Page 19 of Alien Wants A Wife

“You okay?” Briar asks, dragging Lydia and me into the makeup room.

Lydia holds up a finger, pausing Briar’s question. Then she removes a blue-gray asthma inhaler from her dress pocket and takes three deep breaths, pulling medicine into her lungs.

After another few deep breaths, she nods. “Ihatedust.”

“God.” Briar exchanges a look with me, eyes wide.

Lydia must take insult, because she stuffs the inhaler back into her pocket and crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” Her expression suggests any arguments to the contrary would be highly unwelcome. And it’s not like we’ve got enough to deal with already, so Briar steps up behind me, reaching up to fix my hair.

I bend my knees, making myself a couple of inches shorter so she can more easily reach. Lydia grasps me by my elbows, helping keep me steady, and for a second there’s nothing but the sound of our combined breathing.

A mix of emotions squirms in my stomach, making me feel as if I’ve eaten a bowl of live worms. I hate feeling like this—stressed and panicked. It’s draining my energy and feeding my headache. All I really want to do is lie down and cover my head in an icepack.

What I’ve actually got to do is face up to my two near-impossible tasks.

Finding a way to return to Earth.

And making Roan fall in love with me.

The first of those seems absurdly more important than the latter. But I’m thinking they might actually go hand in hand. If I want Chloe and Mr. Smith to help us get home, then I’ve got to do what they say, and what they’ve said is for me to make and then break Roan’s heart.

I close my eyes, the task unpalatable. I’d thought the other contestants would be the same as me—here for selfish reasons. Certainly not here searching for genuine love. Yet that’s exactly what Roan’s hoping for.

Romance. A partner. Someone with which to share his life and have children with.

And then there’s me, the one destined to rip the heart out of his chest and present it to him (and the entire LOVE GALAXY audience) on a silver platter.

“I don’t know about you,” Briar says in a whisper so quiet that I feel Lydia lean closer, all the better to hear, “but I don’t trust Mr. Smith. Even if we do as he says, what’s stopping him from ditching us the second LOVE GALAXY finishes filming?”

“Fucked if I know,” Lydia whispers, and I open my eyes again. She’s watching Briar over my shoulder, and I study the tight lines at the corners of Lydia’s mouth, another sign of how stressed she is.

“Maybe there’s some way we can find the control room,” Briar says. “If we could find the cockpit, we could take control of the ship.”

“Have you ever flown a spaceship?” Lydia asks, even though we all know the answer.

“It can’t be that hard,” Briar argues, the breath of her whisper tickling the back of my neck as she continues to busy herself with detangling my hair. “Mr. Smith can do it.”

“Good point.” Lydia thinks for a second. “But not all the doors open automatically. There are… What are the called?”

“Biogenetic locks,” Briar answers, speaking slowly, in a way that makes it clear she’s not said those words before and is repeating what she heard someone else say. “Mr. Smith bragged that some of the doors only open to him, but I can’t believe that. Every lock can be picked.”

“By an expert,” says Lydia. “Are you an expert?”

“No.” Briar’s comb catches on a knot. “We still have to try.”

“I’ll talk to Chloe,” I say, finally breaking my silence. It’s been so long since I’ve talked that my voice sounds like it did when I first woke up, hard and raspy. I clear my throat. “She’ll be on our side.”

“I don’t know…” Briar lets the end of her sentence fade away. She might be too kind to outright disagree with me, but clearly she wants to.

“Chloe and I are allies,” I say, keeping my voice as quiet as possible, not wanting the cameras mounted to the wall to overhear. “She’ll help us. I know she will.”

The desire to tell them about the deal Chloe and I made twists inside me, but I bite back on the urge. She made me promise not to tell, and I don’t want to disappoint her because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut on the first day.

I also, selfishly, don’t want to admit to the terrible thing I’m about to do.

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