Kingston 691

by Donna McDonald

  Regardless of her lame coffee date, she was not going to let herself be discouraged. There were plenty potential men left on the list she’d compiled. She had sporadically arranged coffee and lunch dates throughout the week since it was her last free one before starting her work at Norton. Dr. Winters had called the day after she saw her. They’d reached a compromise of waiting one week to start instead of two.

  So today was all the closure the man waiting for her in her mother’s favorite sitting room was ever going to get. This wasn’t just about him. This was about her own healing too. She had very little energy left over from what happened to her to deal with King’s issues. He could just go back to his restaurant and the new life he had been building for himself before her mother talked him into rescuing her.

  Chanting her decision like a mantra, Seetha charged into the sitting room only to freeze in the doorway. Her determination to feel nothing sentimental got swept away by the pleasurable rush she got from the sight in front of her eyes. King was calmly sitting and reading something on his handheld. He looked so good in the chair. He looked like he belonged. It was like the room and she had both just been waiting for King to wake up from his Rumplestiltskin-like cybernetic sleep and come home to them.

  Seeing him sitting there so calmly was surreal. It reminded her of her studies in theoretical physics. There was a theory about time really being more of a big circle instead of happening along a linear line. In school, she’d thought those theories weren’t worthy of labeling themselves scientific. Now she was experiencing the past and the present converging in a giant smiling man once again sitting in the chair she had lovingly bought for him.

  The pain of those years without King instantly returned in full force. Seetha could all but hear her heart cracking open again as she stared at him. Finally, she couldn’t bear looking anymore. Forgetting her less than feminine appearance as she dealt with her shock, Seetha stumbled to the sofa across from King and fell onto it, putting her face immediately in her hands.

  Skipping all pleasantries, she mumbled through her fingers. “Did you come here to torture me, Kingston?” There was no way she could say a casual hello when she wanted so badly to climb into his lap and be held.

  King locked his screen and slipped the handheld back into his pocket. He hoped doing it slowly would give Seetha time to recover from her surprise to see him. He scanned her vitals as he watched and was alarmed by the thunderous sound of her heart beating so hard, not to mention the low, pain-filled moaning she wasn’t even conscious she was doing.

  “I’m sorry. That was the restaurant calling. I sort of slipped out to come here and have stayed away longer than I intended. I’m glad I did now. It’s good to see you again, Seetha.”

  Seetha dropped her hands and rolled her eyes before looking at him. “I know you don’t understand why I get so disturbed around you, but I can’t just turn my reactions off to make you more comfortable. You’d do me a big favor if you’d just forget I existed. I mean for real this time—not just as part of some cybernetic overhaul.” She stood and sighed. “And for the sake of the Goddess, please take that damn chair with you when you leave.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with the chair? I see no flaws in its design.” King ran his hands over the rich, textured fabric where his arms rested perfectly with no undue pressure on any one spot. As a cyborg, he could tell an engineer with an appreciation for size and dimension had picked it out.

  His gaze lifted and took in the current version of the woman he’d seen in the vid recordings. Seetha was gaunt and unhappy looking today. A woman her size needed to be filled out. If he got to feed her on a regular basis, it wouldn’t take long for her to pack on a few pounds. Now why would he be considering that? He narrowed his gaze as he pondered it.

  “There’s nothing structurally wrong with the chair,” Seetha said, swinging her arm. “It’s you in the chair. It makes me think of things I’m trying like hell to forget. Can’t your cyborg brain get how hard that is for me?”

  King’s gaze followed the arc of her hands as she talked. Even her arms were too thin. The desire to feed her was both strong…and strange feeling. He’d thought he’d come to say goodbye to her. Apparently the conclusion had been in error. What he really wanted to do was hold her, or let her lean on him again, like she had on the air transport when she slept.

  “I’d be happy to remove the chair from the house, but I don’t think that’s going to fix our problems. We seem to have some unfinished business between us.”

  Seetha snorted. “No—We—don’t. Any problems are totally mine. Your Cyber Husband days are over and I’m sure I’m just one more woman you hate because of it. You don’t even remember anything about our time together. I know damn well my absence wasn’t exactly keeping you awake at night before my mother told you what was going on. That’s pretty much the sum of our combined truths, isn’t it? I would think you’d be happy to have such a clean slate for your real do-over.”

  King settled his body more deeply into the chair and tented his hands in front of him. Everything about Seetha shouted go away, but every time she spoke, he heard a phantom husky laugh echoing inside him somewhere. His slacks got tighter just thinking about her hand tracing the same paths. Sex had never, to the best of his human side’s recollection, ever been something he let determine his actions. The woman before him might be the single exception. It required investigating and he couldn’t do that with her pushing him away.

  “I’m sorry if my presence here causes you additional distress. It wasn’t my intention when I decided to come see how you were adapting,” he offered.

  King blinked at the lightning suddenly flashing again behind his eyes. He had merely said the same words he’d said to Annalise. Now that they weren’t in danger, and he was finally confronting Seetha in person, there was a lot of things he wanted to say to her. None of it included saying goodbye. Apparently, his brain was having some sort of fit over his waffling.

  “Being sorry doesn’t help anything, King. While I’m grateful you rescued me, I’d prefer we never saw each other again. It would be easier for both of us.”

  Since he could hear in Seetha’s voice that she was ready to end things, King decided he had to stop her somehow. After running through possible scenarios with high failure points, he decided there was only one thing that would work in their situation and buy him the time he needed. He decided to do the one thing a cyborg found nearly impossible to do. He decided to lie until he could decide what he wanted from the woman confronting him.

  King took a moment and consulted the notes he’d kept about the vids he’d watched. It didn’t take long to find what he sought. “You bought this chair for me to use at your mother’s. It fit me so well, you bought an identical one for our house. I think that’s why I feel so comfortable in it. Do you still have the other one?”

  “Oh fucking hell…how do you know that? Mother told you…didn’t she?”

  Beside the factoid reference in his notes, he’d written “proof of her affection” and other potential explanations for why Seetha had bought two chairs that fit him perfectly. Seeing her have a meltdown over his statement was more drama than he’d bargained for though—her swearing was evidence of the stress he was causing. It took all his effort not to run to Seetha’s side when she literally fell back down on the couch and went pale.

  “No…just fucking no. I don’t believe you came up with that on your own. Why are you pretending you remember us?”

  For a couple of minutes, all Seetha could do was shake her head in disbelief. It was like hearing the impossible, only she couldn’t handle hoping for the impossible any more. She had set the impossible aside already.

  “I’m not pretending anything.” King rubbed his forehead, ignoring the nagging pain as he forced his secret thoughts and notes into words. “Annalise told me how clear her memory was of the two of you buying the chair. I suddenly got a bad headache and started sweating. Next thing I know I’m yelling the ‘f’ word and you
r mother is laughing at me. Then you came home. The moment I saw you, I knew we weren’t over yet, Seetha. You can’t convince me you think we’re finished either. I think we both need closure of some sort.”

  Seetha shook her head. “No, I don’t need anything from you…and this is not happening. You’ve been ignoring me. All this time—I know you forgot me, King—you forgot everything. They erased your storage area and rebooted you back to the beginning. You lost everything we were to each other. I know I did not imagine losing my life with you. I have witnesses. There is no way your body could have kept seven years of memories hidden for so long without someone figuring it out before now.”

  King thought quickly. “Amnesia patients do it all the time. My restoration scientist compared me to one the other day, and I think he was right. Sometimes amnesiacs get it all back. Maybe I’m going to get everything back as well. It was what I was thinking about before the restaurant called. I was wondering how soon I was going to get it all back.”

  “Why would you want it back?” Seetha demanded, running a hand over her hair. “I bought you, King. I was your third wife, and I bought you just like the first two did. I saw your picture online and spent my entire savings to have you in my bed. For the first year or so, I used you like the multi-million dollar man-toy you were. I swear I’m not being crude in my explanation. It’s just the truth of what we were in those early days. Do you remember those?”

  “No, I don’t remember any of the early days,” King said quietly, glad he could speak some of the truth. Outright lying physically hurt. “What I know about us is like the kind of knowing you get from reading a book or watching an entertainment vid. Most of what I’m calling memories is like looking at shadows of events. But I absolutely know we were once important to each other. I knew it when there wasn’t any data to support it. Your presence upsets my equilibrium, and frankly that just never happens to me. From everything I remember about my human life, women never distracted me like you do.”

  Seetha put her face into her hands again. She was shaking and felt sick. He sounded so believable. When she lowered her hands, she saw herself being studied by the cyborg who had saved her. There was no specific recall in his gaze. Her agony was split in two. Who and what was King now? And why was he really here? All she could see was her unhappy past happening to her all over again. The hope…the trying…the disappointment when King looked right through her.

  “I can’t. I can’t do this, and I can’t hope again. I just don’t have it in me.” Seetha stood and turned. “I have to go…to my room. I need to lie down before I get sick. If you remember what you say you do, then you can find your own way out. I’m not prepared to deal with you today.”

  Seetha headed for the doorway when his voice stopped her.

  “I’m not going away again, whatever comes of our exchanges. Why don’t you have dinner with me? Let’s get to know each other for real. It’s true, I have a lot of confusion about us, but you could clear it up for me. Seetha, you don’t have to be afraid of me—I swear.”

  Hearing King say her name so sweetly and express what sounded like genuine concern was her undoing. Lifting a hand to her mouth to stifle her sobs, she bolted without another word.

  She passed her mother coming in from the garden and shook her head. “No. Don’t say anything,” she begged as she dashed by.

  It was imperative to put as much distance as she could between her and the man she’d never gotten over.

  ***

  More than a little alarmed, Annalise watched her sobbing adult daughter make her escape. She didn’t know what was more shocking to witness—the crying or the running away. Neither were things Seetha ever did. She turned to face the giant man who walked slowly towards her.

  “Was Seetha crying because you got your closure? Or is it ass-kicking time, Kingston West?”

  “Neither. I asked her to dinner and you saw her answer to me. I merely suggested to Seetha the logical way to handle our existing confusion is to get to know each other again—like normal people do.”

  “Logical?”

  “Yes.” King nodded to back up his declaration, then he put his hand to his head before it could explode from his volatile thoughts. “Seetha’s upset because I told her some things I recalled about us.” What he said was technically the truth—or at least half a truth.

  Annalise lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes as she tilted her head back and up. She searched Kingston’s gaze. “I don’t believe you got your memories back either. I know better.”

  “I didn’t—at least not all of them.” King winced and laughed. “Damn it, Annalise. Answering your questions makes my head hurt.”

  “Good. I wish I could do worse to you. You’re lying to my daughter. I want to know why this instant,” Annalise declared.

  King’s eyebrows shot up at the threat, and at the accusation, which was true but wasn’t supposed to show. “Regretfully, it doesn’t matter what you believe. It only matters what Seetha believes. I had an epiphany while sitting in the chair the two of you bought for me. If you want a list of everything I know about my relationship to Seetha, I’ll be happy to email you a copy. I guarantee you will be shocked at what I now know.”

  “Are you saying your memories magically returned in the ten minutes I was out in the garden?”

  “Something like that,” King agreed, wincing at her glare. “Look—have I let you down since you asked for my help? No. I brought Seetha back when I said I would, so trust me in this too. I’m trying my best to do what’s best for Seetha and me. I just don’t know what that exactly is yet.”

  Annalise crossed her arms. “This is about what Seetha is going through. I don’t think you have a sufficient understanding of her feelings.”

  King frowned and nodded. “You’re right—I don’t. But I’m not going to get it with Seetha refusing to interact with me. Talk her into going on a date with me if you can, Annalise. I’ll be at the restaurant working and waiting to hear from her.”

  ***

  Annalise tapped on the bedroom door softly, entering the room at an equally soft command to enter.

  “Seetha—honey. All this crying in your bed reminds me of when you were in high school. You had a different sobbing drama every day. Then you went away to college and came home a tough-as-metal engineer. I don’t think I’ve seen you cry since, not even when King was returned in his rebooted condition.”

  Seetha rolled to her back and stared at the ceiling of her room. “Oh, I cried plenty then. I just didn’t do it in front of anybody. Today he said some very disturbing things. Do you think King’s lying to me about remembering?”

  Annalise looked down into her daughter’s hopeful gaze and couldn’t tell her the truth of her thoughts about it. Now she was being as bad as King. “I don’t know, sweetheart.”

  Seetha sniffled and stared at the ceiling. “After all this time, do you think it could actually happen?”

  Annalise paused, but then finally shook her head. “No. I don’t. But why would King bother with pretending? Cyborgs don’t lie, Seetha. Their logic chip won’t let them and I believe he still has that in place. I think it was causing him headaches today when he tried.”

  “Great. I’m crying over the only cyborg who lies. What am I supposed to do about him?”

  Annalise bent and kissed her daughter’s cheek. “I don’t know. That’s something only you can decide. My job is to help hide the body if you decide to kill him. Maybe we can sell off his cybernetics as scrap and bury all his organic parts in the backyard. King could fertilize next year’s crop of prize winning tomatoes.”

  Seetha laughed at her mother’s joking and sighed so heavily her body moved the bed. She peered up into her mother’s supportive gaze.

  “I know you don’t mean any of that. You like King too much to bury him in the backyard. I’m going to have to see him…and I guess I have to talk to him. But I can’t do it in clothes that make me look like a twenty-first century war refugee. Being like I am now, I really
don’t understand those vid actresses who barf on purpose to get in this condition. I miss my curves and my breasts.”

  “Of course you do. You always looked great, though it is usually healthier to be a little thinner than you were there for a while. What can I do to help you, sweetheart?”

  Seetha snorted as she rolled to a sitting position. “Mother…now don’t laugh at this…but if I have to go face my lying ex-husband, I can’t do it in anything in my closet. Take me shopping again. I need something that makes me look like I still have a real woman’s body, even though I don’t.”

  “Now that you’re eating again regularly, it won’t be long before you’ll be at a more reasonable weight for your height, Seetha. You’ve already put a little back on,” Annalise said.

  “Not enough,” Seetha declared, rising from her bed. “I want something red…and sexy. Maybe if I look it, I might actually start to feel it again.”

  “A light color would make you look less frail.”

  Seetha nodded. “Okay. Fine. You can choose the color. Just make me look like a woman again. I want to get talking to King over with before I lose my nerve.”

  Annalise nodded. “I’ll get my jacket. The gardening can wait.”

  Chapter 10

  It had been a little arrogant of her to assume she’d get into his restaurant without a reservation, but Seetha had honestly thought things would work out in her favor. Maybe it was because King had finally come to see her. Maybe it was because of what he’d said to her mother about waiting for her—an idea which had caused many stomach flutters.

  As the maître d’ searched the reservation list for an opening, Seetha looked around. Amazement had her chewing her lip at the beautiful tables, and at the polished real wood bar King had no doubt spent a fortunate acquiring. Judging from all the smiling customers happily eating, who had smartly booked early reservations, it wouldn’t take long for him to show a profit.