“For what?”
“For being here.” I lean up to kiss his cheek, but he turns, and our lips brush.
For a moment, I give in and lean against him. Heat sears from his touch, and he pulls me close, drawing me in, and I start to part my lips when I recall that guards are heading this way.
I pull back and clear my throat. “We, ah, need to handle this now. If whatever happened—”
“You don’t think it’s Paul, do you?” Rix asks.
“No. This place is where I bunkered down after he screwed me. He would have no idea I’m here. I’m just worried that whoever stole it isn’t going to realize what it is and will sell everything for parts. If that’s the case, that’s years of research all gone. If I can’t copy over all of that data… I should’ve done that before, but I didn’t have another motherboard—”
“Ava, it’s all right,” Rix murmurs.
“Nothing will be all right until I have it back.”
We head back to my place, and I look everywhere. There are no signs of another person being here, no footprints, nothing. The wagon's gone too, but there are no tracks that I can tell that haven't been from me. That's a dead end.
My hands grip my hair. I’m ready to yank out the strands, but I force myself to take several deep breaths. I can handle this. I can, and I will. First, I just need to think.
I glance all around, and my gaze falls on an old camera. It’s a security cam, but I haven’t been able to access the footage in years. I don’t even know if it’s still recording anything or not.
“Rix, do you think we can head to your ship?” I ask.
“You want to finish the tour?” he jokes.
“Not now. Maybe later,” I say distractedly as I detach the camera from up in its perch in the tree. “I need to see if I can access this footage.”
“That’s electrical, not plasma,” he says.
“Yes, but if you have a convertor—”
“I don’t.”
“I do.”
“You do?” he asks, surprised. “Of course you do. Why wouldn’t you?”
I grin. “I have a decent haul of your tech actually. I’ve been to a lot of sites of down ships, and I stripped a lot for parts. If you’re an explorer, I’m a scavenger.”
“I think I wouldn’t mind if you scavenge my body.”
“That just sounds wrong,” I inform him, and we both laugh. It’s nice to be able to joke, and for a moment, I’m happy.
It only lasts a moment, though, and by the time we reach his ship, I’m exhausted. My body hates all of this walking, and the amount of stress I’m under is immense. My head is splitting, and my lower back aches. I just want to collapse onto a bed, maybe have Rix massage me, and sleep. No sex. Not yet. We’ll get there. I know we will, and that does frighten me a bit, but I think I can handle it. I know I can. I’m willing to at least, but only after we recover my levitation device.
Rix gets to work hooking up the convertor, and it takes a lot of tinkering and curses and sparks and almost setting a fire, but there's footage. Somehow, there's footage, and I rewind until reach the point of the footage where I spy movement.
“I love past me,” I mumble.
“Why’s that?” Rix asks.
“Because I forgot that I backed up all of the data on the camera to the cloud. I hacked into the server. I wasn’t sure if there would be footage on this thing, if it would be full. If I hadn’t used the digital space, it would’ve been backed up, but I was smart. So very smart.”
“You forgot humble.”
“That too.” I grimace and have a bit more trial and error to get the footage to come in clearer. To my surprise, the person seems a bit smaller than I would’ve thought. Curvier. A woman.
“Wait. Rewind,” Rix instructs.
I do that, and he shifts to stand in front of the screen we’re viewing the footage on. He mumbles a curse, zooms in on the woman’s face, and curses again.
“Do you know who she is?” I ask, crossing my arms. “Because I sure don’t.”
"I'm pretty sure she hit on me before," Rix says. He rubs his chin. "One of my friends knew her by name. They might be back from their assignment. Do you mind if I go and fetch one of them so they can give us her name? I think it might be similar to my mom's name. Rachel. It began with an 'R' I'm pretty sure."
“Rory? Reagan? Um… Rebecca—”
“Rebecca. That might be it, but they’ll know her last name, maybe where she lives too.”
Rix starts to leave, pauses, comes right back to me, kisses me full on the lips, and then leaves. My fingers brush against my lips, and I sigh. His excitement has me excited, but I’m also furious. Who the hell is this chick? Why did she steal my device? It couldn’t have been because of jealous, could it? Did she follow him here one time? Does he have a stalker?
Even if this mystery chick isn't a stalker, it's not that inconceivable for Rix to have one in the future, given how women flock to him. Can I handle that if we do have a long-term relationship? I'm not a people person, and to have women constantly vying for my man doesn't seem appealing at all. Not one little bit.
But first things first. Device and then dessert. I mean, device and then dating.
Rix returns with Simon, and I grimace.
“You’re friends with him?” I ask.
“Nice to meet you too,” Simon jokes.
I scowl. “As if we don’t already know each other.”
“You two do?” Rix asks, confused.
“Yeah, we talked to you about her, remember?”
“My friends are how I learned your name,” Rix says.
“It’s not hard to know me. Just ask about the purple-haired woman.” I glare at Simon.
“Why do I get the feeling that something not too
