Page 46 of Rizzed Up By My Alien Neighbor
Inside, I hear glass clink—Sammy working on a craft. Glitter and glue, scissors shredding paper. Little mortal repairs. I smile.
The house next door is dark. Nessa’s lights off. Her silhouette is gone, shadows concealing her form. I remember her face—soft golden hair, the catch in her voice when I offered coffee, the way her chest rose and fell in laughter with my terrible Earth quips.
I whisper her name. Quiet enough that only the wind hears.
I settle my legs and fold them, and speak in the tongue I thought I'd left behind.
“She is not mine. She is not ready.” My Vakutan voice trembles, even in the stillness. The words hover, half-formed absolution.
But I know.
I feel the lie in my throat.
Sheismine. My soul recognizes the anchor the moment our eyes met. But that recognition doesn’t remove her agency—it sharpens my fear.
I shut my eyes.
I imagine a world where I step back.
Where I watch her favorite season change through the window.
Where I don't stand between her and the expansive sky because I no longer want the infinite beyond her fence.
Where I never become part of the predator world she fears, never late to soccer games, never guarding her perimeter, never tying her shoelaces—or cutting her thumb mk1's circuit boards.
Yet here I am.
The wind carries the faint sounds of craft glue brushes tapping on artboard. She’s creating something—maybe her own bond talisman to guard her secrets. Maybe she’s drawing me in ways she doesn’t understand yet, ways I can’t even articulate in Earth words.
I swallow hard, throat tight.
The bond is sacred—and terrifying.
I should distance myself. Retreat back into logic. Back into circuits and galvanized steel walls. I should lock the vault, finish the beacon, prepare the Starfighter for departure.
But the night is so alive.
Crickets crescendo in unison; a breeze rustles a nearby rose bush I once calibrated. I inhale deeply, tasting freedom and fear in the same breath.
Everything inside me says,You should not stay.
But my legs remain folded in grass. My eyes remain open.
Because leaving her unmarked—unclaimed—was never going to be an option.
And in the stillness, when the world holds its breath, I realize:
The bond isn’t a prison.
It’s a choice we’ll both need to make.
Later, when I hear the basement door click and Sammy yawn softly—“night, Richard”—I only nod. Inside, I carry the weight of decision.
Under a sky bright with stars, I whisper again:
“I cannot walk away.”
CHAPTER 12
