”

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything, so he continued.

“I loved Elinor with everything I was capable of, which at the time was actually not very much. I realize that now. She was pretty and sweet, and she loved me too. We were so young.” He ran a hand over his braids, looked in Tirzah’s eyes. “Elinor was my first love. My only love, before I met you.”

Zeke stood, and paced. “She was the perfect prosecutor’s wife. She attended all the parties, and she would charm the politicians. I thought we were happy. We talked about having babies.”

He frowned and swallowed hard. “We talked about finding the perfect little colony to join, with plenty of opportunity for advancement. I worked a lot of hours, but tried to make time for us. I knew she was lonely at times, but I thought it would be better when we had a baby. When she told me she was pregnant, I was thrilled. Her pregnancy was rocky. She was sick a lot. She was depressed. I thought that’s just the way pregnancy was for some women, and maybe it was. But she was so damned sad, it broke my heart to see.”

He paced back to the chaise and sat next to Tirzah. “When Ethan was born, he had blond hair and blue eyes. It’s not how I would have imagined finding out my wife had been unfaithful to me.”

“Oh, Zeke.”

“I pretended for a time, pixie. What else could I do? I’d heard of mixed race babies looking black, white, or anything in between. I’m mixed race myself, so I tried to believe my father’s Dutch genes had helped produce this darling boy, my son. And I loved little Ethan Lucassen with a father’s love.” It was true; he had loved Ethan, in spite of the suspicions he’d harbored about his wife. The boy couldn’t have been blamed for his mother’s actions.

“So what happened?”

“One day, one of Elinor’s former classmates arrived, demanding to see
his
son.” Zeke smiled a brittle farce of a smile. “Ethan looked just like him. Elinor begged my forgiveness, but I refused it. I was so angry. I was so goddamned self-righteous. I threw her out.”

He sighed. “I was heartbroken. I threw her out of our home. I told her to go as far away as they could get. I told her I never wanted to see her again.”

“I’m so sorry, Zeke.”

“The absolute hell of it is…” Zeke’s voice cracked and he drew in a ragged breath. It was his fault. His ego. His lack of ability to forgive that had caused it all. “Their transport crashed on takeoff. All aboard died. I had to identify their bodies. I let my ego kill my wife and son, and the last words I spoke to them were angry.”

“It was an accident, darling. You couldn’t have known.”

“No, I couldn’t. But I’ve lived with these regrets ever since. Ethan haunts me. Elinor haunts me. My inadequacies as a husband and father haunt me. I stopped trusting women, or at least, I thought I had. It was so easy to scapegoat her for my failings. It was more that I didn’t trust myself.”

*

“Shush.” Tirzah cradled Zeke’s head in her arms, rocked him as he cried tears of shame and grief for the loss of his family. “Shush.” Her heart ached for him. The Zeke she’d gotten to know in the past weeks was sensitive, loving. She’d seen flashes of his ruthless side when he was her lawyer, but when she imagined him young and cocky and unforgiving, she couldn’t reconcile that man with the one crying on her shoulder.

When the storm of his grief had passed, he met her eyes. “You see now why I keep to myself? I hurt the people I loved the most. I don’t deserve…”

Tirzah drew a deep breath.
Oh, Zeke.
He blamed himself for a freak accident he couldn’t control. His self-imposed reclusive lifestyle, his fear of letting another person care about him. She pressed one of his big hands to her lips.

“Zeke, I know you want to blame yourself for what happened to Elinor and Ethan. But the crash was an accident. You weren’t to blame.” She stroked the side of his face. “I don’t think asking, out of hurt and anger, an unfaithful spouse to leave is quite the same thing as murder. You didn’t kill anyone, Zeke. God, how dare you have a moment as a human being?”

“Tirzah… I know what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m not trying to do anything, Zeke. I care about you. You’ve woken me and made me feel alive and beautiful. You’re a big, stubborn man who covers his need to be loved by caring for others and loathing himself. You’re allowed to regret your past and grieve your wife and child. You’re not required to castigate yourself for eternity because of words spoken in anger.”

“I love you, Tirzah. I know you’re leaving, but I can’t regret the way I feel even though I’m losing you.”

“Zeke … you know what fight command means to me.”

“I do. I would never ask you to give that up.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ve known since I boarded this ship we would only have a short time together, but I wanted you so much. I tried not to let my heart get involved, but the heart wants what the heart wants. I’ll make my peace with it somehow, pixie.”

“I wish I could give you more.”

“Don’t. Let’s not waste any more of the time we have together on wishing it could be different.” Zeke pressed a kiss to her lips. “Sweet pixie.”

She felt a jolt of tenderness as he pushed her back against the chaise, running his hands over her body, tugging his shirt over her head. She covered his hands with her own, pressed them firm against her breasts, marveling at his restraint in the way he touched her. He bent to kiss one rosy peak, and she pushed herself up into his mouth, watching the contrast of his dark hand against the rounded globe.

“Zeke, I won’t break,” she whispered. “You don’t have to hold back.”

His eyes darkened as he sat back on his heels, kneeling beside the chaise. Suddenly he pulled her hips to him, pushing her legs back to open her to his gaze. He bent to taste her, and she stilled, taking each sharp jab of pleasure as he molded her bottom with his hands, teasing her clit with his tongue.