Page 61 of Delivered and Devoured

She is asleep on my chest, and I have forever to learn her middle name.

“Jazil.”

“Mm.”

“I’m happy. Not just tonight. Not just the oil colonization.” She laughs softly. “All of it. The route. The copilot’s seat. HORATIO’s symphonies. I am the happiest I have ever been.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

Simple. Like coordinates. Like a heading. Like something true.

“Captain,” HORATIO. A whisper. From the remote terminal. “The female human is asleep. I will withdraw. May I recommend the wine reserve for the morning?”

He means coffee. The wine reserve has been coffee for nine years. HORATIO calls it the wine reserve because he believes the phrase has gravitas. Lorri figured it out in week two. She plays along. The wine reserve is coffee, and the coffee is excellent and the game is love.

“Thank you, HORATIO.”

“Captain. I am being good.”

“You’re being good.”

“Please note.”

“Noted.”

The lights dim. Nobody asked. HORATIO has been dimming the lights without being asked for three months and the dimming is love in the only language an AI knows how to speak.

I press my mouth to her hair. The scent of us. Tea and mineral-clean and the warm-sweet base note that only exists where we overlap.

“Stay,” I say. The word. Every night. The word I said on a deck plate when she was sleeping on my shoulder and I didn’t know she heard.

She is asleep. Her hand on my ridge.

She always hears.

Always.

Home is wherever she is.

We are home.

Okay. Breathe.

If you just finished that last chapter and you're not entirely okay — good. That was the whole idea, and I'm not even a little bit sorry.

Here's the thing: Junction One is so much bigger than one locked cargo bay. There's a whole station out there. A recovery agency built by people the galaxy gave up on, six couples who bond hard and fall harder, and an AI in every single story who isfartoo invested in whose bed its operative ends up in.

I'd love to keep telling you about them.