He said it anyway. He owed her as much. “This doesn’t sound much like you.”

“We haven’t seen each other in years,” she snapped. “What do you know about me?”

The sharp tone cut him. “Not as much as I thought, it seems.”

For a time, silence sat between them like a wall.

“I hired on with The Exchange for a good reason, I thought. To provide a good life for my daughter.”

“Zeerid—”

“Just listen, Aryn!” He took a breath to calm himself. “And that one decision, that seemed so right, led to me running weapons, and then to running spice. One decision, Aryn. One act.”

She shook her head. “This isn’t like that, Zeerid. I know what I’m doing.”

He wasn’t so sure but decided not to press further. He changed the subject. “I think I can get us into the spaceport. There are ships there, from Valor, and Imperial troopers, but I have a plan.”

Without looking at him, she reached across the seat and touched his hand, just for a moment. “I’m sorry for the way I spoke, Zeerid. I’m not …”

He shook his head. “No apologies, Aryn. I know you’re hurting. I just … don’t want you to make it worse for yourself. I know how that can happen. Are you … seeing clearly?”

He felt ridiculous trying to provide an empath, of all people, with insight into her emotional state.

“I am,” she said, but he heard uncertainty in her tone.

“In the end, you have to live with yourself.”

He knew well how difficult that could get.

“I know,” she said. “I know. Now, what’s your plan?”

He told her.

She listened attentively, nodded when he was done. “That should work.”

“Tee-seven can do it?”

Aryn nodded, and T7 beeped agreement.

“I will help you get in and get a ship,” Aryn said. “But … I’m not leaving Coruscant.”

“I figured you’d say that,” he said, but in his own mind he had not yet conceded the point. He wrestled with whether to tell her about the Twi’lek.

“You are holding something back,” she said.

He rubbed the back of his neck, torn.

In the end, he decided he owed her honesty, and he knew he could not make decisions for her.

“The Twi’lek we saw in the vid at the Temple …”

He trailed off. Aryn grabbed his forearm, squeezed.

“Tell me, Zeerid.”

He swallowed, feeling complicit in a crime. It wasn’t so much harm to the Twi’lek that concerned him, as it was harm to Aryn.

“I saw her at the Liston Spaceport. She was there.”

Aryn’s fingernails sank into his skin, but she seemed not to notice. He welcomed the pain. She stared off through the windscreen. He fancied he could see her weighing options in the scale of her mind. He held out hope she would choose the right one.