Page 3 of When She's Handy

Brux snorts and crosses his arms as if to say yeah right.

That makes my heart flutter even harder. “How have you been, Brux? Tell me what’s been going on with you for the last few years. I want to hear everything.”

“Melody,” he says my name in a mixture of exasperation and frustration, but it still makes me prickle with excitement. He hasn’t forgotten it. Hasn’t forgotten me. “We’re on a tight deadline. You can’t come by and get in the way while we’re working.”

“Then I’ll come by after hours,” I compromise easily, and then add my most charming smile as I glance up at him from under the brim of my big floppy hat. “As long as you’ll go to dinner with me so we can catch up.”

Please say yes. Please say you miss me. Please say you want me. Please say you think about me as much as I think about you.

Brux’s hard mouth flattens into an unforgiving line. “No.”

I push aside the twinge of hurt that his refusal gives me. He’s like a hard coating over a bit of chocolate. I have to break that shell before I get to the sweetness inside, and I’m not going to give up. “Then I guess we’re done here. You go back to work and I’ll go back to scrapping.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says again, even as I ignore him and sit on the edge of the tall platform, then hop back down to the scrap pile.

“See you tomorrow,” I say brightly, grabbing the largest hunk of metal I can and dragging it after me. I’m not giving up. There’s no way I’m letting this opportunity pass me by. Not after five years of missing him.

I’ve broken through his barriers before. I can do so again.

CHAPTER

THREE

BRUX

Crazy, insane, gorgeous human.

I can’t believe Melody is here. It’s like something out of a dream. She looks amazing, too. The last time I saw her, she was skin and bones, all ribs and bruises. Now she’s filled out and she looks healthy and lovely…all the more reason she doesn’t need to get tangled up with me.

I’m not a good male. She deserves better.

I stalk away from the edge of the platform, my thoughts whirling, all of them focused around curling hair and a cheery smile. The way she lifted my hand to her mouth and kissed my knuckles as if she were paying homage to me…

“Hey, Brux!” Jonnas jogs up to my side as I storm back to the crane I was working on.

“Go away.”

“You know that female?” He lifts his chin at me, a smirk on his face. “You buy a couple nights with her in some cantina or something? You think she’s still taking clients?—”

I turn on him so quickly that he stumbles backward. “You do not speak to her,” I snarl. “You do not make eye contact. You do not even look in her direction.”

He puts his hands up. “Okay, so she’s yours. I got it.”

She’s not mine. She deserves better. She deserves a life without someone like me bothering her, weighing her down…

“But we all heard her ask you for dinner. Why’d you turn her down if she’s your female?”

“Go back to work,” I tell him, voice flat.

And I go back to work myself, trying to concentrate on the dock plans and knowing that I’m going to fail miserably at everything today. I’m going to think about Melody, and that night five years ago. I’m going to think about how sweet her mouth was against mine, and how good her body felt, how soft and fragile she was…

And what a mistake it was for us to end up in bed together.

So yeah, I turned her down today. Melody deserves better than an ugly alien with no good family name, no credits to speak of, and a criminal history. She deserves better than someone who’s an outcast amongst his own, whose blood isn’t pure mesakkah but might have a bit of moden in it. She deserves better than a broken-horned laborer.

Which is why I’m going to stay away from her. Five years ago was a mistake. I can’t—won’t—let it happen again.

It made me want things I can never have. Better to want nothing at all.

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