Read Losing Mars (Saving Mars Series-3) Online
Authors: Cidney Swanson
Losing Mars (Saving Mars Series-3) (32 page)
“Porto Moniz,” Jess replied. “Cameron told me to stop there.”
“You game?” asked Pavel, white teeth flashing in the dark of the cockpit.
“Sure,” said Jessamyn. She brought the craft down in a large parking lot. It was, as Cameron had promised, empty.
“Place is awfully quiet,” said Pavel as he swung out the hatch and jumped outside. “On such a nice night, too.” Hands on his hips, he gazed about and then held out a hand to Jessamyn.
She looked at his hand and took it firmly in her own, releasing it once she’d hopped from the craft.
The two walked side by side toward the sea.
“It looks so violent,” she said as waves collided above the hollows of exposed volcanic rock.
“The ocean?” asked Pavel. “We don’t have to go in.”
But as they neared the pools, they were able to determine that while some of the volcanic hollows took the brunt of the ocean’s attack, others remained calm.
Their hands brushing together, the two descended sets of stairs to a series of pools outlined in the dark rock that had once been molten lava. Ocean waves crashed violently beside the pools, sending white spray into the dark of night. It seemed to Jessamyn yet another and different ocean from the one she had known aboard the escape pod. She shivered.
“A bit of a change from the desert,” murmured Pavel, shifting closer to Jessamyn.
Where his frame sheltered hers, she felt a whisper of warmth.
He shifted until his head faced hers. “I’m so sorry for what I did back in Yucca. For destroying your ship.” He paused and turned his eyes away from hers. “I know words aren’t enough. What I did was unforgivable.”
Jessamyn felt a tingle run along her spine. One part of her wanted to reply that it was okay. But was it? She was alive. She was safe. She was with Pavel. Was that
okay
? Perhaps. But if Pavel hadn’t shot out the hover boosters, they might have been laying plans to leave for Mars within the year.
Swallowing against the sorrow constricting her throat, Jess turned away from Pavel. It was his fault. She wanted it to be his fault. Once again, she was homeless and without a craft to steer through the stars. She needed it to be someone else’s fault and not her own.
But she knew better.
And you can admit it
, she told herself.
“It’s not your fault,” she found herself saying. “I ought to have trusted you.”
Tears squeezed through her tight-shut eyes. She took one of his hands in one of hers and held tight.
“I owe you an apology,” said Jessamyn, when she was able to speak. “For not trusting you when you saw through your aunt’s spy.”
Pavel stared off into the distant horizon. “I guess he’s probably dead, the real Renard.”
Jessamyn nodded. “That’s what I figured.”
“I’m glad he didn’t see the destruction of Yucca. He loved that place like I can’t begin to imagine loving any place.” He shook his head in sorrow.
Jessamyn swallowed back the ache of another loss, and the two stood quietly again.
At last, Jess spoke, acknowledging the wild beauty before them. “This is amazing,” she said.
“I’ve never seen pools that looked anything like this before,” Pavel said, pulling his shirt over his head.
“Really?” asked Jessamyn. “I’d have thought …” She turned to face him and saw the moonlight striking his face and chest. Whatever she’d been about to say disappeared. Marsians did not often see one another without thick layers of clothing, and the sight of Pavel’s bare chest took words from her entirely. He was so …
beautiful
.
His own gaze still fixed on the water, Pavel slipped a hand into hers.
A breeze blew past, cool with night air and the tang of the ocean. Pavel’s hand against hers felt warm, comforting. Jessamyn wondered what his chest would feel like, if she placed her palm over his beating heart. The thought brought a flush of warmth to her face, and she warned herself sternly:
you’re too impulsive, Jaarda—show some restraint.
But then she glanced back at Pavel, shirtless and vulnerable, and suddenly, she wasn’t thinking about restraint any more.
“I came back for you,” she whispered. “To Earth, I mean.” The words tumbled out. “It was wrong, and I knew it, and I did it anyway.”
A confession. An admission.
She couldn’t meet his gaze, but she felt his grip tighten upon her hand. She continued.
“I tried to make it about Mars Colonial, about setting things straight for Mei Lo, and it’s true I wanted to do something for my home world, but mostly I came back because I wanted to see you again. It was selfish and wrong-headed.” She paused to take a shallow breath.
“Jess,” whispered Pavel.
She placed two fingers on his mouth, shaking her head. She had to say it all now or she would never find the courage. “And you and I don’t even know one another. Not really. I’d known you for, what, a day, when I left for Mars? So what does that make me, for flying all the way back here to find you? The biggest fool in the history of Mars Colonial?”
Pavel took her hand from where it rested on his lips. He kissed her fingertips, and then murmured, “You might qualify for ‘Most Determined Girl’ in the history of Mars Colonial.” He smiled. “And as far as knowing each other? Of course we don’t know each other very well. Not yet. But I know this, girl from Mars—” Here his voice dropped to a whisper. “I can’t bear the thought of a life without you.”
And then he took her face in his hands, tracing the outline of her jaw, running a thumb across her First Wrinkle.
“Every time I see that worry line on your forehead, I want to say how sorry I am.”
Jessamyn smiled. “That’s my
First Wrinkle
. It’s a sign of distinction, Earth-boy.”
“I would’ve ended up with a lot more than one lousy wrinkle if I’d been stuck in a transport alone for two months,” he murmured.
Heat hummed between them, and Jess leaned in, placing her palm just over his heart. She felt the double-thump of it as it beat under her hand. Strong. Steady. Unswerving. For better or worse, this, she felt with certainty,
this
was what had called her back to Earth.
“It belongs to you,” Pavel murmured. “Ever since the first night when I saw you in that orange
sari
.”
Jessamyn closed the gap between their bodies. And then, slowly, tentatively, between their lips. In the warmth of that kiss, it didn’t feel so wrong to have crossed a sea of stars to find Pavel.
They pulled apart at last, standing in quiet awe of the moonlight washing over them, the ocean thundering just beyond them.
“We’ll find a way,” he whispered. “A way to get you home.”
To Jessamyn, it felt as if the chambers of her imagined fortress were slowly dissolving. She felt the heaviness of each of her griefs, but as she turned her gaze from the churning water to the still pools and at last to the boy beside her, she found her sorrows no longer overwhelmed her. Sighing, Jess released her grip upon all she had lost. She allowed her losses to drift out to sea, borne away upon the tide.
Pavel took her hand and brought it to his lips once more, his breath warm upon her fingers, her palm, her wrist. “So what do you say we get to know one another? Seeing as you came a hundred million kilometers or whatever it was.”
Jessamyn smiled, flushing once more.
“Come on,” said Pavel. “You up for a swim?”
“I don’t know how,” she admitted. “But the one thing
all
Marsian kids dream of? It’s definitely swimming.”
The water felt cold, bracing, and tasted of salt tears, but Jess laughed as she pushed off from the bottom of one of the pools. “Under the water, it feels like Mars,” she said. “The gravity’s not Earth-gravity at all!”
Pavel tilted his head to one side. “Huh. Yeah. This is probably as close as you can get to your Mars-weight.”
“We’re coming here every day,” declared Jess. “Until I learn to swim.”
Pavel smiled. “Coming here every night would be more fun.”
Jess splashed him and then pushed through the water to kiss the boy she’d journeyed so far to find again.
And kissing Pavel felt like coming home.
End of Book Three
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LOSING MARS
. If you enjoyed it, please consider loaning it to a friend. If you are a blogger or post reviews to Amazon and would like to receive a complimentary review copy of another Cidney Swanson title, just email your request along with a link to your review to cidneyswanson at gmail dot com. Free Review Copies available for a limited time.
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Acknowledgements
What is it about Mars that calls to some of us so loudly? I don’t know, and when I try to explain it to others, I trip all over myself, usually ending in some blushy–faced version of NVM. Which, I suppose, is why I write these stories about Mars: because I need a way to explain why the images sent back from Curiosity have the power to reduce me to teary speechlessness.
So, for those of you who enjoy these stories, thank you. I am so humbled by the thought that someone else is reading and enjoying what I cobble together for the love of Mars.
Special thanks are due to those who make my books better: editor Alexis at Word Vagabond, Danielle for the concept for the series cover art, Jacob for this book’s cover, and Chris for pulling it all together so that it can sit on a shelf (or inside an e–reader!) Thanks, as well, to my writer buddies who push me to sprint, and to my agent Michael Carr, who reminds me it’s a marathon. (Or was that a sprint?)
Author’s Note
Would you like to see humans on Mars? Or journey there yourself? You many find the following organizations of interest:
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