Page 203 of Star Bringer
I search her face, wondering what has her in such a state. And I’m absolutely astonished to realize she has tears trembling on her eyelashes. In all the days I’ve known Beckett—and in all the situations—I’ve never seen her cry before.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, my own problems forgotten.
She shakes her head, and I know what she’s going to say even before she says it. “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” I say. And while part of me wants to yell at her until she’s honest with me, I’ve never yelled at anyone in my life. I don’t have a clue how to even go about doing it.
“I’m fine,” she says, shrugging off my concern yet again. “You should go back to bed.”
I try not to let it hurt me, this incessant need she has to push me away. But it’s getting a little harder with every day that passes.
Still, I have to try. I can’t just leave her like this, suffering. It’s not in my nature. More, it’s not who I want to be. Not because of the high-priestess thing, but because of me. Rain. The last thing I ever want to do is deliberately turn my back on someone who’s hurting.
Especially not Beckett.
So I put my arm around her waist, bolstered by the fact that she only fights me a little as I guide her away from the comms link and out the bridge door.
I’d like to take her to our bedroom—she has a much harder time lying to me the fewer clothes I’m wearing—but Kali is sleeping there at the moment. So I take her to our storage room, and after getting her situated on the cot we put up inside there, I start to gently, gently massage her head with my fingertips.
“What are you doing?” she asks hoarsely.
“Loving you,” I answer as honestly as I can. “The only way you’ll let me.”
“Rain—”
“Hush,” I tell her, deepening the massage just a little. I’m careful to avoid the scars on her head—I know them as well as I know my own body these days—but I dig a little deeper into the muscles at the top of her head, over her temples, and along the back of her neck on either side of the scar along her spine.
Beckett holds herself rigid for most of it, but as I hit the muscles at the base of her skull, her whole body arches off the cot. “Did I hurt you?” I gasp, immediately lightening up on the pressure.
She shakes her head, and her voice is hoarse when she says, “Please. Do that again.”
I can no more turn that down than I could cut off my own hand. So I carefully dig deeper, running my fingers in steady, deliberate circles over the back of her head and up the sides.
By the time I get to the crown of her head, her entire body seems to have collapsed in on itself, but in a good way. So I keep going until she finally asks me to stop.
“Thank you,” she whispers, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me down until I’m sitting in her lap.
“You don’t have to thank me for that,” I whisper. “I hate that you’re in pain. And I hate even more that you so rarely let me help you with it.”
“I don’t want—” She breaks off.
She tries to look away, but I slide a finger under her chin and gently turn her face toward mine so that I can search those gorgeous eyes of hers. Tonight, they look like molten gold—hot, endless, dangerous—and I have to fight from falling into them.
Falling into her.
“What don’t you want?” I ask in a tone that tells her I’m not going to move on from this until she talks to me, no matter how much she wishes I would.
“I don’t want you to see me as less,” she finally answers.
I nearly laugh out loud. “Less?” I ask incredulously. “Beckett, how can you not see that you’re everything? That there’s nothing about you that’s anything but incredible?”
She shakes her head, and her glorious black curls bounce over her forehead and her shoulders. “I’m messed up, Rain. You know I’m messed up.”
“We’re all messed up,” I shoot back at her. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“You’re not.” Her arms are around my waist now, holding me in place, and her fingers are tracing little patterns on my back that send shivers up my spine—even through the jumpsuit.
This time, I do laugh, because that’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. “I’m the most messed up of everyone here!” I tell her.
