The arms that had been comforting a moment ago now seemed too tight. Catherine looked within her for the same surrender that had let her give in to her grief, but it wasn’t there. How many hours had she spent dreaming of being with him again? Why was this so hard?
A face drifted in front of her thoughts. Tom. No, no, no, go away. You’re not welcome here.
David pulled back with the same worried look he’d just given her. “Too soon?”
“No. I mean— I missed you so much, it’s just—”
“I understand.” He let her go, but kissed her hand. “It’s been a long time. The NASA docs told us you’d still be recovering physically, too.”
“I’m so sorry.” Anxiety sat in the hollow of her throat. She was screwing this up. One of the most important parts of coming home, and she couldn’t get it right.
“Do you want me to sleep in the guest room?” David offered gently.
“No! No, I don’t want that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Cath—” He halted, and now he was the one fidgeting. “We should talk about Maggie—”
“No… we don’t have to, not tonight.” Please not tonight. Catherine wasn’t sure she was ready for this.
“I need to.” David’s gray eyes were pained as they sought hers out, and he took her hands in his. “Cath… I’m sorry. Maggie and me, we didn’t plan for anything—”
“Stop; you don’t have to apologize. You thought I was dead.” But again, once the door was open, thoughts rushed out. “I know the two of you have been friends for a long time. Longer than you’ve known me, even. She was always there for both of us. When you thought I’d died… I get it. She’s a great person. Aimee clearly thinks the world of her. I know you love her. I—”
“Cath—”
“No, let me finish.” Catherine took a deep breath and pushed on. She needed to give David this chance. “You moved on. You should have moved on; that was the right thing to do. I want you to know… I get it. You spent years rebuilding your life, and I never wanted to come back and upend it. If— If you want me to step out of the way… I mean, you’re not obligated—”
“Cath, stop.” David reached up and gently put his fingers on her lips. “What Maggie and I had, yeah, I cared about her. She was there for me and Aimee in ways I still can’t describe.”
“Then why—”
“I am obligated. I didn’t stand up with her in front of my family and hers and make a bunch of promises. Catherine, I love you. You’re my wife. You’re alive, and that’s a miracle I don’t fully understand yet. But I’ll take it.” David held her gaze with his, then leaned in and carefully kissed her. A quiet warmth grew in her chest—not desire, not yet, but it could easily turn into that. “I never stopped loving you, not for a second. When they told me you were dead, Aimee was all that kept me going. But between the grief and the publicity, I wouldn’t have been able to keep it together without Maggie’s help. But now I have you back, and…” He trailed off and pulled her into a hug. “We can fix this. We are fixing it.” He pulled back suddenly, searching her face. “If you want to, that is. I’m not the only one who went through a lot; if you—”
“No, I do. I want to be with you.” And she did.
Are you going to tell him? Ava asked.
But it would only hurt him, and Catherine didn’t want to hurt him just for the sake of unburdening her conscience. “I love you.”
“We can fix this,” David repeated, his smile turning soft. He reached up and touched her cheek, and now she did feel that initial spark of desire, finally, after so long.
That feeling of ease faded as they started undressing, kissing as they peeled away each other’s clothing. David must have sensed it. He paused and drew back. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” It was a lot of sensory input at once, most of it so unfamiliar it might as well have been the first time. Catherine took a breath, half expecting the strange feelings of wrongness and disgust from earlier to reemerge. Thank God they didn’t. She tried to smile, watching the heat in David’s eyes and letting it fill her. “I just needed a minute.”
“We’ve got all night.”
Catherine had another uncertain moment when David laid her down on the bed, a moment of unreality that overtook her, as if she were just an observer and not a participant. David’s hands moving over her skin brought her back, helping her focus in the here and now.
This was where she wanted to be. This was where she belonged. Home. The word repeated in her mind and heart as they moved together, David’s breathing warm and humid in her ear as he murmured endearments. The word swelled in her with each moment that passed until they were both crying out with the strength of it.
After, she lay in his arms and listened to his heartbeat as he pressed kisses against her hair. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.” She looked up at him and smiled. There was a flicker of guilt that tried to insinuate itself into her thoughts but she pushed it away.
As exhausted as she was, she lay awake afterward for a long time, acutely aware of every movement David made. He was right; it had been a long time since she’d been intimate with anyone. It just hadn’t been as long as he thought.
Sagittarius I Mission
DAY 859
SOMEWHERE IN ERB PRIME
“No, I’m just saying that initially NASA was determined to only send committed couples on these long missions together.” Tom leaned against the tiny galley counter, unsteady on his feet while Catherine tried to wrestle open another bottle of wine. It was New Year’s Eve on Earth, and the crew was celebrating, here in the middle of nowhere.
There wasn’t a huge store of alcohol on board, but there was enough for a few decent parties during the mission, at the commander’s discretion, of course.
Plus, as Izzy said, monitoring how alcohol affected their behavior, both in the wormhole and planetside, could prove scientifically interesting. And since the whole point of this mission was to maybe find somewhere for humanity to settle, they’d have to spend some time living as normally as possible to gather the information.
“Yeah, but committed couples never would have worked,” Catherine countered, scowling at the recalcitrant wine bottle. “They’d never find a couple who could both pass the training, for one thing.” And she should know. David had been as likely a candidate as anyone, but there he was, sitting at home while she was out here, over two years of travel away.
“See, then the answer is clear,” Tom said, swaying around to point at her. “They gotta encourage matchmaking during the training, between the candidates who don’t wash out.” He grinned. “Come on, how much easier would this trip be if you had a partner with you?”
Catherine snorted, uncorking the bottle. “For me? It wouldn’t. It would be easier for you, and for Izzy, and Richie… but for me and Ava and Claire? Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Proven fact, in heterosexual relationships, a man’s happiness improves, a woman’s happiness stays the same or declines. I’d just have somebody else to look after.”
“Cynical.”
“Married,” she shot back.
“Look, just because your marriage isn’t great doesn’t mean that all men are like that.”
Catherine paused midway through filling her plastic wineglass. “Hang on, I didn’t say my marriage wasn’t great.”
Maybe it wasn’t perfect, and admittedly, there was a sense of freedom in being away from David, as much as she loved him. Sometimes she wished he were here—and he might have been, if the washout rate among prospective astronauts weren’t so high. They’d met in the training program but after they got married, David washed out. At first, he insisted he was happy for her, happy that at least one of them was going into space. As time went on, though, she got glimpses of his resentment. She started censoring herself, trying to protect his feelings. It was nice, not having to be concerned about anyone’s emotional well-being but her own on a day-to-day basis.