Page 63 of Claimed by an Alien Warrior

“I suppose we are a pair of fools, you and I. But…” He extended an upper arm and placed his hand over hers. “I have greatly enjoyed your company, despite the unpleasant circumstances that brought us together.”

She stared at their hands and brushed her thumb against his. “Me too.”

Using his lower hands, he tore off a chunk of the muffin and slipped it into his mouth. A smile, small but genuine, crept across his lips as he chewed. “Somehow, it tastes even better than it smells.”

Zoey grinned. “They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

“And this does tasteverygood,” he replied, smile widening.

She placed a hand over her chest. “Aww.”

Despite her overacting, the fire inside her had rekindled. She’d tried to force distance between them, had tried to tell herself there was nothing to pursue here, that there was no future for them. That it would only end in heartbreak.

But she couldn’t stay away from him.

Maybe…she didn’t have to.

* * *

The day was a good one, and they passed it as though the night before never happened. They talked in the kitchen as the sun rose, which, thanks to the continuing storm, only meant a shift from black to gray outside. Afterward, they watched a couple more movies. Zoey found popcorn in the pantry, and Rendash partook eagerly until the skins started getting stuck in his teeth. He scowled so darkly at the bag that she thought he was going to murder it.

When the end credits started rolling on the second movie, Zoey stood. Rendash moved to join her, but she stilled him with an extended hand. “Stay here, Ren. I’ll be right back.”

She hurried upstairs to the master bedroom. Kneeling on the floor beside her suitcase, she opened it and dug through her clothing until she found her little photo album. It was her most treasured possession. Her fingertips trailed over its worn, familiar front cover, and she felt a single moment of doubt. She hadn’t even shown Joshua these pictures, even after almost a year. Would Rendash care? Her father meant nothing to him, and his relationship with his parents hadn’t exactly been close.

But it will mean that dad’s memory, at least in part, is with one other person in this universe.

Zoey returned to the media room with the album clutched to her chest and smiled at Ren.

“What is that, Zoey?” he asked.

She sat next to him and lowered her arms, holding the album on her palms. Taking a deep breath, she cast aside her lingering anxiety.

“This,” she said as she opened the cover, “is my dad.”

The first picture was her father fresh out of high school — a young man, hair cropped short, face as bare as a baby’s ass. He wore a huge, proud, goofy grin.

“And this,” she pointed to the newborn baby in his arms, “is me.”

Ren leaned down to study the picture more closely before pulling back to glance at her again. “That was really you?” he asked. “You were so tiny. And wrinkly.”

She chuckled, eyes on the picture. “Yeah, that was me.”

Rendash tilted his head. “Ah, but there you are. Your eyes were just as beautiful then as they are now.”

Zoey looked up to find Ren staring at her. Her heart did a little flip, and she blushed. She’d received so few compliments since her father passed that she couldn’t accept them easily, but his conviction made it impossible to reject his words.

Though her eyes blurred with tears, Zoey smiled as she turned the pages, sharing each photo with Ren. Her as a baby; posing with her dad on her first day of kindergarten; her and her dad eating ice cream at the zoo; the two of them dressed as Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask in hand-made costumes on Halloween when she was nine. With each picture, she shared a little bit of herself with Ren, shared a little bit of her father. He hadn’t been a perfect man, and even as a child she’d understood they had struggled financially, but they’d beenhappy.

Her tears didn’t spill until she reached the final photograph.

She gently brushed her finger over the plastic sleeve holding the picture. “It was his birthday and he was stuck in the hospital, so my grandma helped me bring him balloons and a cake. One of the nurses took this picture for us because grandma couldn’t figure out how to use the camera.”

Little Zoey had climbed onto the bed behind him, smiling over his shoulder. Her father — emaciated and with a sickly pallor — had smiled just as wide, eyes sparkling with happiness despite his pain.

“This was last picture we took together. He, uh—” she hurriedly wiped the moisture from her cheeks to keep it from dripping on the page and sniffled. “He died a few days later.”

When she blinked away her tears, she realized Rendash was staring at her again.

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