Keith

Chapter 2

"Chemistry is you touching my mind and setting my body on fire."
                            -Unknown

There are things that are universally expected to be sources of guilt. Example, if you accidentally burn your house down. Guilt. If you wreck your parents' car. Guilt. If you take the last slice of chocolate cake in a buffet table. The worst kind of guilt.

Then there is the guilt caused by  lack of feeling eg, when you're told your cousin, and not the twenty third cousin fourteen times removed kind,I'm talking about the  we shared a crib kind of cousin was abducted, you are supposed to feel something.
So it is understandable to say I felt my guilt in tonnes when my reaction to hearing my cousin was kidnapped was,
     "Ooohhhh?"
To be fair, I waited and waited for the remorse, fear of his life or maybe even plain sadness but it never came.

     "You'll help us?"
Danny's question was directed at Keith but he couldn't take his eyes of me, probably expecting a weeping mess, screaming dirges and praying to the ancestors for my cousin's life.
            "Of coarse. I owe you a debt of honour after all. I take it your team has arrived already?"

I often wondered if it was the debt of honour that had led Keith to save me when he found me in the Nobun desert a year ago. Maybe it was what had kept him from killing me though that would have been the most merciful coarse of acti-

"Did you just say team?"

My head swirved to Keith. With the harsh male beauty that cut the lines of his face into an art that had no words. It was lethal, that face of his, in a kind of way that could make a woman weak in the knees, among other places.
There was no mistaking the power that danced in that man's eyes. When you looked at him, you saw a man that knew he had worlds at his feet.
Not even his face could distract me from his words.

Team.

Danny's battle team.

My old battle team.

And the thought that I had been avoiding hit me like a truck. A team that also had Shun.

****

"You could have warned me."

Danny had left minutes ago and I remained seated across Keith, aghast. He knew, he of all people knew what they meant to me.

"You can handle it."
I walked to the the floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the Vetoxi City. Sometimes I still couldn't believe I lived in such a city. At one point my greatest aspiration was to backpack through Europe. Years later I'm living on another planet.

"People that can handle it maybe move to a different street. Not two planets away."

I felt him come up behind me.
His hand trailed along my unsleeved arm leaving a trail of goosebumbs, that had nothing to do with the cold, in its wake.

"I will not run away again."

Wouldn't I?  Were these words just spoken in the heat of the moment or were they actually true? My first instict had always been to run and to ran fast. To disappear. Wasn't that how I ended up here in the first place?

"Good."

The breath of his words fanned my neck. His voice skitted across my skin. His dark deep voice caressed my skin as though they had fingers of their own.

Keith and I, had a simple kind of relationship. No strings attatched.

"Will we find him?"
I turned to face him. He was so close the edge of his lips touched mine as he spoke.
"Do you really care?"