Page 56 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
Zero flung himself into the navigator’s seat, his legs over the armrest. He sighed dramatically, slinging an arm over his eyes.
“Problem?” Mari asked.
“I’m reading a book and I’m mad at the characters. They’re so dumb right now.”
Mari folded shut her own reader. Hiding in the cockpit had, until recently, been one of the few places she could sit and read in peace and still give the illusion of working. In theory, she could lounge around in her tiny cabin. Out in the deep black, there was a whole lot of nothing. The computer handled the piloting and would alert her in case of trouble. She didn’t have a good explanation why she wasn’t holed up in her cabin, other than she liked it when Zero barged in and started rattling on about whatever was going on in his head.
“Why are they dumb?” she asked.
He sighed again, sinking lower in the chair. “I don’t know. Adults always havereasons. They like each other but they won’t just kiss and stuff.”
“Oh, well, maybe they need to get to know each other. Sometimes it’s not smart to jump right into the kissing.” Then added, “And stuff.”
Zero made a noise that could mean anything from agreement to outright sedition.
“Tell me about the book,” she said.
“Well, it’s about this kit. He’s great. The best. Super funny and smart. He’s trying to find a mate for his dad, who’s also great. Luckily, he found the perfect female. The kit, I mean. He found a female for his father.”
“How thoughtful,” she said dryly. Zero needed to have a serious conversation about how people weren’t things to be purchased like a box of chocolates, but she wasn’t the adult in charge.
“Right? He’s the best.” His tail did a little jig. “Anyway, the dad likes the female, and the female likes the dad. They met on a tropical island, did a ton of romantic stuff, but they’re notdoinganything about it. He’s all, ‘No, I will not speak of my deceased mate’,” Zero said in a mock gruff voice that sounded suspiciously like Winter. “And she’s, ‘How can I learn to trust again?’ And then there’s this story in the media and the dad loses his shi—”
“Zero,” Mari said flatly.
“Shi…ship.”
“He lost his ship.”
“Yeah. Totally lost it and blamed the female and now they’re not talking and it’s making the kit really sad. See? Dumb.”
“Zero—”
“It’s a book,” he said immediately, eyes averted as if to avoid looking in her direction.
“Is it?” Because thatbookfelt familiar, especially the part about losing hisship.
He slinked down ever lower in the chair, his body boneless and threatening to ooze onto the floor. “Yes?”
“Okay,” she said placidly. “What does the kit think, besides despairing for the adults?”
“He wants them to be a family,” he muttered. “It’s all he wants, and they just won’t give it to him. It’s not fair.”
Sometimes it was easy to forget that Zero was fourteen. Sometimes his age was really, really obvious.
“Have you tried talking to your father—”
Zero bolted upright. “It’s a book!”
“About the book,” she continued.
“Yes. He’s dumb. I mean, the book dad. Book dad is dumb.”
“Uh-huh. And what did the book dad specifically say?”
“I need to be patient.” He groaned and melted back down into the chair.
“You can’t force people to kiss and make up. They need to work through their disagreements on their own,” she said.
