Renegade Runner Nicole Conway (christmas read aloud txt) 📖

my rear end and stared at him. My mind was a tangled wreck of thoughts—a thousand frantic worries I had no control over whatsoever. They carried me to dark places I’d never even known existed in my own subconscious. What if this didn’t work? What if he died anyway? What would I do? Where would I go? What if the ship didn’t start back up? Would it just be easier to kiss the end of one of his plasma handguns instead of waiting in here to cook alive? Or stand out in the open and wait for Sienne to find me so she could do the dirty work?

I shuddered, looking away as I wiped my face on the sleeve of my suit. I couldn’t do either of those things. Brinna Blake did not give up. If Sienne wanted to kill me, then dammit, I was going to go down swinging.

Raking through the other medical supplies, I found a vacuum-sealed package of wet, disinfecting cloths and got to work wiping the blood and grime off Phox’s face. By the time I’d finished, that dusky, dark blue bruising around one of his eyes had already begun to fade. Was that a good sign?

Unzipping my bodysuit, I peeled it off my sweaty, slimy skin and stood naked in the dim, cool air to hastily clean off as many of my own cuts and scrapes as I could find by the soft glow of the emergency light. My leg throbbed beneath the bandaging job he’d sealed over it, but it still looked all right in my completely ignorant, no-idea-what-the-heck-I-was-doing medical opinion. I decided not to mess with it.

My bicep had taken a deep gash from a piece of shrapnel while I’d been air-skiing behind our ship, however. Lucky for me, it hadn’t nicked anything life-ending, otherwise, I’d probably already be dead. But it had bled out into my suit, smearing crimson all over my body. There wasn’t much I could do about that. I only had so many of these cleaning cloths. So instead, I just cleaned the area around the wound itself before going through the same bandaging sequence I’d seen Phox do for my leg. Er, well, minus the painkiller cocktail. I couldn’t afford to be out of it after taking another dose of that.

I bit down hard, fighting curses that burned on my tongue as I used the disinfecting sprays and clear gel sealant to close the wound. Granted, my attempt wasn’t as clean and neat as Phox’s had been when he’d worked on my leg. It would do, though.

I cringed as I picked up my blood-and-sweat-soaked body suit. It dripped a mixture of both onto the floor as I held it up. Glancing down at Phox, I wondered if I could steal a few more minutes of nudity before I had to put it back on. He might not wake up for a while. Oh, hell. What did it even matter if he saw? It wasn’t like I cared what he thought, right? Besides, the cool air felt good against my sweat-soaked skin.

Draping it over the seat so it could drain, I cleaned up what little remained of our medical supplies and quickly downed a ration of drinking water. Outside the ship, the raging storm filled the silence with the constant SHHHHHHHHH of sand blowing in the rushing winds. The occasional crack of lightning, accompanied by the hungry rumble of thunder, made me jump every single time. Part of me wanted to watch it, but sand had already covered the windshield entirely. Between that and the ship’s computers being shut off, there was no way to know what was going on out there.

At last, I couldn’t put it off any longer. Zipping my bodysuit back up felt like climbing into a damp Ziploc bag. I gagged as it made squishy, sucking, smacking sounds with every movement. Ugh. Yuck. No doubt it was going to smell amazing after a few days in the heat, too.

With my boots strapped back in place, all my sweaty, damp hair raked back into a sloppy ponytail, and Phox’s dual plasma pistols resting in my lap, I sat down beside his head and went back to waiting. My thoughts circled back to that dream—nightmare—whatever it had been. I couldn’t even close my eyes without seeing Mom’s face.

I had absolutely no idea how long I’d been away from home now. Weeks? Months? I wondered if Mom was still looking for me or if she’d already given up. I wasn’t a minor, after all, so it was probably going to be an uphill fight for her to get the police to take my disappearance seriously. They’d likely just assume I’d dropped everything and moved off.

Besides, it wasn’t like there wasn’t a family history of that kind of behavior.

But I wasn’t like him. Mom knew that, right? She had to know I’d never leave her like that. Ever. Not when she needed me most.

That pain, seeing Mom like that again, made the lingering bits of hazy memory immediately snap into focus. I remembered all of my fractured, messed-up life. I knew who I was again.

Too bad it didn’t make me feel any better.

Puffing a heavy sigh, I let my gaze drift back to stare at Phox’s still-unconscious face. My hand—the one he’d held when we’d been flying into the storm—tingled at the memory of how his rough, warm palm had felt against mine. My stomach flipped. Heat rose in my cheeks and I looked away.

It was stupid, really. It didn’t mean anything. He’d probably have held hands with Rout in a moment like that.

Okay, fine, so maybe not Rout, but still. It was beyond ridiculous to even think about holding hands with him.

So why couldn’t I get it out of my head?

25

FULL FRONTAL

When Phox coughed, I almost jumped right out of my skin—disgusting bodysuit and all.

Pushing my weapons aside, I rushed to kneel down close at his side. “Phox, can you hear me?” My voice cracked.

He blinked