Page 59 of Frequency of Attraction

“With each other. And wine.”

“I don’t drink,” she reminded them.

“You might want to start.”

28

For the next two weeks, Vadim pretended he didn’t recognize how badly he’d hurt Quinn. It was easy enough to avoid her with all the hours he was throwing into his training, but each time he ran into her around the hangar, he was reminded of how Quinn’s fire had dimmed. She didn’t prance around with the same sparks. In that, Vadim knew she’d felt what he did. She’d seen their potential, and now she knew their reality.

At least he had a steady stream of text messages from Babushka Mila. His three nights a week fucking Quinn had been replaced by three afternoons video chatting with his little Mila. His angel.

Hurting Quinn had hurt him, too, but it had been necessary. He’d made the right call. Thomas had stopped cussing at him. Harv was speaking to him again. Vadim was on a path to redemption. Alone, yes, but he was used to that. He just wished his heart would stop following hers every time she walked by. The traitorous organ needed to stay focused on their objective: low-earth orbit.

Vadim left a meeting about that very thing, feeling better than he had in weeks. Stratos was gearing up for a payload test run. Thomas was considering the possibility of Vadim in command of the run. The role should rightly be his, but Vadim knew flying Stratos was a privilege he’d have to earn back.

His phone buzzed in his pocket as he left the conference room for his own office. Chen’s goofy smile, a drunken selfie he’d taken years ago, flashed on the screen.

“Brother,” Vadim said in greeting.

“My man. Tell me everything. I need to know how you’re doing at OrbitAll.”

He’d rather hear about Chen’s time at Jiuquan, China’s secretive space base out in the Gobi Desert. Chen’s experience probably had less punitive action or girl drama. Vadim shared anyway since his friend had helped him get the job. He complained about Darin, the laziest engineer on the flight test team, and about Thomas.

“He thinks he’s a hard-ass, but he’s not so bad,” Chen said.

Thomas had thawed quicker than Vadim had expected. He’d take it. “I have other news. I found Mila.”

Chen sucked in a breath. “Are you fucking serious, Vadim? After all this time? How?”

“Quinn.”

“Quinn Geier, my favorite ball of stress, found your daughter?”

“She’s in Boston. I got to spend a weekend with her. I got to be her dad.”

“I’m so happy for you, brother. You deserve that.”

“It will change things for me, I think,” Vadim admitted.

“Less ink, less women, I imagine. Have you gotten a Victory tattoo yet? It’s not an American flag, is it?”

Vadim chuckled. He was saving his Victory tattoo for his first spaceflight. He hadn’t gotten one in Boston, either. Not yet. “No American flags for me. What’s happening in Jiuquan?”

Chen groaned, which surprised him. “Being here is like being in the military again. I hate being on the bottom. I can’t make any decisions.” Chen had always chafed against the stratified society he’d grown up in. “And she’s not here.”

“Elle? Are you still mooning over her?”

“Always. I can’t just turn it off. How is she?” Chen’s voice had quieted with the question.

“She’s gone.”

“What the fuck? And you didn’t tell me? Gone where?”

Vadim frowned. “You left her, Chen. How is her life my business, or yours? I don’t know where she went. She just quit.”

A string of Cantonese followed. “I’m not sure I can do this. I really don’t know if I can do this not knowing where or how she is. She’s my north star.”

Vadim’s first instinct was to tell Chen to get the fuck over it. He’d made the choice to take that job in China. It had been the right choice. Two months ago, he would have told Chen that Elle was just a woman. That there were billions on the planet, millions in China alone. He would have pointed out that his parents wouldn’t allow them to be together anyway. That Chen and Elle had always been doomed. But he didn’t. After Quinn, after touches and looks that seared his soul, he understood the pull of possibility. “I’m sorry, brother.”

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