Page 39 of Trove’s Purpose

Letting out a long breath, she connected the voice comm.

“Hey, Hyde,” she muttered.

“Are you okay?” He asked immediately. There was no way for her to hide the tears in her voice.

“No,” she admitted, wiping aggressively at her cheeks. “I can’t do this. I can’t!”

“Chee.”

“I’m trying, I really am. I even kissed him! But then there was a brothel and they were calling out to him and what kind of person gets begged to come back by prostitutes? Like, how much money is he giving them? How often does he go there?”

Hyde didn't say anything. And his silence was damning. Chee stilled, staring at her combot as she realized-

“You knew. Didn't you.”

“Don’t be mad, Chee.”

“You knew he was like this and you still-! Ah!” She turned around, running her hands back through her hair. “I can’t believe this. How careless is he about sex is he that this place would… No… It’s not just this brothel is it?”

He said nothing.

“Hyde!”

“He… prefers to pay such places a visit when he has a chance.”

“No, no, no…” She laughed, and once again, the sound was hysterical rather than joyful. “He prefers such places. Meaning, he only goes to the brothels when he has station leave, doesn’t he? There are probably brothels all across the cosmos that would beg him to come back.”

Hyde said nothing, and she really was going to throw up.

“This can’t work,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “This isn’t going to work, Hyde! I can’t be with someone who thinks sex is so meaningless!”

“Who said he thinks sex is meaningless?”

“What else could that mean?” She threw out her hand, gesturing out of the room to everything that might lay beyond. To Trove and the brothel and her entire messed up life that she even agreed to a deal like this to begin with.

Because she was going to stay. She wasn’t going to give up. The prize at the end was well worth whatever suffering she went through now.

But damn, it was hard.

“Hypersexuality can manifest for a variety of different reasons. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he feels sex has no meaning.”

“This is so messed up,” Chee muttered, holding on the back of her neck, staring up at the ceiling, completely at a loss.

“Maybe you just need to get to know him better.”

“I don’t-” She cut herself off before she could say she didn’t want to know him better. “What if he has some kind of disease?”

“Sexually transmitted diseases that cross species are incredibly rare.”

“Yeah? I bet being able to make hybrid babies is even more rare,” she grumbled, knowing full well that, in the entirety of the cosmos, only human females could do such a thing. She didn’t know for sure, but she wouldn’t bet against her being able to catch alien herpes.

“Even if they are, our medicine is fully capable of curing you.”

“Curing anything?”

He hesitated a moment before saying, “Curing almost anything.”

“I feel so much better now,” she grumbled.