Page 31 of Until the Stars Fall

“Are you up a tree?” I wandered through the forest, looking through the branches. A real bird fluttered across and I gasped, surprised at the movement. A little sparrow. I stopped and watched it eating from a bird feeder hung on a tree. Two others joined it, and more birds sang in the trees. When was the last time I’d seen a real bird? I couldn’t remember. Had I wasted the last several years of my life, holed up in the San Francisco tunnels, the laboratory, my sterile apartment, exiled from what was real?

“Did you give up?”

I jumped and whirled around at his voice right behind me, squealing, my hands up in an attitude of defense. He brought his hands up too, my surprise having startled him too. We burst out laughing, gripping our hands together.

“You scared me!” I accused. “Where were you hiding?”

He pointed behind himself. “Behind that apple tree.”

The door to the forest opened. Without thinking, I pulled him against a tree to hide and huddled close to his chest. His arms were around me, hands on my back. I stifled a giggle and shushed his.

“Eyre,” Hannah called from the door. “Are you in here?”

We leaned together, shaking with silent laughter.

“Why are we hiding?” he whispered into my ear, sending a thousand electric shivers down my back.

The door closed, and we busted out laughing aloud, leaning together for support.

“I don’t know!” I squealed. But my amusement sobered up. I was standing in his arms, my hands on his chest. If I wanted to, I could stretch right up and kiss him. Just plant one on him here, barefoot in the forest. He had nice lips, full and usually smiling. Kind things came out of them.

I remembered myself and looked up into his eyes. They were focused on my lips. His lips parted as he met my eyes, and warmth pooled in my belly.

I shouldn’t. What would he think of me after I had my magic taken? He’d said he wanted a witch to settle down with, and that wouldn’t be me.

I lowered my head, and he let go of me as I stepped back. He crossed his arms across his chest, his cheeks flushed above his beard.

“I brought that last piece of coffee cake too.” He cocked his head toward the clearing. “I’ll race you for it.”

He didn’t start running until my brain caught up with what he was saying, and I took off. We raced through the trees and both hit the quilt at nearly the same time. But I zigged when I should’ve zagged, and he tripped over me at the last minute, tumbling into the grass, laughing.

“Beck! Gemma!” Summer’s voice came over the intercom. “We have a problem! We only have a half hour until we need to change course at the next dynamic vector, but our propulsion system’s too weak to make the adjustment!”

Beck dropped the cake back into the picnic basket and took off running. I ran barefoot after him out of the forest, skidding to a stop in front of the floor’s master panel where he was already tapping through the systems.

“Everything in here looks fine.”

He scanned through panel after panel. Everything looked fine. Except—

I grabbed his arm. “There! Go back!”

He flipped back a panel, and I leaned past him to zoom in on a schematic of the external components of the propulsion system.

“Gah,” he muttered, now seeing what I’d seen. “The Lichtenstein drive. And of course it’s only accessible from the hull.”

My brain pivoted into problem solving mode. “Okay, so we send the astromech out to fix it.”

Beck shook his head, agitated, but not at me. “We don’t have an astromech.”

All the hairs on my neck stood up. “We don’t have an astromech?” How had I not asked that question before on a ship this age?

“We have one, but it’s missing its CPU. We tried to spell him back together, but we can’t control him well enough from inside the ship for him to do that fine an adjustment.” He slammed his fist on the nearest column and stormed toward the elevator.

I trailed behind him, a formless worry starting to claw its way up from my stomach. “Where are you going?”

“On a spacewalk,” he said quietly, pressing the up button five times.

CHAPTER EIGHT

---