Read Online Greenshift by Heidi Ruby Miller - Free Book Online

corporation? She shuddered,
thinking that would have been her life…still could be.
    “I was enamoured to a miner,
or rather my family arranged the betrothal,” she said, needing to share
this information with David because her memories snapped at her in agitation.
“I never accepted his proposal, and I’m not sure my family really forgave
me for embarrassing them like that.”
    David remained silent so she kept
talking.
    “I couldn’t do it. It felt
so suffocating there, and not just because the air quality is so bad.”
Mari’s voice became low. David ran his palm up and down her back.
    “My sisters are only a
couple of years older than me and already have several amours. I was a late
start. I mean,” she said quickly, hoping he didn’t pick up on the real implication
of her words, “I just didn’t want to get married.”
    “Well, you are still a
teenager,” David said.
    She shrugged out of his touch and
put her fists on her hips, a mender in one hand and disinfectant solution in
the other. “My age has nothing to do with it. I didn’t want to marry that guy. Or any of the other ones I would have ended up with had I stayed on
Deleine. They were nice, hard-working guys, but they were complacent, happy to
spend the rest of their lives at jobs they hated.”
    “I’m proud of you for
leaving, for following a different path than was laid out for you. That took
courage.”
    “Thank you.” The
earnestness of his expression took Mari’s breath away. She looked away quickly,
afraid he would be able to read her emotions. She had never had this kind of
reaction to any man. Maybe because David was so much of a man. Strong,
mature, commanding, smart, confident, good-looking—she could list his
attributes the rest of the night, but he needed her to sew him up right now.
    “I should put a couple of
sutures in here before I put the menders on. The cut’s deeper than I thought.
Does this hurt? I can give you a stim patch.” She swabbed the disinfectant
over the area again, trying to be professional but unable to ignore the delight
of touching David so intimately, of feeling like she was taking care of him.
Most of her life someone had taken care of her, she was happy to be the
responsible one for a change.
    “It’s fine. Just another
battle scar.”
    “Oh, I’ll make sure it
doesn’t scar.” Then she asked, “Do you have real scars on your
body?” Mari assumed the military had the most advanced healing and
reconstructive technology in the system. Even her miners could walk away
without many visible souvenirs of their wounds.
    “I kept a few as reminders,”
David said.
    “Really?” Mari suddenly
felt a little too warm next to David in the med suite. “Can I…see
them?”
    “They’re not all that
exciting,” he said, but showed her a halfmoon scar near the crook of his
elbow. It was only a couple of centimeters long, but she was surprised she had
never noticed it before.
    “What did you do?” she
asked.
    “Ben did it. Took a chunk
out of me with his teeth when he was four. I didn’t tell anyone about it, just
let it heal on its own, then kind of forgot about it after a while.”
    “You didn’t want to get Ben
in trouble?” Mari asked.
    “No.” David broke into
one of his little smiles which always lit up his smoky eyes. “I didn’t
want to have to explain to our father how a four-year-old got the drop on his
eleven-year-old brother. Now, I keep it to remind Ben what a pain in my ass he
has always been.”
    “Is Ben your favorite
brother?”
    “Just the one who would
never leave me alone.”
    Mari could tell David was joking.
Family was so important to him, and despite the fact that she felt as though
she had abandoned her own to chase her dreams through the stars, family was
very important to her, too.
    “Did Ben give you all your scars?”
she asked.
    “Not this one.” David
lifted his shirt to reveal a raised patch of flesh that left a dark zigzag starting
only a few centimeters