Embracing the Commander

Priya Rao has been married to Commander Kel Doran for four months and has never once been in the same room with him for longer than a meal. Then the ship breaks, and they are stuck together in a dead system for six weeks with nothing but time. Kel sleeps in the corridor outside her quarters. Priya starts cooking for the crew because someone has to. Slowly, in the dark of a cold ship, they start telling each other the truth: he was married before, and the Accord killed her, and he took a second match because the fleet needed him to. A sci-fi alien marriage in crisis romance about a husband learning to speak and a wife learning to ask, in a system with nothing left to do but listen.