Page 31 of Fallen from the Stars

She’d had a few hookups over the many years she’d been off-planet, but none of them stood out in her mind. She could barely remember their faces, much less their names. None of them had bothered to get to know her. They hadn’t cared. For a long time, she’d told herself she hadn’t cared, either. She’d been just as guilty of using others to scratch an itch and move on, but those couplings had left her feeling unsettled. Naked. Vulnerable.

At least those feelings had been predictable. With Vasil…couldshe really get it over with? She feared there was no quick solution — he didn’t want to merely satisfy a craving. And she had no idea how that would make her feel.

Theo looked away from Vasil and brought the cup to her lips, drinking slowly to stall; she wasn’t sure how to begin.

“There’s really not too much to tell,” she said, lowering the cup and idly running her finger up and down its side. “I wasn’t wanted, and I’m sure my mother tried everything short of killing herself to get rid of me after finding out she was pregnant. Guess I was as stubborn then as I am now, because I refused to go anywhere.”

Vasil’s skin darkened a few shades. He clenched his jaw, and the cords on his neck stood out. He shook his head a moment later, clearing away some of his visible tension, but when he spoke his nostrils flared, and his brows fell low. “Why would anyone try to…toget ridof a youngling?”

Theo shrugged. “Too much responsibility, another mouth to feed, the inability to feel anything toward another human being but resentment — take your pick. I’m sure there are a million other reasons.”

He raised his hands and spread his fingers as though something would form in the air between his palms only to curl them into fists a few moments later. “Nothing you said is an adequate reason. Younglings are precious things. The most important things.”

She snorted and set down her empty cup. “I don’t know how things are here, but that’s not the case in the rest of the universe.”

Theo glared at the fire and tossed a handful of sand toward it. The flames sputtered, hissed, and flickered. “The only reason she kept me alive as a baby was so she could collect more funding from the system and keep herself high on relinquiem. Otherwise, she would’ve thrown me in the garbage.”

“Is everything all right, Theo?”Kane asked in her mind. “Your vitals roused me—”

I’m fine.

She inhaled deeply, shoving away her surge of anger. No matter how many years went by, she always felt that same impotent rage whenever she thought of the woman who’d birthed her.

“What of your sire?” Vasil asked in a low, tight voice.

“Who knows? Knocked my mom up and bailed.” She tilted her head and swept her hair in front of one shoulder, fiddling with the strands. “He was probably a junkie just like her, but I hate notknowing. Because he could’ve been a decent guy. A decent dad. He could’ve been the one to take me away and save me from all that shit.”

The remaining tension faded from Vasil’s face, leaving behind a deep, troubled frown.

“You know what’s funny?” Theo asked, but didn’t wait for Vasil to respond. “My name wasn’t even Theodora. She never really gave me a name. I was alwaysbrat, oryou little shit, oryou fucking kid. Once in a while, usually right after she took a hit, I was justgirl. That was the best I had to hope for. I didn’t think things could get worse, not that I knew any different back then. But then she died of an overdose when I was around eight, and I got thrown into the system.”

She didn’t realize how tightly she’d been pulling on her hair until she felt a sharp pain on her scalp; she forced her fingers to relax.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said quietly. For almost twenty years, she’d tried to keep those memories at bay, but they constantly reached out to grasp at her with icy claws and drag her into the darkness. To remind her that she was frightened and alone, that she always would be.

No, not alone. There was someone else in those memories, someone with putrid breath and sweaty palms…

Vasil’s hand, its skin soft over firm muscle, settled lightly on her forearm. “You do not have to, Theodora.”

“Don’t touch me,” she snapped, flinching away from him. The pounding of her heart sent bursts of pain through her chest, and, for a terrifying moment, she couldn’t catch her breath. “Just…don’t touch me right now, okay?”

Without another word, she pushed herself to her feet and fled. She hauled herself into the pod, crumpling to the floor the instant her feet touched down. It felt like a vise was closing over her ribs. Her constricted throat limited the air she could take in, making her breaths short and ragged. The walls of the pod spun around her, teetering wildly, and she knew they’d crush her any second.

“Theodora, I need you to breathe.”Kane’s voice was commanding, projected directly into her mind. “Don’t think about anything else. Please, just take some slow, even breaths.”

Pressing her forehead against the cool floor, Theo closed her eyes. She focused on Kane’s voice and the movement of air in and out of her lungs, pushing through the tightness in her throat.

“Good. One at a time, slow and deep. You’rehere, Theo. And as long as you have me, here is always the best place to be, right?”

Theo released a raspy laugh even as tears gathered behind her eyelids. “Yeah. It is.”

Drawing in deep, burning lungfuls of air, Theo blindly crawled to her toolbox and curled around it. She rested her cheek on its lid and brushed her fingertips over the etched letters there. “I miss him, Kane. I miss him so damn much.”

“You carry him with you everywhere you go, Theo. Not in that toolbox, but in yourself. You didn’t become the person you are because of the woman who gave birth to you. It was Malcolm’s guidance andyourdetermination to be better than what you were shown as a kid.”

“I know,” she said, releasing a shaky sigh. She hated that her past still affected her like this, that itstillhad control over her. It didn’t hit her like this often, but…

She’d lowered the walls around her heart for a few moments to give Vasil a glimpse of her true self, of the Theo she never let anyone else see. That had been more than enough time for her memories to take advantage of her brief vulnerability.

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