Page 89 of The Darkest Parts of Me

“What’s her name?” he asks, and I know he’s not asking to be a smartass this time.

“Maven.” I say her name like a confession. “Her name is Maven.” Nate blinks a couple of times in thought.

“Maven.” He ponders it for a moment. “I like it.” Then the realization comes across his face just from me saying her name. It was all he needed to know.

“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” His tone is solemn. I turn to face the window, closing my eyes, thinking it will help me say what I need to say out loud.

“I love her more than anything,” I whisper. I open my eyes to stare out into the forest. I don’t turn to face him, but I hear the chair scrape against the floor, and then he places a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Renn.”

And that’s all he says, because we both know what I have to do. After all that has happened between Maven and me—our friendship, our love—to be ripped away so quickly, it’s the final piece of my heart that wasn’t completely destroyed . . . that last bit of my heart that was waiting for her to come into my life only to be lost too soon.

“I just found her,” I whisper.

I thought I’d only said it in my mind until Nate says, “I wish there was another way.”

I don’t know what’s worse: that it’s only taken mere months to meet and fall in love with Maven, or that we met, only to have our time together cut short. My heart beats faster at the thought of never meeting her, but what’s worse? I fell in love with her . . . made love to her only to say goodbye?

Nate stands by me patiently, waiting for me to work through my thoughts.

“You need to finish what you started,” he says calmly.

Even after all these years, Nate knows what I need to hear to make me realize what I already know, what I have to do. Even if it’s going to kill me to do it, I will do it. For the simple fact that I owe it to my crew. This has to be done right.

“I know,” I say softly.

Nate removes his hand from my shoulder, and I run a hand over my face, taking deep breaths.

“So how long do you estimate it will take us to get back to Earth?” I ask.

Nate grimaces before he responds. “If my calculations are correct . . . six months.” I swear under my breath. “My ship is small and fast, but we are far, far away, which is why it took so long for anyone to first pick up on your beacon and then get here,” he adds.

I bury my face in my hands, trying to calculate the amount of time I could potentially be away, but there’s no way of knowing how long I’ll need to be on Earth on top of the journey back.

Nate gives me space to process it all, and then finally, I turn to him.

“Tell me everything,” I say, and so he does.

Nate didn’t pause for a second as he told me about every moment since the day I had last seen him. We probably sat there for an hour at least. Nate was able to escape by programming the admiral’s ship to self-destruct, and by some miracle, no one found him. He gave the crew time to escape, but the chaos was enough of a distraction that no one noticed him jump into an escape shuttle alone. From there, he had to navigate back to Earth but take the “long way” to avoid running to anyone from the admiral’s crew, and when he got back to headquarters, he went straight to the highest ranking official he trusted, and then the fire was lit.

The gist of it was that Grey, Locke, and a handful of other higher-ranked officials were in the process of staging a coup to take over the SEA, with the end goal being that they would take over the galaxy.

“Very Galactic Empire, right?” he said at one point.

“Are you seriously referring to Star Wars right now?” I asked, unamused, and he just laughed. I didn’t need to mention that the movie was almost three hundred years old but, for some strange reason, still beloved by many on Earth.

I found out that the Locke Family, no surprise, were paying off individuals to “quietly” take control of planets with viable resources and little force available to stop them. Then, with the added expertise of members of the SEA, they formed an underground Galactic Conquest. Their knowledge and diplomatic influence helped them gain access to planets all over the galaxy. Add in ground forces, weapons, strategic planning, and a hell of a lot of nerve. They had the moving parts in motion, but fell apart the second Nate found those files.

Admiral Grey wasn’t the only higher up officer involved, and after lengthy trials, those who were involved were brought to justice, and the imprisoned planets were set free and promised a lot of resources and assistance to rebuild—all to be provided by the association. Some of those involved, like Locke, attempted to escape, so Nate was tasked with tracking them down.

Nate kept speaking as if it was a happy ending for everyone, and I hate that he kept saying things like “because of you” and “thanks to you, this terrible thing wasn’t as bad as it could have been.” It didn’t matter how many times he said it, I still felt that heavy guilt in me. My crew paid the price for the choice I had made.

“They’ll want you to make an official statement of the events and”—he purses his lips, hesitating to go on—“to honor you with an award.”

“And by they, you mean The Council,” I say.

“Yes. They want everything straight for the records. You know how the SEA is. They like order.”

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