She flinched when he shouted, she couldn’t help it. She was too keyed up and she was too busy berating herself for her weakness to feel him approach. She flinched again when he touched her but she did not pull away even though part of her, a big part of her screamed at her to pull away. She’d been hurt before, in so many ways and allowing touch was simply inviting more hurt. Look what had happened the night before after all.

But she was obedient, tractable and in so many ways trained to please and his hand delivered the message he wanted it to and then some. It told her to stay put and so she did. The touch kept her from fleeing which she very much wanted to do. 

But then he was speaking and his words, wonderful, heartfelt, absurd, made her shake her head in denial. He no sense, not a lick. He needn’t prove anything to her, he owed her nothing. He was the Captain! He had given her the position and it was her place to keep it. 

But still those words sank in, sinking through her honey-colored skin and past the discipline she’d had hammered into her while serving in the Navy. They reached the core of her, the Nicolette long buried and locked away. The soft, sweet girl who had made naive decisions and ruined everything. She was not gone as the Nicki of now hoped, not wholly. She was simply locked away. However, all the upheaval of the past day had put cracks into the prison that held her trapped inside. So the words Captain Lightfoot spoke reached this Nicki. That Nicki came to the surface for some much needed air. Neither Nicki was able to stop the fat crystalline tears that formed with artful precision on her thick lower lashes. They lingered, caught on the hairs, catching the light just long enough before taking a tragic and lovely dive onto her cheeks, ruined and smooth. 

Where there was one tear there seemed to be another. Each one long overdue. She fought them, because she was incapable of not fighting, even if it was a futile battle. She shook and before she was fully aware of what she was about, she turned and with a quick step that surprised her she stepped into the Captain. She still had her arms around herself but she put her forehead on his shoulder and then turned her head, pressing her face into the warmth of his neck, breathing in a long, shuddering breath.

“No.” she said softly, her breath a warm honeyed breeze against his throat. “There is no need, you need prove nothing to me. If you will have me as I am, broken and un-trusting I will serve you with all that I am.”

A soft sob slipped past her lips, a heartbroken sound and her arms seemed to snake around him of their own volition, tightening her hold, her softness pressing into him as she shook.

“Why couldn’t I have met you before?” It was a question that required no answer for all the heartbreak in it.