Gravity of Us

The coolant leak hit me in the face like a pissed-off ice spider. I spat a mouthful of blue fluid onto the deck plating and kept my hands buried in the access panel. The *Lucky Break* was three days out from Port Maris and my hyperdrive motivator was singing a song that meant trouble. A song I knew by heart.

“You’re going to electrocute yourself.”

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t need to. I knew that voice better than my own heartbeat. “I’ve been shocked before. Builds character.”

Kael leaned against the bulkhead behind me. I could feel his presence like a second sun on my back. Warm. Familiar. Completely distracting. “It builds scars. There’s a difference.”

“Scars are just character you can see.” I twisted a coupling until it bit down hard. The coolant stopped spraying. Small victories.

He didn’t laugh. That was the thing about Kael. He never gave me the easy reactions. He stood there in his crisp Imperial-surplus jacket, arms crossed, watching me work like I was a puzzle he’d been trying to solve for ten years. Maybe he had been.

“We need to talk,” he said.

My stomach dropped. Those four words never led anywhere good. I pulled my head out of the panel and wiped my forehead with the back of my glove. The blue smear didn’t help. I probably looked like a half-drowned mechanic with a bad dye job.

“Talk about what? The fact that you’ve been staring at the same nav chart for three hours? Or the fact that you haven’t asked me a single question about where we’re going?”

His jaw tightened. That was a tell. Kael had perfect control over everything except the muscle in his left jaw. When it jumped, he was holding something back.

“The job,” he said. “I want to know what we’re actually running.”

I stood up. My knees cracked. Thirty-two years old and my body already sounded like a bag of loose bolts. “We’re running cargo. Clean cargo. Legal cargo. The boring kind that pays just enough to keep the fuel tanks full.”

“Cassa.”

The way he said my name. Soft. Like a hand on my shoulder. It cut through all my bullshit.

I turned to face him. He looked the same as he did the day I met him. Same steady gray eyes. Same mouth that could go from a hard line to a surprising softness in half a second. Same hands that had pulled me out of a burning cargo bay on Kessel and never let me forget I owed him.

“It’s a medical shipment,” I said. “Antibiotics. Vaccines. Bound for a colony on the Outer Rim that’s had a plague outbreak. The kind of place the Republic forgot existed.”

“And you’re not getting paid.”

I didn’t answer.

He uncrossed his arms. “You’re hauling free cargo across half the galaxy and you didn’t tell me.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“Three days into the trip.”

“Better late than never.”

He stepped closer. He smelled like recycled ship air and the cheap soap he always bought at port. It was the smell of home. The only home I’d ever known.

“You always do this,” he said. “You take the jobs that don’t pay. You help people who can’t help you back. And you pretend it’s because you’re just passing through, because you don’t care.”

“I don’t care.”

“You care so much it’s eating you alive.”

I wanted to look away. I didn’t. That was the rule. Never look away first. “What’s your point, Kael?”

“My point is that someone’s going to take advantage of that soft heart one day. And I won’t be there to pull you out.”

“You’re here now.”

“I’m always here.” He said it like it cost him something. Like admitting it was a wound he kept reopening.

I grabbed a rag from my pocket and wiped the coolant off my hands. The blue stain didn’t come off. It never did. “The colony’s called New Harran. Population four thousand. They’ve lost two hundred already. Children mostly. The meds we’re carrying could save the rest.”

“How long until we get there?”

“Fourteen hours if the motivator holds.”

He looked at the access panel. At the dripping coolant. At the faint smell of ozone that meant something was burning somewhere it shouldn’t be. “And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we drift and I fix it. Or we don’t drift and I fix it faster.”

He almost smiled. Almost. The corner of his mouth twitched and then flattened. “Same Cassa I met on Kessel.”

“I haven’t changed.”

“Neither have I.”

That was the problem. Ten years of running together. Ten years of close calls and narrow escapes and nights spent sharing a single bunk because the *Break* only had one. Ten years of pretending I didn’t notice the way his hand lingered when he passed me a cup of caf. Ten years of pretending he didn’t notice the way I held his gaze a second too long.

We were professionals. We were partners. We were two people who had built a fortress out of unspoken words and never once tried to knock it down.

I tossed the rag onto the tool bench. “I’m going to make caf. You want some?”

“I want you to be honest with me.”

“That’s not on the menu.”

He caught my wrist before I could walk past him. His fingers were warm. Calloused. They wrapped around my arm like they belonged there.

“I’m serious,” he said.

“So am I.” I didn’t pull away. “The caf is bad. The filter’s clogged. But it’s hot and it’s caffeinated and that’s all that matters.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

I knew what he meant. I’d known for years. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t understand. The problem was that understanding meant I had to do something about it. And doing something meant risking everything we had.

The *Lucky Break* hummed around us. The engines thrummed. The life support cycled. We were a tiny bubble of air and metal and heat in the endless cold of space. And in that bubble, there was only him and me and the thing we never talked about.

“Kael.”

“Cassa.”

“Let go of my wrist.”

“No.”

I could have pulled away. I could have twisted free. I’d gotten out of tighter holds than his. But I didn’t. I stood there. I let him hold me. I let myself feel the weight of his hand.

“If I let go,” he said, “you’re going to walk into that galley and make bad caf and pretend this conversation didn’t happen. You’re going to bury it under jokes and sarcasm and that smile you use when you don’t want anyone to see what’s underneath.”

“You know me pretty well.”

“I should. I’ve been watching you for ten years.”

“Creepy.”

He didn’t take the bait. His thumb traced a slow circle on the inside of my wrist. A casual gesture. Intimate. Like he’d done it a hundred times before. He hadn’t.

“I’m not going to push,” he said. “I’m not going to demand answers or force a conversation you’re not ready to have. But I need you to know something.”

“What?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The words hit me harder than they should have. Harder than any blaster bolt or debt collector or Imperial patrol. Because they were true. I could see it in his eyes. He meant every single one.

I swallowed. My throat was dry. “That’s a stupid thing to promise a smuggler. We don’t stay. That’s the whole point.”

“Then maybe it’s time you learned to stay.”

He let go of my wrist. Slowly. Like he was giving me time to change my mind. I didn’t.

I walked to the galley. I made the bad caf. I brought him a cup and sat across from him at the small table bolted to the deck. We drank in silence. The ship hummed. The stars streamed past the viewport.

And for the first time in ten years, I didn’t have a joke ready.

He looked at me over the rim of his cup. His eyes were steady. Patient. Like he could wait forever.

Maybe that was the scariest part.

Maybe he could.

The hyperdrive motivator coughed. The ship shuddered. A red light blinked on the console.

I set down my cup. “I should check that.”

“You should.”

I didn’t move. Neither did he.

The alarm kept blinking. The ship kept shaking. And I stayed exactly where I was, because for once in my life, I didn’t want to run.