Page 20 of Until the Stars Fall

I looked at it in surprise, and he smiled at me, an honest-to-God smile. So he could form one with his face muscles after all. It was casually devastating. It lit his whole face and the room too. Right now, telescopes on Gaia were mistaking it for a supernova.

Damn it all, he was far too good looking to be allowed.

“C’mon, Gemma,” he said, “don’t leave me hangin’.”

I bumped his fist, messy hand to messy hand, and he laughed. An honest-to-God laugh, and no one else was even around. It made me crack a smile.

Eyre’s voice crackled across the intercom into the engine room. “Summer wants to know if the drive’s back up.”

Beck jogged over to the wall and pressed the response. “Yep! Gemma’s got us back on track. We’re good to go.”

“Thanks, guys!”

He followed me to the sink. “We made a pretty good team back there,” he said.

I had to look up while I scrubbed my hands to make sure he was talking to me. “Yeah, I guess.” This was the friendliest he’d ever been. If Hannah or Zola told him something about acting weird, they were both going on my shit list.

“Look,” I said, “I know Hannah has us working together for the next couple of months, but it’s okay. You don’t have to pretend to like me.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, stopping with his hand halfway to the pumice soap I’d just put down. “I like you. You think I don’t like you?”

Great. Now I made it weird. “I’ve just never seen you smile much before.” I shrugged, not daring to look at him. “At least not at me.”

His shoulders deflated as he picked up the soap and started scrubbing his hands. I regretted saying anything. Leave it to me to make an awkward situation way more awkward. And yet I pressed onward.

“I just figured you either thought I didn’t know what I was doing, or you were still mad about the candles or the window. Or…I don’t know.” A rebellious corner of my lip tugged upwards. “Maybe smiling wasn’t covered in any of the many degrees you have.”

He paused, grabbing the bottom hem of his dirty T-shirt and narrowing his eyes at me, a smile playing about his lips. “Are you teasing me, Gemma Abadie?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

He chuckled, his many large muscles rippling as he pulled off his dirty shirt and tossed it into a hamper. Heat rose into my face. I’d never seen a body like that up close and in person, only in movies and magazines.

“I’m sorry if I didn’t make you feel welcome,” he said. “And I’ve never doubted your capability. I guess I was just nervous about meeting you.”

I remembered what Hannah’d said about him seeing my photograph, then looked up and caught the full display of his muscular chest as he dried his hands on a towel, a few tattoos winding down his arms. Those two thoughts jangled against my suddenly pounding heart. I swallowed hard and averted my eyes.

“That’s okay.” I busied myself with polishing the extra bits of grease from my nails with a rag.

“Was I rude to you?” he asked, worry coating his words.

“No, not at all. You were really sweet, offering me food, offering me help. Just not...smiley.”

“I am sorry. I don’t want you to think I don’t like you. Because I do. Did you ever hear that if you meet someone and you like them straight off, even when you don’t know them yet, it means your auras are harmonious? But if you instantly dislike them, and you can’t put your finger on why, it means that your auras create static together?”

“Sounds familiar.” I smirked. His aura was a magnet to me.

“I can’t see auras for shit, but I feel them very acutely. Some people? Beaucoup static.”

I hadn’t heard anyone throw the French word for a lot into casual conversation since before I left for California. His voice always transported me right back home.

“You?” he continued. “No static.”

“Well I guess that’s good, since we’ll be working together so much.”

“Yeah, and we’re both the odd ones out, with everybody else paired up on or off the ship.” He stepped around me and picked a clean white T-shirt from the top of a stack of them, shaking it out and stretching it up over his head. His stomach muscles were halfway to mesmerizing me when he pulled his fresh shirt down. “At least I thought. What about you?”

I snapped my eyes up to his face, my heart pounding like the lecherous, guilty human I was. Did he just ask me if I liked him? Did he catch me checking out his abs?

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