The next morning, Alex watched the sunrise over the Vestan planet with a mixed sense of satisfaction and curiosity. His satisfaction was due to what happened the previous night, when he’d allowed himself to be fully open with Jenna by telling her the scarred story of the last two decades of his life.

At that moment, he looked over to her still-sleeping form. Jenna’s back was to him as she slept, her blonde hair an interesting color clash with the camo-green sleeping bag. Even though there were some that would call Alex a monster for the things that he’d done in his past, Jenna didn’t seem to think that way.

If anything, he could tell that opening up to her brought them closer.

The only thing that he was curious about now was her story. She certainly had some demons in her past as well. He remembered one encounter on the Racine, when Alex had lost his temper and a frightened Jenna had backed into the corner, begging him not to hit her.

That wasn’t the behavior of a normal woman. Alex suspected that she had an abusive father or partner in the recent past. Either way, he was curious to find out, especially now that she knew about him (and she was willing to stick around afterward).

He was still thinking about it when he failed to notice that she was stirring in her bag. She rolled over to look at him, a sleepy smile appearing on her lips.

“You’re watching me,” she said playfully, forcing him to blink in confusion.

Alex felt a tinge of embarrassment at that moment. Though he’d been thinking, his eyes had been glued to the back of her head.

He shook his head quickly. “Sorry, I was just thinking. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

Her smile grew bigger. “It’s quite all right, you know. You don’t have to be embarrassed to just look at me. The whole nature of this program says we’re supposed to be doing a whole lot more than just looking at each other.”

There was something about the way she said it that just made his pants extremely tight at the moment. Alex found himself looking away, not wanting his body to betray his thoughts to her.

Unfortunately, Jenna witnessed his reaction and the smile dropped from her face. There was a moment of tension between them, one that wasn’t easily solved since neither knew the right way to broach the subject.

Finally, Alex could let it go on no longer.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at her. “I wasn’t trying to be disinterested. Or imply that I’m not interested in being in this program with you. I looked away because I think I was a little too interested in that moment.”

There was confusion in her eyes until he gave her a knowing look and glanced down into his lap.

Suddenly, she understood.

“Oh!” she said loudly, her face turning red. “I see. Well, nothing wrong with that, right? I mean, that’s what we’re here for.”

“It’s still crazy for me though,” replied Alex. “I still barely know you. Don’t take that the wrong way but I feel like I know very little about who you are. You heard the gritty details of my life last night and you’re still here but I feel like I don’t know the first thing about you. I don’t even know how old you are.”

“I’m twenty-three,” she blurted out. “Well, I just turned twenty-two before I entered the program and seeing as I was asleep for my twenty-third birthday, that’s still my number.”

Alex winced. He knew that Jenna was young but just how young had been a matter of ignorance on his part. He almost didn’t want to know, especially with the gap between them, but now it was out there and he couldn’t ignore it.

“Twenty-three,” he repeated slowly. “And you know that I’m thirty-eight, right? That’s not a . . . problem for you, is it?”

She blinked at him a few times. “Why would it be, Alex?”

“Christ, because I’m old,” said Alex, a smile finally breaking through. “I could almost be your father.”

“Fifteen years isn’t that bad,” she said, defending the gap. “I had a friend in college that was madly in love with a man ten years older than her. Of course, his wife wasn’t thrilled about it but they seemed happy.”

Alex started to laugh. “Yeah, I could see that being an issue. At least you know that’s not the case here.”

Jenna smiled. “Either way, it doesn’t bother me, okay? After what I’ve been through, I just want to be with someone that makes me feel safe. And so far, you’ve done that better than anyone else. By a large margin.”

“You didn’t feel that way with your father?” asked Alex. “Usually that’s a father’s first job, making his family feel safe.”

Jenna let out a deep breath and then shook her head. “Maybe he might have done that, if he was around in the first place. I guess that’s where the story starts, with my parents. It’s not the greatest story either.”

“Neither was mine but you’re still here,” replied Alex. “And I’m here to listen to yours.”

She gave him an encouraged smile before she started to speak. “My family is from the Great Plains District. I grew up not far from the ruins of the city of Omaha. Sometimes I wonder if my parents ever truly loved each other. By the time I came around, they were just going through the motions. I once found a picture of them soon after they started dating and they appeared to be happy. I’m not sure what happened between them but by the time I was born they’d definitely fallen out of love.”

“Anyway, I remembered them fighting a lot when I was little. I don’t remember what it was about, just that they did it all the time. Around the time I was four, my father finally had enough. He left, leaving just my mother and my older brother to fend for ourselves.”

“That must have been tough,” said Alex. “So there’s no relationship with him at all?”

Jenna shook her head. “Nothing. He remarried and started a new family. I heard from him a few times until he just faded away. He actually reached out to me on my sixteenth birthday, and I remember being so excited to hear from him. We made plans to go out to dinner to celebrate just the two of us but he never showed up at the restaurant. I remember how embarrassing it was to sit there waiting for him to come. That was the last time I ever spoke with him. I was done with him after that.”

“I can’t say I blame you,” said Alex quietly. “I wouldn’t want a relationship with him either.”

Jenna nodded her head quickly as tears appeared in her eyes. “I wish I could say the story got better from there but it doesn’t. I told you I have an older brother, right? Jay is six years older than me and there’s no sibling affection there whatsoever.”

“You two just didn’t get along well?” asked Alex.

She shook her head. “No, it’s worse than that. Jay . . . has a very cruel streak in him. I don’t know if he took our parents’ separation in a different way than I did but the older he got, the meaner he got as well. I can tell you that I’ve lost track of the number of times he’s hit me over the years.”

“Your own brother hit you?” asked Alex, his jaw dropping.

“Too many times to count,” said Jenna, wiping away a tear. “I could never do the right thing with Jay. As the oldest sibling, he wanted total control of the house, especially after our father left. My mother just kind of let him take over the fatherly role. She’s still alive but she’s a shell of her former self. Never once did she intervene when Jay punished me, especially for something little like one time when my hair clogged the drain in our bathroom. I had welts on my ass and my thigh for like a week because of that.”

“Did you ever think to tell someone about it?” asked Alex. “Surely there was a way to escape that madness.”

Jenna took a deep breath. “I went to the police once, when I was fifteen and he broke my finger because I broke one of our kitchen plates. Jay told them that it happened because I got the finger shut in a car door and they reached out to my mother. My mother was fearful of what might happen to Jay if he got any charges so she backed him up. In hindsight, she did it because he was the only member of the family working at the time, and she needed his income to keep a roof over our heads.” Jenna sniffled. “I think it was then that I realized that I had no family left, no one worth trusting at least.”

Alex could only shake his head. “That’s absolutely despicable, Jenna.”

She wiped away another tear. “He was just cruel. He broke my other finger as soon as the cops left, as punishment for what I did.”

Jenna held up the two smallest fingers on her left hand, where there was a noticeable, unnatural bend where they’d healed crookedly.

“I knew I could never do anything like that again without hard evidence, but more than anything, I just wanted to get away from them. They weren’t family to me, not at all. Jay took every opportunity to remind me how worthless I was, how ugly I was, all of it.”

Alex gave her a weird look. “At least you knew that last part was untrue. I mean, you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, and I’m being completely honest when I say that.”

She rewarded him with a smile. “Thank you, Alex. That means a lot, especially coming from you. You can say that my teenage years were a lot more awkward though. I know everyone goes through an awkward ugly phase when puberty hits but it hit me exceptionally hard. I was really ugly as a teenager. My teeth were too large for my face, as was my nose. I had terrible acne and I didn’t get boobs until I was in college.”

Alex couldn’t help himself. He let one single glance drift down to Jenna’s chest, watching her breasts rise and fall with her breathing.

Jenna didn’t seem to notice before she continued on. “I took a lot of abuse about my looks growing up, and I didn’t have anything in the way of self-confidence. How could I? With how my brother treated me and how my father left us, I figured I was unlovable. I figured I wasn’t going to have a life worth living.”

“So what happened then? Did you get away from them? You mentioned going to college,” said Alex. “When did things start to turn around?”

Jenna closed her eyes for a moment. “I wish I could say it got better from there but it only got worse when I met Vince.”

“Who is Vince?”

“My ex-boyfriend. The man who caused me to enter the colony program.”