Page 53 of Mongrels United
Nash kissed her. Lightly. “Breakfast. That’s the second time your belly has grumbled.”
She hadn’t noticed, but Nash had. Grady smiled at him. “I’m going to go to Kailash’s game tonight. Come with me.”
And shefelthis caution drop over him.
Nash looked down at the sheet beneath them. Brushed at it. “That’s…not a good idea.”
Disappointment touched her so strongly, she felt suddenly cold. “You don’t want to be seen with me.”
His head came up. His eyes filled with fire. “You shouldn’t be seen withme!Stars, Grady, you already feel like you’re not doing your job. How bad do you think it will be if you’re seen in my company…and actuallyenjoyingmy company?”
Grady pressed her lips together, to hold her reaction in. To keep her face neutral.
Nash swore and picked up her hand. “Don’tlooklike that!” His voice was a growl. “Don’t look at me with those big eyes. You know I’m making sense. You’re too smart not to.” He paused, drawing in a big breath that made his chest rise. “I kissed you last night…I let myself kiss you, because I…because I’m going to change, Grady. Because the last few days have handed out lessons that mean I can’t go back to what I was. But the rest of the ship can still only see the old me and it will take a while to change their minds.”
Grady held herself very still. He saw far too much in her face if she did anything else but freeze. “Okay,” she said, her voice utterly without inflection.
Nash swore again. “No, you still don’t get it. Look at it like you do as Chief of Staff. Changing people’s minds is like trying to turn the ship. They wanted to do that, dozens of years ago.”
“That’s when most of the let’s-stop people shut up and went away,” Grady said. “When they found out it would take a decade or more to change directions.”
Nash nodded. “It takes incontrovertible proof to change people’s minds. And until I’ve proved that I’ve changed, you can’t be seen with me.”
Grady grimaced. “I hate that you’re right. I hate that I have to agree with you. I was thinking with…something other than my brain when I asked.”
Nash slid his thumb over her cheek, making her skin ripple at his touch. “You actually think well of me…” he breathed.
“Well, yes…”
But her puzzlement didn’t last, for Nash drew her to him and she forgot that she was hungry, or that she needed to go to work, or that people might be dying at this moment, their brains broken down by Bellish.
For those few moments, life was astonishingly carefree and happy.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The shoe dropped twenty-four hours later.
Grady spent a busy day bringing the captain up to date on open projects and other matters, planning his next few days and ironing out his calendar hiccups. The pace in the office always picked up speed when Siran was in his office, as everyone rallied to provide the captain the support he needed, and prepared for upcoming events.
That night she attended the tankball game in person, which thrilled Kailash and his team. Grady sat in the normal seats, even though she was entitled to use the Captain’s box, if she wanted to.
The Grey Team lost to the Planets, the Esquilino team. The Grey Team managed to keep the other team from scoring until the last period, and they only lost 1-0. Grady loved watching the game, and found it just as interesting to watch the people who were watching the game with her.
She wasn’t sure, but she thought there might be even more people in the seats than there had been in the last game.
And she tried very hard to not mind that Nash wasn’t with her. It was still a new thing, she told herself.
Neither of them had pretended it was a single night and over. They hadn’t even discussed it. She had just known. And everything Nash had said implied he’d made the same assumption.
But it was new and delicate, and this was the time to proceed cautiously. She really didn’t know Nash all that well and she could still be utterly wrong about him. But she felt safe in his arms, and that counted for a lot…or it once had. She couldn’t trust her instincts anymore.
Grady stayed up far too late, sitting at the open area tables in the closed up Esquilino markets, drinking cheap coffee with the Grey Team. They were actually celebrating their loss, and didn’t need alcohol to feel the natural high that came with their growing confidence in their abilities as a team.
The planning, the discussions about tactics and strategies and training plans…most of it was three steps beyond Grady’s basic understanding of the game, but she loved listening to their enthusiasm and their happy banter back and forth.
This was what team sports should be like, she decided. All the high-powered financial interests that based every decision upon revenue should be jettisoned. The teams should just play the game and enjoy it.
But for something like that to happen to tankball would require the same effort that turning the ship would take. Neither would ever happen.
