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He had said no.
He had said it over and over until his voice broke.
No, no, no, I’m not doing this, you can’t make me do this, I’m not going, I’m not dying for you, I’m not your solution.
None of it had mattered.
Hands. Restraints. A needle. Carl saying his name like that made it better.
And Eva.
He had looked for her.
God help him, even then, even while hating every single member of the Petrova Task Force, he had looked for her.
Because she was supposed to stop it.
Because Eva Stratt stopped things.
Eva Stratt walked into rooms and made generals shut up, turning the impossible into instruction.
Eva Stratt, who looked at the end of the world and forced governments to work together.
Eva Stratt could freeze a whole room with one sentence and make people twice her rank feel like badly prepared children.
So when they actually reached him, tackling him to the ground, some terrified, betrayed part of him had looked for her and thought,
Why aren’t you stopping this? Why are you letting them do this?
The thought hurt worse than he’d like to admit.
Now the transport vehicle shuddered beneath him, voices low and indistinct somewhere near the doors. His wrists weren’t tied anymore. They did not need to be. His head hurt while trying to move it so what was the point in even trying to run?
They had lifted him roughly, like he was not a person at that moment.
People who he considered colleagues and friends now treated him like he was cargo, if that.
Pain flared in his shoulder when they shifted him onto the bench inside the van.
A sound came out of him, muffled by an oxygen mask being clumsily placed over his face. Then a hand, warm and gentle, slid under his head.
Everything stopped.
Not the van, if anything, it picked up speed.
But everything inside him.
For one impossible second, all the noise narrowed to the feeling of fingers at the back of his skull, careful, familiar, and infinitely gentle.
His head lowered onto something soft.
A lap.
Ryland forced his eyes open.
Eva was above him.
Not the Eva from the command room, all fury and authority. Not the woman who could make presidents flinch. Not the first in command of the Petrova Task Force, the person history would one day either worship or condemn depending on whether Earth survived long enough to write books about it.
His Eva. Pale and shaking. Her eyes filled with tears she had not allowed to fall.
For half a second, rage rose in him again, hot and confused. You let them.
The thought must have shown on his face because tears instantly fell down Eva’s cheeks.
Ryland tried to say her name but the mask swallowed most of it.
“Eva.” It came out as a whisper, barely above a breath.
Her face changed. “Oh, my love.”
Tears flooded his eyes immediately, hot and humiliating but unstoppable.
He was so angry he could barely breathe, and yet the only thing he wanted in the universe was to stay exactly here with his head in her lap and her hand in his hair.
Her nails were grazing lightly against his scalp in the way that always made him melt when the world was still as close to ordinary as it could be.
But the world wasn’t ordinary. The world was ending. And he was being sent away without his consent.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m right here.”
He blinked hard, tears spilling toward his temples.
He wanted to accuse her. Wanted to ask why. Wanted to demand that she explain how this could happen if she loved him. How she could be here, touching him like this, while he was sent toward a rocket he did not want, part of a mission he had not chosen, a death that everyone had already declared as heroism so they could sleep at night.
His mouth moved but nothing came out.
Eva’s hand stilled for a fraction of a second, as if she had heard the accusation anyway.
“I tried,” she whispered, so softly that only he could hear. “You have to believe me, I tried.”
He stared at her.
“If there was any other way,” she said, voice breaking. “I would’ve done that. I am so sorry.”
His eyes squeezed shut.
That hurt too. Because he believed her.
It hurt because believing her meant there was no one in this world with enough power to save him.
It hurt because she was Eva Stratt, and even she had no other solution.
Her fingers moved through his hair again, slower now.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
The anger in him did not disappear. It did not have anywhere to go. And yet there was this impossible need to be held by the person he loved.
He opened his eyes again.
Eva blurred above him.
He swallowed against the dry ache in his throat.
His lips moved under the mask.
Eva leaned closer. “What is it?”
He forced the words out. “Tell me something.”
Eva froze.
Then inhaled shakily, one hand still running through his hair, the other resting over his chest.
The demand was certainly odd but also unbearably Ryland. Because this wasn’t just a simple “take my mind off of all this” but also a request to give him something to hold onto.
“I love you,” she whispered.
His eyes closed.
“I love you so much it hurts.”
She pressed her lips to his forehead, lingering there while the engine vibrated beneath them.
“I love you so much,” she said again, “that I do not know what to do with it.”
His breath hitched under the mask.
Her fingers stroked slowly through his hair.
“And did you know,” she continued, “that you are going to absolutely crush this mission?”
A broken sound left him.
It might have been a laugh, it might have been pain, but Eva kept going.
“And against every odd, you are going to come back home.”
Ryland’s eyes opened.
She was crying now. Tears on her face, her voice steady by force alone.
“You are going to come back to Earth,” she whispered. “Back to me.”
His hand twitched against the bench.
Eva saw and caught it immediately, threading her fingers through his. His grip was weak. Hers was not.
“And when you come back,” she said, “we are getting a bigger bed.”
That surprised him enough that his brow moved up a bit.
Eva gave a tiny, shattered smile.
“Yes. A bigger bed. Because you sleep like a starfish when you are comfortable, and I am tired of waking up to find one of your arms hanging off the side as if you are attempting to communicate with the floor.”
A tear slid down Ryland’s temple.
“And I know. You are going to argue that you do not starfish. You do. You absolutely do. And I will buy a bed large enough for your ridiculous limbs, and you will still somehow find a way to end up on my side during the nights you don’t starfish for once.”
She stroked his hair again.
“And eventually we will get a new place,” she whispered. “Not because this one is not enough. It is. But one day, when the world is not ending and we have the luxury of being annoyed by normal things, we will find somewhere with bigger windows and a kitchen you can make chaotic without endangering my paperwork.”
His mouth curved slightly beneath the mask.
Eva’s thumb moved over his knuckles in response.
“We will fight about wall colors,” she said. “You will suggest something warm and absurd, and I will say white walls are efficient, and you will look at me as if I have personally murdered joy.”
His eyes softened.
“You will insist the couch belongs in the wrong place because of light angles or conversation flow or some other domestic theory you invent on the spot. I will pretend to be exasperated. Then I will let you move it there because you will be very pleased with yourself, and I am unfortunately very weak for that.”
His hand tightened faintly in hers.
Eva noticed.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Exactly like that.”
“And you are finally going to convince me to get a dog.”
Ryland’s eyes widened a fraction.
Eva nodded gravely.
“Yes. I know. Shocking. You will be very smug about it. Insufferably smug. You will say you knew I was a dog person deep down, and I will tell you that I am not, that I simply tolerate one specific animal because it has excellent taste in people.”
His mouth curved more.
Almost a smile now.
“You will bring home the most emotionally manipulative creature on the planet,” she continued. “Something with enormous eyes and no respect for personal space. It will love you immediately. Of course it will. Everything with a pulse loves you eventually. I will pretend not to care, and then one day you will come home and find it asleep in my office while I work.”
Ryland’s eyes were wet and smiling.
Eva bent and kissed his forehead. “You will be unbearable about it.”
His fingers moved weakly against hers. She held on.
“And you will keep distracting me,” she said, quieter now. “With gentle touches. Soft kisses. All at the most inconvenient times.”
His eyes fluttered, but he forced them open again.
Eva saw the effort and a sob pressed against her throat.
She swallowed it.
“You will kiss the crease between my eyebrows when I work too long,” she whispered. “You will steal my pens. You will leave your shirts near the hamper and call it a system. You will talk to me about science while I am trying to read, and I will pretend not to listen, but I will listen because I like your voice more than any book on this planet.”
His smile deepened, small and drowsy and heartbreaking.
“And we will pick up our morning routine again,” Eva said. “The coffee machine will be making that god awful noise.”
The tears were still in his eyes, but now there was something else too.
Want.
Not for touch. Not just for her. For life.
For the impossible future she was building.
“You will kiss me in the kitchen until the coffee gets cold,” she whispered. “I will tell you we are going to be late. You will say morning kisses are more important. I will roll my eyes. Then I will kiss you again because unfortunately, you will be right.”
She paused for a second and her tears fell onto his hair. She did not even bother to wipe them away.
“And I am definitely going to marry you someday.”
Ryland stopped breathing for half a second.
Eva smiled despite herself. “You heard me.”
“I am going to marry you,” she whispered. “Not because the world is ending and I need something to hold onto. I am going to marry you because I want to be yours, and only yours, in every way that matters.”
His face crumpled and Eva cupped his cheek. “And I want you to be mine. Every day. In every ordinary, ridiculous, inconvenient way we can find.”
His lashes fluttered. He was fighting the sedative with all of his remaining strength.
Not against the mission. Against sleep. Against losing her voice.
Eva spoke faster, “When you come home, I will introduce you everywhere as my husband. Everywhere. To colleagues. To officials. To the poor person trying to deliver food. To strangers who ask for directions. I will say, ‘This is my husband, Ryland Grace,’ and you will get that look on your face, the one where you try not to be pleased and fail spectacularly.”
He was smiling now. Faintly, but unmistakably.
Eva laughed once, broken and wet. “There it is.”
His eyes shone up at her.
“You will come up with more ridiculous pet names,” she continued. “I know you will. They will get worse with time. You will call me something impossible before breakfast, and I will threaten to leave you, and you will know I am lying.”
The vehicle slowed. Eva’s heart lurched violently.
Not yet. Please, not yet.
She bent lower, as if she could hide him from arrival.
“And we are going to grow old together,” she whispered. “Do you hear me? We are going to get older and stranger and more insufferable. I will develop even less patience for fools, which you will claim is impossible, but I will prove you wrong.”
Ryland’s smile flickered wider.
She pressed her forehead to his.
“And I will love you loudly,” she said. “For the rest of my days. I will love you in rooms full of people. I will love you in kitchens and hallways and beds too big for you to fall out of. I will love you when you are brilliant, and when you are afraid, and when you are annoying about furniture placement, and when you come home to me.”
His eyes were barely open now.
Eva’s hand shook as she touched the edge of the oxygen mask.
“I need you to come home,” she whispered. “Not as a mission objective, but as the woman who loves you. For the love of God, please come home to me.”
Ryland looked at her through the haze. For one second, she thought he might speak.
His mouth moved.
Maybe her name.
Maybe I love you.
Maybe tell me more.
Then, the vehicle stopped.
Voices rose outside.
Eva’s entire body went cold.
No.
No, no, no.
She looked down at him, at the man they were about to take from her, the man she had failed to save from leaving and would now have to save by making sure there was a world to return to.
His eyes were still on her.
Trusting her. Loving her. Angry, maybe, still. Terrified, definitely. But smiling because she had given him a future for a few minutes in the back of a transport vehicle, and Ryland Grace, the absurd man that he was, had held onto it.
Before anyone could open the doors, she slipped the oxygen mask from his face. Then she bent over Ryland and kissed him.
Thoroughly.
Because she had no ring to give him, no promise strong enough to stop the Hail Mary, no power left except this.
Ryland responded weakly at first, then with everything he could still muster at that moment.
His hand twitched in hers. His mouth moved under hers, slow and clumsy and desperate. A tear slipped down his cheek.
Eva kissed that too.
Then his mouth again.
When she pulled back, he was looking at her as if she were the last star in the universe.
She placed the mask back over his face with shaking hands.
“Ich liebe dich, Ryland Grace.”
I love you, Ryland Grace.
His eyes filled again.
This time, he managed one word.
“Eva.”
“I’m here,” she whispered, though the doors were opening now, “I’m right here.”
His gaze stayed on her.
She stroked his hair once more.
One last time.