“Shit,” Aidan said. When he returned, he was fully dressed and might even have attempted to brush his hair.
The doorbell rang. Caleb went to the intercom. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s Anna. I would have just jumped in, but I wasn’t sure you were ready for visitors. Can I come up?”
“Look at that,” Aidan said, staring at Laila. “Manners.”
She gave him an unrepentant shrug and continued drinking her coffee.
When Anna came up, she was carrying a fern in a blue ceramic planter, and she wasn’t alone. Deb was with her, a cardboard pastry box in her hand.
“You still owe me coffee,” she said, when he blinked at her in surprise. Once he’d finally braved his phone, he’d texted her an apology and their new address, but hadn’t expected a visit so soon. “Also, a long explanation. But congrats.”
She huffed indignantly and pulled him into a one-armed hug.
“It’s good to see you, Deb.”
“I’m glad you’re still alive after that stunt you pulled,” Deb retorted. She set the box on the kitchen counter and hugged Aidan. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this. You’re just as much at fault.”
“Oh, definitely more,” Aidan said.
“As usual,” Deb said. She pointed at the box of pastries. “That’s a housewarming gift, because I’m a better sibling than either of you.” She kissed Aidan on the cheek. “Congratulations. You’d better visit me now that we live in the same city, or I will show you just how good I’ve gotten at throwing punches.”
“Deb,” Aidan said, catching her by the hand before she let go of him. “I should apologize to you. I stopped Caleb from having coffee with you a couple weeks ago for the same reason I haven’t been in touch these past few years. I was… hiding, more or less. I was worried about endangering people by association. Nothing has really changed on that count—I can’t promise I’m not putting you in danger—but I realized I was only hurting myself and the people I cared about.”
“Wow,” Deb said. “I wasn’t expecting to get sincere before noon. Apology accepted. You know I’d rather have you in my life than not.” She turned to Caleb. “What’s your excuse?”
“Uh,” he said, cringing. “I went to space to rescue Aidan, then got a little busy?”
“Uh-huh,” Deb said. “I heard all about that from the psychic. You’re forgiven, I guess. But why move back to the old neighborhood? Everyone will know where you are.”
“That’s the idea,” Aidan said.
“And I’m hoping fewer reporters will bother you, if we’re out in the open,” Caleb said.
“You could also try not causing any more huge scandals,” Deb suggested, then laughed when they both fell silent. “Oh, I see.”
“We’re trying something different,” Caleb said. “The Union’s been really secretive since its founding, but we thought we’d try having a public face. Maybe it’ll make it easier for young runners to find us when they need to.”
“We?” Deb asked.
“Oh, that was figurative, I’m not—”
“Yeah, he is,” Aidan interrupted. “Caleb’s been with us since the beginning. He helped me recruit our first members. And he was a runner for weeks, so I figure he’s in.”
“That’s great news,” Anna said. “I hope you were serious about making it easier for people to find you, because there are a few more of us coming over.”
“There are?” Caleb said. “But we don’t really have any… furniture. Or food. Or anything.”
Anna waved a hand. “I think we’ve got it covered.”
The Runners’ Union showed up in groups of two and three, sometimes carrying a couch or a table, sometimes loaded down with groceries, and soon their apartment was full to the brim with furnishings and food and people.
They did a couple of rounds of hellos and thank-yous at the party, and then Laila found them in the kitchen by the coffee pot, taking a break.
“Thanks for this,” Aidan said, gesturing at the building. “Caleb told me you did all the work.”
She shrugged. “I live here, too, now. Good luck getting rid of me.”
“Can’t imagine why we’d want to,” Caleb said. “You were brilliant. We like having you around. Let us be grateful.”
“I owe you,” Laila said, glancing from Caleb to Aidan, then down at her bare feet. She set her coffee on the counter and then clamped her arms around Aidan.
“I didn’t think we could do it,” she said into his chest. “I thought it was gonna blow up in our faces the whole time, and there was a long period there where I was just waiting to break it to you as gently as possible. I thought I was gonna have to live the rest of my life with him looming over me, and now I don’t, and that’s thanks to you. I know it didn’t go the way you planned, and it was pretty awful at the end there, but I’m not sorry about any of it. You always believed and you were right. You did it.”
He hugged her back. “Not me, us. Nobody works alone. Everything we do around here is a team effort.”
“You are so fucking corny all the time,” she said, punctuating it with a laugh that was more like a sob. Her voice sank to a reverent whisper. “We lived, Aidan.”
“Yeah,” he said. Aidan looked like he was on the verge of tears. “We did.”
“There hasn’t been very much justice in my life.”
“Mine either,” he said.
She exhaled gustily and then pulled Caleb into the hug. She was soft and smelled like coconut, and she was definitely smearing tears on his shirt. “I’m not supposed to be crying. It’s a party.”
“You don’t have any makeup to mess up, at least,” he offered, and she laughed.
“What’ll be like, do you think? Living here where anybody can look us up?” she asked.
Aidan shrugged. “I don’t know. More good than bad, I think. That’s what I’m hoping. Right now, it feels that way.”
“I’m inclined to believe you,” Laila said. She let go of them and dabbed at her eyes. “Okay, I’m going back out there. See you later.”
“I think you’re right, too,” Caleb said, leaning up against the counter and sidling close enough to kiss Aidan. “About this being more good than bad.”
“I couldn’t have envisioned this without you,” Aidan said. “That stuff Laila just said about not really believing something was possible until she saw it, I feel that way about all of this. It’s amazing. It was only a few weeks ago that I thought I’d be living anonymously in some remote outpost by now. Alone. I’m so, so glad I was wrong about that. I love you.”
“I love you, and I’m glad you were wrong about that, too. Wanna go back out there?”
“Yeah,” Aidan said, and took his hand and led him into the living room. It was crowded and joyful and loud. Not one person was wearing a mask.
The series will continue with a third book.
* * *
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Acknowledgments
This book was a hard one, partly because this year was a hard one. Here are some people who helped me through.
First, thank you to everyone on the internet and in real life who told me nice things about the first book in this series, or said they were excited for this one. It meant—and still means—a lot to me.
Thank you to Natasha Snow for her beautiful cover design and for always being such a joy to work with.
Thank you to K. R. Collins, who read multiple early drafts of this book and was unflagging in her encouragements. Thank you to my writing buddies Valentine Wheeler and verity, both of whom listened to their fair share of my despair on the topic of this book.
Thank you to Wren Wallis, lawyer and writer and friend, who was willing to answer my ridiculous questions about future laws concerning kidnapping someone into space and confessing to a crime on a live broadcast. Any legal nonsense in this book is my fault, not hers.
Thank you to Olivia Dade, who lives across the ocean but who wrote alon
gside me and kept me accountable through Twitter DMs for the final few days of editing this book.
Thank you to Elia Winters, who spent many hours sitting across a café table from me, drinking a London Fog and writing a novel, thus inspiring me to write some words of my own. Our conversations about what we’re writing have scandalized or titillated every coffeeshop patron and employee in the area, which makes me feel like a notorious, dissolute rake in a Regency romance—the dream.
Thank you to Ryan Boyd, who edited this book when it was a total mess, whose insights were crucial to making it less of a mess, and who was patient and kind and funny the whole time. They were right about everything, which is a priceless quality in an editor, and I am grateful for their work and their friendship.
And, as always, thank you to J, whose wish to remain mysterious and elusive I am contradicting by acknowledging him, but it would be a crime not to record here how much I love him. He listens to a lot of meandering soliloquy for every book I write, and this one was especially torturous. He also answers questions on everything I don’t know, which is a vast and varied field. If anything in this book struck you as a cool sci-fi concept, credit goes to my beloved science consultant and would-be cryptid, J. He taught me everything I know about physics (still not much, but that’s on me) and everything I know about love (a lot).
Also by Felicia Davin
The Nowhere
Edge of Nowhere
Out of Nowhere
The Gardener’s Hand
Thornfruit
Nightvine
Shadebloom
About the Author
Felicia Davin is the author of the queer fantasy trilogy The Gardener’s Hand and the sci-fi romance Edge of Nowhere, which was a finalist for Best Bisexual Romance in the 2018 Bisexual Book Awards. Her short fiction has been featured in Lightspeed, Nature, and Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction.
She lives in Massachusetts with her partner and their cat. When not writing and reading fiction, she teaches and translates French. She loves linguistics, singing, and baking. She is bisexual, but not ambidextrous.
She writes a weekly email newsletter about words and books called Word Suitcase (wordsuitcase.substack.com). You can also find her on Twitter @FeliciaDavin or at feliciadavin.com.
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