Cheating Time

by T. R. Graves

  My brows wrinkled. I was trying to decide if I was shocked or hurt.

  "The point is it didn't matter what my head screamed. As soon as I saw your face, my heart raced hysterically and took control of my every action. It was almost as if self-preservation took over. If you died, there was some part of me that would die, too. There would never be another woman in the world for me. It was then I realized I'd never been with a walking, talking woman who made me feel as alive as you—despite your comatose status—who'd ever made my heart skip a beat. I needed to see you up, awake, and moving around. Tonight, I saw that you are everything I'd hoped," he said sweetly.

  I closed my eyes and shook my head.

  "What?" He asked.

  "Nothing. I just don't know what to do with you. You're so brutally honest. I've never had to deal with anyone like you. In my house, we keep secrets. Not because we don't love each other. It seems that we do so because we love each other so much. I know my parents love me, but I didn't even know I'd been promised to you until you told me. In fact, I've learned a lot of things in the last week.

  "Don't get me wrong. I'm not angry with my parents. I believe they thought they were protecting me… or they thought they'd be able to change my future before I'd actually have to marry you. I don't know. I just know I've never known anyone who is so open and honest," I said right before a giant yawn escaped, and I closed my eyes.

  "I am what you see, Carles. Nothing more. Nothing less. I'm not sure the same can be said for your Surrogate Soldier," Thorne said.

  My eyes flew open, and Thorne stared at me pointedly. He wanted me to ask questions. I didn't. I was afraid I might find out Thorne was right, that Jayden was working with Barone to keep my family under the president's thumb.

  When Thorne realized I wasn't going to be baited, he looked back down at his notebook and began writing again.

  I wanted to hop from my cot and go find Jayden. I wanted to make him tell me everything he knew. I wanted the lies to stop and the truth to be splayed out and ready for me to accept.

  I lay there knowing Jayden was more secretive than Mom, Dad, and Gran combined. He'd never tell me anything he'd not been authorized to disclose. Everything about that hurt. Until Thorne reminded me otherwise, I'd convinced myself that Jayden was more Procreate than Surrogate.

  Jayden is a Surrogate Soldier above anything else, I thought as I drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 19

  Preparatory Academy

  Carlie

  I wasn't sure how long I'd been asleep before I awakened to a hand covering my mouth.

  Before I could jerk around or groan loudly or take a bite of the hand, Jayden whispered in my ear, "It's me, Carlie. Meet me outside so we can talk."

  His movements were so quick, graceful, and sinuous that he was up and out of the tent before I knew it. Looking around as if I were afraid to get caught, I saw that Rorie was still asleep. Only now I noticed she had a purple stuffed bear tucked under her chin and squeezed into her chest like it was her lifeline.

  Thorne was passed out on his desk. His notebook was under his cheek and the computer's timed-out glyphics twisted and twirled above his head, lighting up the entire tent.

  Ignoring my need to stretch and yawn loudly, I slipped on the slippers next to my cot and left the tent. Jayden was waiting. As soon as I let the flap close behind me, he had my hand in his and was leading me toward the camp's more isolated periphery.

  There, he pulled me into his chest and held me like I was the thing most precious to him. Everything about him told me he needed to hug me, needed me to hug him back, so I did.

  "I thought I'd lost you," he said in my ear. "I knew it was bad when Gran overrode the secret identities your mom had loaded in our MicroPharms and reentered our real names. Then he turned off the block your mother had on the two of us. When he did that, he put us back on the map. Because you were dying, it instantly alerted MediTech. We were all fortunate the weather was good and they could reach you quickly."

  I was just as quiet as him when I asked, "Where are Gran and Tawney? Why didn't you stay with them?"

  Jayden kissed my head. "Your dad has trained me my entire life to guard you. He ordered me to stay with you no matter what. They wouldn't let me get on that damn MediChopper, so I traveled night and day until I made it to you. I won't leave you again. No matter what," he swore.

  "Jayden, I'm better off here than they are out there by themselves. Seriously, you saw the two of them dragging their way through the forest," I complained.

  "Gran is more resilient than you give him credit for. The second you got into trouble, he took matters into his own hands. He gave you an extra shot of the venom antibody after realizing the MicroPharm wasn't working well enough. He asked me if I knew the last time your MicroPharm had been refilled, as if I'd been the one living with you for the last six months."

  "Mom refilled it the day before we left. I-I think it had been working overtime. Pumping adrenaline through me so I could go farther and stay up longer and do more," I explained.

  Jayden nodded as if they'd figured that out.

  "Without asking me if it was okay, he accessed your mom's MicroPharm controlling device, and the rest is history."

  "So you think they're fine?" I asked.

  "I think Gran was on a mission to get Tawney to the next safe house. He will not rest until he does just that. When I make contact with your Dad, I'll see if he's heard anything."

  I cringed. "I messaged Mom and Dad a few hours ago. They've not heard from them."

  Jayden's lips pursed.

  Suddenly, I was the one consoling him. "You're right, Jayden. Gran loves Tawney too much to let anything happen to her. He had an entire backpack full of rations. They'll be able to survive until they make it to the safe house. Then they'll rest. Mom said it's a place Tawney will love. There's a hammock in a tree house where she will spend all day every day reading," I said, and I could almost imagine her doing just that.

  Jayden smiled also. He knew as well as I did that Tawney would love nothing more.

  "What are we going to do now, Jayden?" I asked.

  Jayden pulled me a little tighter. "You're going to the preparatory academy. Your dad will demand I get accepted into their guard and that I get assigned as your personal Surrogate. Barone won't do anything that will upset your mother now that he has her back. He'll agree," Jayden said.

  I hoped and prayed everything was going to be as easy as he assumed.

  "What are we going to do about Thorne? I mean… you heard what Gran said, and you know as well as I do that Dad doesn't know what he's asked us to do," I reminded him.

  Again, Jayden's lips pursed and his jaw was clenched.

  "I know. Let's just get through this. Then we'll decide what else we need to do and if we need to talk to your dad about it," Jayden responded.

  "Rorie is Thorne's twin sister. I'm not sure if you realized that. I-I just want you to know I like them, and I-I think they're as much victims as we are."

  "Yeah, I saw he was pretty protective of her. I suspected there was something there, but I never thought she was his twin. Either way, I'm not quite ready to risk your life confiding in him. For now, everything we know needs to stay between the two of us. Do you hear?" Jayden ordered like he thought of me as one of his soldiers.

  I guess that is exactly what I am now.

  My head bobbed. "I hear you."

  "I'm going to take you back to his tent, and I'm going to guard it from the outside just like I have been all night."

  I looked him in the eyes. "I thought you were in the Surrogates' tent, resting."

  "No can do. I've been outside that tent all night, and I'll be out there the rest of the night."

  I eyed him suspiciously. "Were you eavesdropping?"

  My face was burning. I tried to remember everything I'd said. My face got hotter when I thought about Thorne's kiss.

  Jayden leaned down into my ear and whispered, "I don't care who he thinks he is to you. I
f he kisses you again, he's going to find out exactly who I am to you."

  I wasn't the one in danger, and I was scared of the Jayden issuing the warning.

  I leaned my forehead into his chest. "I'm so embarrassed."

  "You shouldn't be. He was the one who started it." Jayden cleared his throat. "I have to admit it would've been a nice ego booster if you'd pushed him away and slapped him, but at least I know you weren't into it. Not like you are when we kiss."

  "I didn't know what to do. There was some part of me that knew I was supposed to be okay with him. There was a part of me that wanted to be okay with him kissing me. Theoretically, all the right physiological surges were happening." Jayden's entire body went rock hard.

  Trying to figure out how to explain what I needed him to know in a gentler and less brutally honest way, I bit my lip. Then I grabbed his hand and spread his fingers open and placed his open palm over my racing heart.

  "All of them but the one that is the most important. The one that stops and starts here," I said before gulping loudly.

  Jayden's eyes locked with mine, and he smiled like he'd just been given the best gift of his life.

  "It's because it belongs to you, Jayden. No one else," I whispered into his ear before kissing his neck just below.

  When I did that, Jayden came undone. He snatched me up and kissed me long and hard all the while walking with my feet floating above the ground until my back hit the trunk of a tree.

  Pinning me, Jayden kissed me everywhere he could. Forehead, eyes, cheeks, neck, collarbone, shoulders. Finally, he stopped on my lips, parting them with his tongue and deepening our embrace in a way that told me Jayden wanted me in every way I was willing to give him.

  The palms of both his hands were splayed open on my back and getting to know every inch of me without moving into forbidden territory. With him kissing me like that and me wanting him like I did, I was sure I'd never even consider refusing him, but he was afraid enough of my father to keep it as first base as possible.

  After a long few minutes of kissing, Jayden pulled back and with a hoarse voice said, "You have mine, too, Carlie. You've had it for a long time. I've just never been brave enough to tell you."

  I rolled my eyes. "You'd rather fight with me than tell me something like that?"

  He chuckled. "It wasn't necessarily you I was afraid of. Your father is a very scary man. I've seen him in action. You haven't."

  I laughed, aloud. "You are a Surrogate Soldier. Nothing is supposed to scare you… least of all the man who thinks you walk on water."

  "He'd be angry if he knew, Carlie. You don't understand."

  I grabbed his cheeks in my hands. "He loves you like a son, Jayden. Why would he care if we were together?"

  "I don't blame him. He knows it would make your life hard, and he loves you too much to see you walk through life with the stigma that comes with being the mate of a Surrogate. It means people will treat you like you have social leprosy… and you'll never be able to have kids… he'd never have grandkids. That's an important reason to walk away from this right now, Carlie. Walk away before it's any harder on us and your family disowns you," he pleaded, and it came from an altruistic place so deep inside Jayden that I wanted to weep for him.

  "I can't," I said simply. "I love you, and I can't."

  His entire body relaxed, and he let out a long, relieved sigh. "I love you, too." He kissed my forehead. "I love you, too," he whispered again. "Now, I need to get you back to your tent before anyone knows you're gone."

  I wanted to argue with him and tell him I didn't care if I ever went back to that tent. I wanted to let him know my body was experiencing the surge of hormones that Thorne had tried to elicit in me earlier, and they would prevent me from going to sleep anytime soon. Most of all, I just wanted to stay with him.

  In the end, I didn't say a word because he had things he needed to do, and I wasn't going to make him think I was too weak to be without him. Jayden wasn't a man who would want a woman who thought he needed to be with her every second of the day.

  Besides, that's not who I am.

  He intertwined his fingers with mine and led me back to my tent. After a kiss on the cheek, he nudged me inside. When I turned around with a plan to—quietly—make my way back to my cot, I saw Thorne leaning back in his chair and looking at me with every ounce of betrayal he felt.

  Floating in the air in front of him were images of heart and brain rhythms, a pulse rate, blood and pulmonary pressures, and oxygen saturation. I didn't need to ask whose they were. There was no doubt in my mind that he'd seen exactly how my body reacted when I was with Jayden.

  I cleared my throat and decided there was nothing to say. My relationship with Jayden wasn't one I was going to be explaining to anyone. Not even the betrayed physician sitting in front of me.

  Chapter 20

  Sous-chefs

  Carlie

  "Rorie," I heard Thorne whisper somewhere in my dreams.

  I curved into a tighter ball and tried to fall back into the deep sleep I'd just been enjoying.

  "Rorie, it's time to get up, sweetie," Thorne whispered.

  My eyes popped open, and I saw Thorne wiping the hair from her face. He leaned over and kissed her forehead.

  "Rorie," he sang. "It's time to get up."

  "Thorne, I'm still sleepy." She smiled up at him, stretching and yawning.

  "Shh!" he cautioned.

  I sat up and stretched just like she had. "No need to be quiet. I'm up."

  "You barely slept. You need to get more rest," Thorne insisted.

  "I'm fine. Besides, I'm Rorie's sous-chef until I go to the academy," I said, grinning over to Rorie.

  Rorie jumped up and bounced while clapping her hands. "Carles, you're going to help me in the kitchen. That'll be so much fun."

  Rorie's exuberance, her trust, her affections for her brother were nothing short of contagious. When I caught a glance of Thorne, he was standing with his mouth open, staring at me.

  "What?" I asked.

  "No one has ever offered to help her. Everyone here has let her work her fingers to the bone, and not one person has thanked her or offered to help her," he explained.

  "Well, I'm going to lead by example. Maybe if others see me helping, they'll realize how rude they've been," I said, shrugging. "If not. It won't matter. Working together, Rorie and I can run circles around these people around here. We don't need their help."

  Rorie was bobbing her head vehemently.

  She wrapped her hand around mine and said, "Come on, Carles. This is going to be so much fun."

  I wanted to laugh. The last thing I would ever consider fun was kitchen duty, but I wasn't about to tell Rorie that. She loved it too much for me to put it down.

  Thorne followed when we walked toward the door. I turned around and said, "Where are you going?"

  He looked shy. "I thought I'd come and help."

  I eyed him like he'd eyed me earlier and regurgitated his own words. "You barely slept. You need to get more rest."

  He chuckled. "I got all I needed. Now let's go. These people'll be up soon. There'll be riots if there's no coffee and breakfast."

  "Whatever. Suit yourself," I said, letting Rorie pull me toward the galley.

  * * *

  Two hours later, there were pans of eggs, trays of sausage and bacon, and baskets of biscuits waiting for the camp's infirmary workers and soldiers to come through the food line. Thorne and I had gone out of our way to follow Rorie's every instruction. Even then, there were times Rorie wasn't pleased with our offer of hard labor. She very gently asked that I whisk the eggs fast and hard so they would be fluffy. In my humble opinion, I was doing just that. In Rorie's, I was not.

  After a few minutes and before I totally ruined her good name, she took the whisk from me and began beating the eggs with more force than I would have ever thought possible for the petite girl.

  I stuck my tongue out at Thorne after he laughed when she took the task away from me, and
I got even by laughing when she told him she might have to throw his pan of biscuits away they were so misshapen. It was obvious Thorne wasn't used to anything but love and praise coming from his sister. He'd never met her alter ego, the one that wanted every aspect of the meal to be perfect.

  Soon the galley was full and the din of conversation and the clattering of trays and glasses and silverware echoed off the walls, making it seem louder than it actually was.

  I was serving eggs when a tray was pushed under the glass divider. I put one spoon of eggs—per Rorie's orders—on the tray. When the tray stayed put, I glanced up. Jayden was the soldier demanding more. He gave me a lopsided grin and a wink. I blushed like a little girl, shook my head, and gave him another spoon of eggs, making sure to hide what I'd done from Rorie.

  After spending hours with her, I'd learned she was a rule follower through and through. If Thorne told her to do something, she was going to do it or die trying. It only took me a few minutes to realize rules made Rorie feel safe. As long as she did what she was told and followed all the rules, she wouldn't get in trouble.

  Holding up the line, Jayden asked, "Can you stop and eat with me?"

  I looked at the long line and shook my head. "No can do. I'm Rorie's sous-chef. If she cooks, I cook. If she serves, I serve. If she cleans, I clean. I won't be finished until she is."

  Rorie looked over at me and smiled. She loved having my help, but more than anything, she loved working side by side with her brother.

  "You're holding up the line. Do you want anything else?" Thorne asked Jayden gruffly.