“Hey.” Dane appeared at the doorway, followed by C.J. “I’m a grown man. I make my own decisions. And she didn’t say anything to me I haven’t said to myself a million times. David was going to die. I’m a doctor. It’s my duty to save him. Every time I let someone die so we can do our jobs, it kills my soul. Melissa reminded me of that. That’s all.”
“Everyone,” C.J. interrupted. “Let’s tone this down a notch, shall we?”
“No. I’m not being pacified. It’s bad enough she’s walking around as a shell of herself. I’ll be damned if I let this get any more out of control,” Nolan thundered.
It dawned on me the others would never be able to manage his temper, and I wasn’t getting out of this without facing him. I’d already been punched in the face once today, how much worse could it get?
“That’s a terrible thing to say.” I scooted out from around Wes even as he grabbed at me. “I’m not even sure what it means, but I know you want to insult me, so congratulations. You just did.”
Nolan’s eyes were steel, unyielding, unrelenting and they poured through my reserves. If I let him, he’d break what few walls I’d managed to build around my terror. I couldn’t let that happen.
“You put us all at risk. You don’t have that right. You’re nothing.” He said the words still at top volume.
I took a deep breath. “I owe Dane an apology, which I’ll give to him in private. Let me ask you this: If I’m nothing, why are you yelling at me so loudly? If I’m nothing, then why bother? I figured out some things while I waited there. You’ve all placed me in a very difficult situation. I can’t go to Master’s anymore. Things are too screwed up. If I get my memories back, maybe I can make some decisions. Until then, I have to rely on you. I’m sorry if that makes you angry, Nolan. It doesn’t make me happy, either. The others at least make an effort at kindness. What I did, I did out of ignorance. I didn’t mean to risk you, any of you. Why don’t we just agree to stay away from each other until I can get to where I belong? I won’t break your rules, but I’d rather never have to speak to you again. How’s that, Nolan? You and I, we’ll stay strangers.”
Thick, choking silence fell across the room. Nolan finally pushed through it.
“If that’s what you want, that’s what’ll happen.”
“Nolan…” Geoff grabbed his arm. “She doesn’t know, okay? You can’t take it the way you are, brother. You have to treat her like a stranger. She doesn’t know you.”
“I get what you’re saying.” His voice sounded calm and, in some ways, hearing him speak in a rational way made it worse than when he’d been yelling. I went cold. All I’d said was the truth. Why did it make me want to curl into a ball and disappear? “I hear what you’re all saying. Whatever happened, she’s still Melissa. She talks with her voice, looks through her eyes. And she’s done with me. So be it.”
He walked from the room, spine stiff and head high. No one moved. I wasn’t even sure I breathed. What had I said, exactly, to get that response?
I’d really had enough of this day. I was apparently a rebel princess—whatever that meant—and I couldn’t pull off denial any longer. Nolan’s strong reaction to me, as though he really knew me, and the way everything I said was so completely abhorrent to him, solidified what I should have figured out a lot sooner. Enough was enough. I needed answers.
“Okay. So I’m obviously your wife, right?”
Four sets of gazes plowed into me, but no one spoke.
“I just think it’s stupid not to say it. I’m exhausted. Good night.”
Chapter 8
Have you seen Lilah?
NOT one of them had confirmed or denied what I said. My assertion struck them all dumb. Maybe I’d been wrong, and they didn’t want to hurt my feelings? I needed them to confirm they were my husbands and then they could tell me which one of them had left me pregnant and alone.
Three men waited in the hall ahead of me, and I paused when I saw them. I’d not met them before, which meant they were the three guys we’d come to rescue. All three stared at me and no one moved for a moment.
The ship buzzed beneath my feet. All I wanted to do was turn around and run. No more people, no more strangers. I wanted my bed.
The brunette in the group stepped in my way. “Hi, Melissa.” He knew my name. Why should I be I surprised? My not being familiar with them meant nothing. “Is it true your memory is gone?”
He had a gruff voice to go with his dark beard and a jagged scar running across his eye. I didn’t want to know the story behind how he got it, I wanted him to move out of my way. Since that wasn’t going to happen, I had to figure out what he wanted so we could move along.
“That’s true. If we know each other, I don’t recall. I’m told there’s some kind of protocol to keep me from knowing things about my past before I can get into the machine which might give my memories back to me.”
I needed to find a way to condense my statement, since I would likely need to say it at least a few more times.
Brown-haired guy nodded. “Okay. And you were at Master’s?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
“When you were there, did you happen to see a woman named Lilah? She’s smaller than you, dark hair, beautiful, coffee-colored skin. Eyes that see right through you.” He paused. “The prettiest woman there ever was.” The two blond men stepped on either side of him, their gazes all begging me to answer them.
I finally understood. “You lost your wife.”
“She was taken.” The taller of the two blond men spoke, barely over a whisper. I wondered if his voice had been damaged somehow, or if he always sounded strained. “When we lost our other three. A year ago.”
“Actually…” I retreated a step. The intensity of their expectant gazes made the walls seem closer than they were. Was the air in the room being sucked out? “I did know her. Lilah and Farrah, who was my helper, were friends. Farrah taught me. Lilah left shortly after I got there.”
The brunette with the scar grabbed my arm. “We looked and looked but we were convinced she was dead. Before Geoff, none of us could get into Master’s. Can you tell me where she went?”
“I…” Lilah’s exit had been such a glorious day. We’d all worn white, as we did when one of us wed, and thrown petals at her. She’d gone off with her new husband for a good life, I’d thought. The right existence.
“Melissa? Please?” He shook me slightly.
I stared at where he gripped my arm. What if I told them what happened, and they hurt me for it? How were they going to take the news that she’d wed?
“Let go of her, Frank.”
If I’d had to guess who would come to save me, inserting himself like a wall between me and the three men—going so far as to wrench Frank’s hand off my arm—Nolan wouldn’t have been it. We’d just had a big yelling match and yet there he stood.
“Nolan, you have to understand. Surely, you of all people get it…”
“First off,” Nolan interrupted. “She is answering you, so give her a break. Master’s makes them delicate, incapable, and dependent. No one returns from the dead. It might be easier for you to think of Lilah that way. In some ways, I preferred it.”
His words bruised my heart like he’d struck me. He preferred me dead than the way I was? I couldn’t think of anything crueler. What was the matter with me? Why did he hate me so much?
“Easy for you to stand there and preach,” Frank shot back. “Don’t you think that’s a little bit hypocritical? I’m not hurting her. We both know this girl could throw me to the ground and stomp on my face if she wanted to.”
“No.” Nolan shook his head. “She can’t.”
“She married a senator.” I was able to get the words out because I said them to the broad expanse of Nolan’s back and not the frantic gazes of three men getting really bad news. “I don’t remember his whole name. They don’t tell us much. Our husband comes and collects us. It’s all very romantic.”
I couldn’t keep the wistfulness o
ut of my voice. Lilah had the future I’d thought I wanted. Dreams didn’t disappear in one day because I had been given new information. I didn’t want to end up on Hall, but that didn’t necessarily mean I should stay on Artemis trying to figure out how to balance the attentions of five men, one of whom bellowed more than he spoke.
Even if his spine seemed strong, muscled, and so close I could reach out and stroke it if I felt so inclined…
I blinked rapidly trying to clear my head. “His first name was Patrick. He told her to call him Pat. That’s all I know.”
Frank called out around Nolan, his voice shaking. “Do you remember districts? There are hundreds upon hundreds of senators. He could be senator of some random nothing island in the middle of nowhere.”
“No. If I’d known it would be meaningless to me. I’m sorry. I can’t do better.”
I skirted around Nolan and the other three and hurried down the hall toward my room. Anxiety plagued my every step. There were a lot of things happening to me and little time to deal with any of it because it felt like I was always jumping from one situation to the next. How did anyone cope with this kind of stress?
The boy—Brody—had called me the rebel princess. Melissa-fucking-Alexander. What did that mean? I’d stumbled upon understanding I was Geoff, Wes, C.J., Dane, and—despite my doubts about why I would have put myself through emotional hell with him—
Nolan’s wife. By all that was good, that was a lot of husbands to deal with. Although thinking about it wasn’t making my head hurt. What did that indicate, if anything? The world wasn’t as clear cut as either the Nobles or Nomads would have me think. Nolan hated me. Geoff had kissed me. I’d hugely insulted Dane. Wes made no sense. And C.J…Well, I didn’t have a handle on him, either.
I was pregnant. Which one of them fathered the baby? It couldn’t be all five of them.
They’d thought I’d died. Why?
How had I ended on Master’s in the first place?
There was a bomb attached to my heart…
I jumped to my feet. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have time to think. My wet clothes from earlier sat in the sink where I’d left them. They needed cleaning before they started to stink like mildew. There had to be laundry facilities somewhere on the ship, or at least soap so I could wash them in the bathtub.
I swung open the door and nearly collided with Wes. He stepped out of my way, his arms in the air. “Wow. Hi. You okay?”
“No. I need to do laundry. I have one thing that fits—the guard outfit I came in—and I need to get it cleaned, since I can’t stay permanently half-naked in Dane’s shirt. Where can I do laundry?”
“Oh.” He rubbed at his chin. “Yeah. Come on, let’s go. I’ll show you.”
“Thanks.” I ran into the room to grab the towels I’d soaked, too. “Let’s stop by your room. We need to wash your shirts, assuming they all look like the one you have on.”
Wes laughed. “You want to do my laundry? For real?”
“Consider it my Master’s training. I can’t stand the idea of seeing a man walk around in dirty clothing. I’m going to presume you shower…” He didn’t smell bad. By contrast, Wes’ scent came across as clean and fresh.
“I shower at least once a day. If I get greasy working on Artemis’ engines, I shower again.”
I followed him along the hallway to his room. His was two doors away from mine. I wondered if that was true for all the guys. Were they all near me? His quarters were a pigsty, which somehow didn’t surprise me. The ship jerked slightly to the left, and I gripped the doorframe, my stomach suddenly in my throat.
With everything panicked inside of me, I’d put the thought of flying through space from my mind. At least temporarily.
“Hey.” Wes gripped my shoulder, squeezing it slightly. “It’s okay. Probably avoiding space junk. C.J. tends to overcompensate for it, jerks us around. If there was danger, he’d have hit the alarm button. We’re good.”
“Right. I hate everything about flying.”
My words made his eyebrows furrow. “Artemis will keep us safe. I promise.”
I needed to make light of this before I sunk to my knees and hyperventilated. “No offense, but your Artemis is one ugly ship and your room is a huge mess.”
His bed was smaller than my own. Twin-sized, and the covers were strewn everywhere. A desk, with equipment I didn’t recognize piled to the ceiling, stood in the corner. His armoire didn’t seem to have drawers anymore, which hardly mattered since all of his clothes were on the floor.
“Artemis isn’t ugly. She has character. Sure, she’s not perfect, but no one flies like she does. Trust me, I occasionally rebuild her engines. And she’s not my ship, by the way.” He looked around his room. “I come in here basically to pass out. I guess I’m living like an animal. No one ever cared.”
The lessons of Master’s were never far away. “One’s home environment defines one’s very soul. The way we live sets the course of our whole existence.”
“Then my disarray’s been suiting me perfectly.”
I looked over at him, meeting his gaze. “You’re funny when you’re not mad.”
“I’m funny even when I am mad.”
I walked further into the room, and the ship jolted again. Wes took my hand and squeezed my fingers. “I guess I’m going to have to get the drawers.”
“Where are they?”
“I left them somewhere else on the ship. I put…stuff in them I didn’t want to see anymore. Now, I’m thinking this might be a good time for it all to return. Thanks for pointing out how horrible it looks in here. I’d stopped seeing it.”
I was so tired of the way everyone half-spoke around me. “I’m not getting headaches anymore. When you say things that are probably about me—and I know it, because I’m not an idiot—I don’t hurt.”
Wes picked some of his clothes off the floor. “Have you told Dane?”
“When would I have had the chance to do that? I’m telling you. Tell Dane if you want to. All I want is to get you cleaned up. Call it a compulsion. Take off that shirt and pants. Presumably, you have on underwear. If you don’t, I guess we’ll deal with that, too. Start piling your stuff on the bed. I’ll come back and forth from the laundry room once you point me in that direction. By the end of the night, we’ll have you on track.”
Wes ran a hand through his reddish hair. “This is bizarre.”
“Agreed, but let’s get to it. When I can’t stand my own thoughts, the only thing to do is stay as busy as humanly possible. Since I have no function whatsoever on this ship, and no one wants to tell me the truth about anything, cleaning your room is my new task.”
Wes pulled his shirt over his head and threw it on the bed. For a second, I stopped breathing. He was lean but built like some kind of god. There wasn’t a muscle in his abdomen or his chest not distinctly visible. My mouth watered and the hot feeling I’d tried so hard earlier to get rid of surged to life. I had to get out of the room. Grabbing my own dirty clothes and a few of his before I backed toward the door, I hoped I could pull my exit off without looking like an idiot.
“Which way to the laundry?”
“Three doors to the right,” he called after me, and I practically ran to my destination.
Once in the hall I could breathe again. Wes taking off his shirt confirmed my suspicions. The men on this ship were far too good looking for my peace of mind. If I’d been their wife, I must have been constantly happy to live my sinful existence.
The baby rolled inside me. Did I need any more proof of the consequences of just how content I had been?
Finding the laundry room wasn’t a problem. I walked inside and stopped short. There were four washers and four dryers, and all of them must have been at one time top of the line. I gulped. Maybe fifty years ago…
Did they still work? It took me three tries to figure out which buttons operated what and then eventually I got one of them started.
“Artemis, you are a mess.”
Since
neither the washing machine nor the ship answered me, I steeled my resolve to not be so turned on by Wes and made my way back to his room. Back and forth I went until I’d gotten all his clothes, helped by the fact that he wasn’t present when I returned to his living space. When the washers were going, I set about ensuring the rest of his room was spotless. The laundry room had more than just detergent, of which it held in abundance. It also had cleaning supplies to wash up the ship. We might starve but we’d always be able to wash and dry our clothing or mop the floor.
I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing his floor when he came in.
“Shit, honey, what are you doing?” He dropped something with a very large bang and squatted next to me. “You’re pregnant. You shouldn’t be scrubbing. You’re not the maid.”
“Do we have a maid?” If we did I’d yet to see him or her.
He grabbed the sponge from my hand and threw it over his shoulder. I could have screamed. Someone, namely me, would have to pick that up. Wes grabbed one of the clean shirts I’d folded and put it on, slipping it over his head until it covered his impressive abs. My head spun from wanting to reach out and yet resisting the urge. “We don’t have cleaning help, but that doesn’t make it your job.”
I sat back, wiping the sweat off my brow with the back of my hand. “Are you going to?”
“I would.” He rubbed at eyes, the dark circles more evident when he did. “I…I fuck a lot of things up.”
I raised my hand and he took it, helping me to my feet. “You screw up cleaning?”
Wes let go of my fingers and sat on the bed. “There are things I do really well and other circumstances I really can’t seem to manage.”
My back ached. He was right. I shouldn’t have gotten on the floor. However, the part of the room I’d started scrubbing shone, which constituted at least something I could be proud of.
“Cleaning is one of those things you screw up?”
“I…I got thrown out of my house when I was fifteen for failing the ‘caring for myself’ portion of our school exams.” He covered his eyes with his hands.
Kidnapped by Her Husbands Page 10
