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Fourteen days.
Eva had survived twenty years, most of them spent in prison, but somehow the fourteen days after splashdown turned out to be her breaking point.
It was ridiculous, irrational, and inefficient in a way that would have annoyed her on a normal day.
But fourteen days ago, Ryland Grace had returned to Earth.
Fourteen days ago, she had stood in a secured observation room with one hand pressed hard against the edge of a table while grainy footage showed the recovery teams surrounding the Hail Mary. She had heard someone say, He’s alive, and for one second, her knees had simply stopped remembering their purpose.
He was alive. He was back. He was back on Earth.
And then the unbearably long process of quarantine had begun.
Fourteen days of medical reports she was allowed to read but not respond to and updates that told her nothing useful.
Stable vitals, dehydration muscle loss within expected parameters, sleep irregularities, psychological evaluation ongoing, cooperative with staff, requests granted within quarantine restrictions.
But cooperative with staff did not tell her if he still looked for her when the room went quiet.
Psychological evaluation ongoing did not tell her if he hated her.
Requests granted within quarantine restrictions did not tell her whether he had asked for her and been denied, or whether he had not asked for her at all.
And as of this morning quarantine was over.
Ryland could leave medical isolation today, and Eva, who had once commanded the resources of nations, was sitting behind her desk pretending to read a report she had already read six times and understood none of.
Her office was quiet.
Too quiet.
Twenty years.
The world outside had changed. Buildings had gone up. Governments had fallen. People had died, married, divorced, had children, buried parents, changed careers, written books about the Petrova Task Force with her name in the title as if she had been a historical event rather than a woman who still woke up some nights reaching for a man who was not there.
She had changed too.
Eva caught her reflection in the darkened glass of a cabinet and hated herself for looking. There were more lines around her mouth than there had been when he left. More around her eyes. Grey threaded through her hair now, not enough to make her look old exactly, but enough to make the passage of time visible. Enough that anyone looking closely would see what twenty years of command, grief, guilt, and sleeplessness had done to her.
She wondered whether he would look at her and search for the woman he remembered.
She wondered whether he would find her.
Her hand tightened around the pen in her fingers.
He had every right to hate her.
That was the thought she had not been able to outrun in twenty years.
He had every right to walk through that door, look at her, and see the woman who had failed him. The woman who was in command of the mission that took him away. The woman who had held his head in her lap in the back of a transport vehicle and promised him a future that most likely would never happen.
Maybe he had spent all those years in space nurturing that anger.
Maybe he had returned with his mind made up.
Or maybe he would be kind. That would be worse, somehow, if he stood in front of her with that warm, exhausted face and told her he understood, but he could not be with her anymore.
Eva inhaled carefully.
Then there was a knock at the door.
Her entire body went still.
Not her assistant’s knock. Not Carl’s. Not any of the officials who still came to her because they assumed she knew what to do with impossible things.
A softer knock.
Hesitant.
Familiar in a way that made her heart stop before her mind caught up.
Eva stared at the door.
For a moment, she did not speak.
Then she forced her fingers to release the pen.
“Come in.”
The door opened. And Ryland Grace stepped into her office.
The world narrowed. Everything else disappeared so completely that Eva could not have named the year, the building, the country, or her own name.
He stood just inside the door, one hand still on the handle, looking at her.
He looked—
God.
Eva had prepared herself for this. Well… she thought she had prepared herself for this.
She had known intellectually that time dilation was real. She had read the numbers, checked them, rechecked them, cursed them, and then signed documents containing them.
She had known he would not look the way he should have looked if the universe had been merciful.
Knowing had not helped.
Because he was still Ryland.
Not completely unchanged, exactly. No one comes back from a decades long space mission unchanged. His hair was longer than she remembered, curling wildly around his ears and at the nape of his neck. His face was leaner. There was a tiredness around his eyes that had not been there before.
But his glasses were crooked, his mouth was the same, and beneath an open jacket, he was wearing that stupid fox cardigan he had worn when he first joined the Task Force.
Eva’s breath left her.
For one impossible second, it was like seeing a ghost who had forgotten to be dead.
Ryland looked at her.
Eva looked at him.
Neither of them moved.
Eva’s hands rested against the edge of her desk. She could not move. Because if she moved, she might run to him and if she ran to him, he might step back.
If he stepped back, something in her would not survive it.
Ryland’s face changed. His mouth trembled. Then suddenly she was in his arms.
Eva did not register him crossing the office. She did not see him move around the desk. One second he was by the door, looking at her as if he could not quite believe the physics of her existence, and the next his arms were around her, crushing her against him with a force that was clumsy and desperate and so familiar that the sound she made was nearly inhuman.
His face buried against the side of her neck.
Eva froze for half a heartbeat.
Then she broke.
Her arms came around him hard. One hand fisted in the back of his jacket, the other pressed between his shoulder blades.
He was warm, he was solid and he was here.
“You’re back,” she whispered.
It was a stupid thing to say. Obvious and inadequate. And yet it was the only thing her mind could come up with.
Ryland’s arms tightened. “Yes.”
The word was muffled against her neck.
Eva shut her eyes.
Something inside her gave way so violently that she had to hold on to him harder to remain standing. She could feel him breathing. The rise and fall of his chest. The tremor in his arms. The slight, familiar way his fingers spread across her back when he was trying not to clutch.
He smelled different. Like medical disinfectant and something metallic. But underneath all of it, impossibly, him.
Eva turned her face into his hair.
For a long while, neither of them said anything.
Eventually, Ryland shifted. Not away, not really. Just enough to lift his head and look at her, his hands sliding down until they settled carefully on her hips.
Eva made herself loosen her grip. It was, objectively, one of the hardest things she had ever done.
His thumbs moved over the fabric of her coat in slow, unconscious circles.
Eva looked at his face and felt something in her chest try to unfold.
There were so many things to say.
She could have started with the mission, with the science, with the years of uncertainty, with the apologies she had rehearsed in different languages and never found sufficient. She could have asked whether he was all right, which was an absurd question, because of course he was not. She could have asked if he remembered. If he still—
“I missed you so much.”
Ryland looked at her and his eyes filled immediately. “I missed you too.”
Eva’s breath caught. “Really?”
Ryland’s face crumpled and for a moment he looked so painfully like the man she had held in that transport vehicle that Eva almost reached for his face.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Turns out you have a lot of time to think about the people you love in space.” His mouth twitched, weary and crooked. “Even if you’re not alone.”
Eva should have heard the last part.
Any other day, she would have.
Any other version of her would have caught the implication immediately and filed it under information requiring urgent follow-up.
But the only words that reached her were the people you love.
Her lips parted.
He had said love.
Present tense, unless she was losing her mind.
He loved her.
Or he had loved her long enough to think about her in space.
Or he was simply being kind.
No. Ryland had never been kind in ways that were untrue.
Eva stared at him.
He was still holding her. His thumbs still moved over her hips, slow and absent.
She wanted to kiss him.
She wanted to cup his face and kiss him until all the years of them being apart meant absolutely nothing. She wanted to touch every line of him and make sure no one had taken pieces she could not find again. She wanted to press her lips to his and make a sound she would not be proud of and never, ever stop.
But she did not move.
Because the last time she kissed him, he had been sedated and terrified and being carried toward a mission he had refused.
Because love meant nothing if she did not let him choose now.
Ryland searched her face.
The silence stretched.
Then he said, very quietly, “I’m still angry at you.”
Eva’s heart twisted. “I know.”
“We have a lot to talk about.”
“Definitely.”
His thumbs paused, then started again. “But I really want to kiss you first.”
For one second, Eva could not breathe.
Then something let loose inside her. Something locked for twenty years. Something braced for rejection and punishment and loneliness.
She smiled. A real smile.
Ryland stared at it like it hurt him.
Then his hands tightened on her hips and he kissed her.
At first, it was soft.
Careful.
His mouth found hers like he was afraid she might disappear if he moved too quickly. Eva’s hands came up to his face, shaking despite every effort she made to keep them steady. Her thumbs touched his cheeks.
He made a broken sound into her mouth.
That was when the kiss stopped being pretty.
Eva stepped into him, or he pulled her closer, or both. There was no order to any of it. His arms went around her back again. Hers wrapped around his shoulders. She tasted salt and distantly realized they were both crying.
Ryland kissed her harder, and Eva answered with something desperate enough to be grief. Twenty years of wanting. Twenty years of waking alone. Twenty years of sleeping beside absence. Twenty years of knowing the last thing she had said to him before the doors opened had been I love you and having no way to know whether he carried it like a gift or a wound.
She kissed a tear from the corner of his mouth without thinking.
Ryland made another sound, wounded and disbelieving, and kissed her again.
They stopped only when breathing became unavoidable.
Even then, they did not go far.
Their foreheads touched. Eva’s hands stayed on his face. Ryland’s fingers pressed into her back as if letting go required some official order he had decided to ignore.
“I love you,” Eva whispered.
The words escaped before she could decide whether saying them was fair.
Ryland’s eyes closed.
“I love you too.”
Eva’s chest hurt. “You don’t have to say that.”
His eyes opened again.
There was exhaustion there. Anger too, still. Grief. Things they would have to sit with eventually because love did not erase what had happened.
But beneath all of it, warm and unmistakable, there he was.
Ryland.
“But I do,” he said.
Eva swallowed.
His gaze moved over her face slowly. Not because he was judging her. Because he was learning her again.
“And did I mention,” he said, voice rough, “that you look absolutely beautiful today?”
Eva laughed before she could stop herself.
It came out wet and startled, nearly a sob.
“I have aged twenty years since you’ve been gone.”
“I noticed.” Ryland lifted one hand from her back and touched the side of her face. His thumb brushed beneath her eye, over one of the lines she had been trying not to think about.
“Still beautiful,” he said.
Eva’s throat tightened. “It doesn’t bother you?”
Ryland blinked.
Then he gave her a look so plainly, absurdly fond that it nearly broke her all over again.
“Eva,” he said softly. “My love for you survived a suicide mission in space.” His mouth curved. “A few grey hairs and lines on your face are the absolute least of our problems, darling.”
Despite herself, Eva laughed.
The sound startled both of them.
Ryland stared at her for half a second, and then his face changed in a way she remembered so well it hurt. That look. That helpless, delighted look he got whenever she laughed and he wanted to take credit for it.
Then he kissed her again.
Not long. Not desperate.
Just because.
Eva let him.
There was no universe in which she denied Ryland Grace a kiss after twenty years of not being able to give him one.
When he drew back, she was still smiling faintly.
Then the smile trembled. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Ryland’s expression shifted. “I know.”
“I really tried—”
“I know, Eva.”
The words landed softly.
He knew.
That did not mean it was healed.
It did not mean she was forgiven entirely.
It did not mean the wound between them could be kissed shut in one afternoon in Eva’s office.
But he knew.
Eva nodded once.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
Ryland wiped it away with his thumb.
She turned her face into the touch before she could stop herself.
“So,” she said after a moment, voice barely steady, “do you want to try and figure it out?”
Ryland looked at her. Then his mouth curved. “Under one condition.”
Eva did not hesitate. “Anything.”
His smile grew. “I get voting rights on the bigger bed we’re getting.”
For a second, Eva just stared at him. Then the laugh tore out of her. Real. Helpless. Bright enough to hurt.
Ryland’s entire face softened as if the sound had physically struck him.
“Oh,” he whispered.
Then he kissed her again because of course he did.
Because she had laughed.
Because he was Ryland.
Because apparently some laws of the universe had survived after all.
Eva was still laughing against his mouth when he pulled back.
“Yes,” she said. “Definitely.”
“Then it’s settled.” He grinned, pulling her back into a hug.
“Is it?”
“Yes. Very official. The bed committee has been formed.”
Eva’s brows furrowed. “The bed committee.”
“I am chair.” Ryland kissed the top of her head.
“You absolutely are not.”
“I came back from space. I think I get chair privileges.”
Eva’s lips trembled again, caught between laughter and tears.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Eva closed her eyes. “Ich liebe dich so sehr, Ryland Grace.”
I love you so much, Ryland Grace.
His breath hitched as he pulled back a little.
Eva opened her eyes.
Ryland was looking at her with something strange and soft and almost shy. Then he said, careful but clear, “Ich liebe dich auch, Eva.”
I love you too, Eva.
Eva went still. Her mouth parted.
Ryland’s cheeks flushed.
It was, absurdly, one of the most Ryland things he had ever done. Come back from space after twenty years on Earth, kiss her like he had been starving for it, casually participate in German declarations of love, and then look embarrassed about pronunciation.
Eva stared at him.
“Where,” she said slowly, “and when did you learn German?”
He glanced aside, as if he had only now realized this required an explanation. “Oh. Right. That.”
“Ryland.”
“Well, as you know, we had a lot of media files. Which included language courses, books, movies, terrible instructional videos from the early 2000s, which, by the way, were a cultural crime.”
Eva blinked at him.
“And Rocky and I had a lot of free time.”
Eva’s brain, which had survived the end of the world several times over, now only had more questions. “Who is Rocky?”
Ryland smiled. “Long story,” he said.
Eva’s eyes narrowed slightly.
His hands moved on her hips again. “I’d prefer another kiss first.”
Eva should have said no.
She should have said they needed to sit down, that there were debriefs, that there were questions, that not alone and Rocky were not things one simply stepped over in conversation like it’s nothing.
She should have said many sensible things.
Instead, she touched his face again, rose onto her toes, and kissed him.
Because Ryland Grace was back on Earth.
Because he loved her.
Because he was still angry.
Because they had a lot to talk about.
Because there was a bigger bed to argue over.
Because twenty years had passed, and somehow, impossibly, there was still a future.
And because there was no universe in which she would deny him kisses.