He needed me to move my hand so he could speak, which made me smile and him laugh. The sound cut the tension in the room, and he kissed me again, this time on my nose. “My wife, ah, she came in. Her friend had been through the process. Hadn’t recovered any memories. She came in to yell at me. It was a bad day. I’d reached the end. Guilt ate at me, the process for recovery wasn’t perfect, my mother was dead, and the blame fell on me. I yelled at her, threw her out. She came the next day and the next day after that. Every time I kicked her out, she laughed at me. One day she simply asked if I wanted to come with her. Since it was go with her or throw myself out of an air lock, I left The Bridge and joined her family.”
“You didn’t even know each other. It couldn’t have been love.”
“Eventually, for me, it was.”
I couldn’t miss the aside of his answer. “Just for you?”
“I’d follow her into the pits of hell. I’m not sure she felt the same. We all have to share her. It’s part of the deal. The Nomads make family groups. One woman, many men, all committed to her. It works for us. That said, it doesn’t lend itself to a lot of nights like this one.” He kissed my fingers. “And that is my sad story. Lots of woe is me, I know.”
“Dane.” I threw my arms around his neck and held him close. What sort of woman was I in this other version of myself, that I hadn’t made him feel loved? Why had I brought him here if I hadn’t intended to do that? He’d made terrible mistakes, and they were eating him alive from the inside out. He wasn’t blameless, but neither could he be expected to foresee every outcome to things other people hired him, at sixteen years old, to do.
“It isn’t lost on me that you had your mind erased using my technique. I haven’t failed to see the perverse road that brought us here.”
“Enough.” I kissed him hard on the mouth. “I’m sure she loved you. And if you need me to forgive you for building the technology that took my memory, then I forgive you.”
His eyes watered before he blinked fast. “You are kind in a way I never could have anticipated.”
“Let’s go to sleep.” I needed time to make sense of everything I learned. “Do you need more of the Russo’s to do so? Can you sleep without it?”
“I’m not going to change how any of this feels by using any more tonight. I want my memory of it as it happened. Beautiful and sad and hot. If that means I don’t sleep as well, then fine.”
Whatever happened, whatever choices I had to make, I wasn’t losing Dane.
“Let’s get some shut eye. Tomorrow I need you to figure out how to get this thing out of my heart so I don’t explode into a million pieces.” I’d meant it to be a lighthearted joke about the device we both knew was in my body.
He didn’t laugh. Instead, he kissed me hard on the mouth, a reclaiming again. “I won’t lose you. Do you understand? I know what it’s like to be alone in space without you. I’ll get it out of your heart. I promise I will.”
The baby kicked so hard against my stomach Dane felt the movement. He looked at my stomach, and then grinned at me. My daughter had saved me a response.
I pressed my head against his chest and closed my eyes. Sleep didn’t come for me. Rather quickly, however, Dane was out cold. Surprise made me stare hard at him. He’d been so worked up, I’d expected sleep to come hard for him, too. When I let myself, I pulled away a bit from where I gazed at him. He rested, a content look on his face. Had telling me helped?
His story wasn’t so different from Geoff’s. They’d both been men lost to the darkness, brought to the Nomads to serve a purpose, who ended up during their darkest days on the Artemis and, even though they wouldn’t say it outright, married to me. Why had I collected such wounded souls and not better protected them?
None of my thoughts brought me rest. Two hours later, when the clock told me it was dawn, I crept out of bed and left him sleeping under my sheets.
I had to go in the machine. How else would I ever make anything right?
* * * *
I managed to clean the kitchen and make some semblance of breakfast from the very limited supplies by mixing raisins into oatmeal before I plowed into Nolan. He jerked to a stop as I whacked into him in the hallway. His hands steadied me before I hit the floor.
“I’m always having to stop you from falling over.” His tone told me how boring he found the whole thing.
“Sorry?” I stepped away and then paused. “When was the other time?”
“When you decided to faint on Dane’s medical bed.”
Oh, he meant when I’d just been told I had a device attached to my heart which might very well end my life. “My apologies for the inconvenience.”
I’d spent the night with Dane, holding him in my arms and being held. I’d heard his story. He was to blame for a lot of his struggles although some of it wasn’t anything but circumstance. At his heart, he was tender. I hadn’t gotten to know Wes as well yet, but he’d opened up. I’d never think of his eyes as angry again, more like wounded. Geoff, on the shuttle, had been nothing but kind. C.J. still proved a riddle to me but he seemed funny, nice to have around.
What the hell had I seen in Nolan?
Particularly since I knew from Geoff’s story that I’d been with him first.
Had I liked being talked down to and treated badly all the time?
“I didn’t say it inconvenienced me. I said I keep having to do it.”
I held out my hand. “Here’s the deal. I think in our conversation yesterday I said something that hurt you a lot more than I intended. I’m still not exactly clear about how that happened, since you intended to insult me and I didn’t intend to harm you. Yet here I am, saying I’m sorry. Can we start over? I’ve asked both Wes and Dane if they would be my friend. I mean to ask C.J. and Geoff, too. How about you? Maybe we could try friendship. There’s lots of things I’m apparently not allowed to talk about. I’ll just say this baby might be reason to try.”
He didn’t answer me right away nor did he move even the slightest. Nolan became stillness. His black hair, pierced ears, and the tattoo on his neck were all designed to intimidate. They worked on me, even as I recognized them for what they were.
It was everything I could do to stop myself from taking a step away from him. If I did that, this was over. He’d never take me seriously or be willing to co-exist with me on the Artemis.
“I’m not your friend.”
His answer didn’t surprise me, although it disappointed me a great deal. My shoulders fell. “You hate me because I’m your wife and I’m also not. That’s it, right? We might as well talk plainly. This idea everyone has of hanging on to this one bit of protocol is ludicrous. We all know who I am.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Someone’s been breaking protocol with you? To the extent that you have knowledge about who you are?”
Huh. Okay. He hadn’t known they’d broken protocol. Nolan hadn’t been there when most of it had come out.
“I’m not an idiot. It didn’t take a great deal to figure it out.”
“Motherfucker.” His turning around and punched the wall hard several times.
I reacted without thinking. If he kept pounding on the wall, he’d hurt himself. “Stop it.” I grabbed his arm, trying to wrench it backwards, and managed to get thrown to the side instead. He didn’t mean to hurt me. I saw it the second I hit the other wall. His eyes widened, and he rushed toward me as I sank to the floor.
“Shit. Are you okay?” He dropped to his knees in front of me. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Why did you grab me? What sane person grabs a guy when he’s pounding the wall?”
My arm hurt where it slammed into the wall, but other than that I felt mostly okay. Maybe the pain would come later.
“What sane person pounds on a ship’s wall?”
He shook his head, running his hand over his bald head. “I never said I was sane.” He took my arm to help me rise, which proved the wrong move. Pain shot from my shoulder to my fingers. I cried out and then wished I had
n’t. This was a man who only respected strength. He let go of where he’d held me, and I gasped when he scooped me up instead, like I was a baby.
“We’re going to see Dane. He’ll fix you.”
This was only going to get worse. “He’s not in the medical bay.”
“I’ll get him from his room. I’ll buzz him there.”
If I gritted my teeth any tighter, I might never get my jaw open again. “You’re going to need to buzz him in my room. He’s asleep in there.”
Nolan quit moving. If I wasn’t pressed against his chest in his arms, I wouldn’t have felt his sudden intake of breath. What exactly was the way to handle this situation? When I had to tell one husband I’d had sex with the other?
He poked at his wrist and after a second a beep sounded. “Dane, get your ass up. I think I broke her.” Nolan clicked at his wrist again and the beep went off.
“It’s just my arm. I’m sure I’m okay. The baby is moving.”
He started walking again. “He spent the night in your room in what capacity?”
“I don’t think I want to answer you.”
“Which answers me just fine.” Nolan spoke through clenched teeth. As I was doing the same myself, we were both bound to give ourselves headaches.
“Hold on,” I yelled, and he actually stopped. “We were in the middle of a conversation before you went and had a temper tantrum and hit the wall.”
What was it about this man? I could never manage to speak to him without ending up shouting at the top of my lungs.
“Well, maybe we could have finished it if you hadn’t been a dumbass and grabbed onto me when I swung.”
“Why do you even care? You told me you won’t be my friend.”
“Hey.” Geoff’s voice sounded into the hallway. “What the hell is going on here?”
Nolan swung around, both of us able to see Geoff as he stormed toward us. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt, both of which were covered in grease.
“I broke her. She grabbed onto my arm when I hit the wall.”
“I’m not broken. He hurt my arm. It was an accident. Let’s go to the medical bay. Dane will be coming any second.”
Nolan grunted and walked again, this time with Geoff close on his heels. “Dane spent the night in her room.”
“Oh.” Geoff’s voice rose a notch. “Are we allowed to do that again? Awesome.”
My cheeks must be the color of a tomato. I wanted to say something, but I was too busy wishing I could vanish.
“We shouldn’t be. What happened to recovering her? To treating her like a temporary problem until our girl returned?”
“Hey.” Geoff strode faster and punched him in the arm. “I was never there for any conversation like that. I was too busy saving her life and bringing her here. If you dumbasses had spoken to me, I would have told you that wasn’t going to work. She’s Melissa. She’s smarter than all of us.” He paused. “And I don’t believe Dane would have agreed to it, either. He designed the science. She’s a fully cognizant person.”
The ship jolted, and Geoff grabbed the wall. “C.J. isn’t still driving?”
“No, it’s Wes.” Nolan shook his head. “Something must be in the way. He’s changing course.”
I hadn’t been able to speak, not to utter a word since Nolan called me a temporary problem. The ramifications of his statement hit me harder than him throwing me into the wall. Nolan had gotten me into the room and set me on the table when Dane rushed through the door. He was still pulling on his shirt and tucking it in when he entered. He wasn’t wearing any shoes.
“Talk to me. What happened?” Before anyone answered he plugged numbers into the table. “Someone answer.”
“She tried to stop me from punching the wall, and I threw her into it. I didn’t mean it.”
Dane swung around to stare at him. “You threw a pregnant woman into the wall?”
“It was a mistake.” Nolan looked at the floor. “And, since we’re being all judgmental, how was it in her room last night?”
Dane turned toward the table. “I don’t have to answer that. You know the rules. Unless you’re in there with us, you don’t get to ever know.”
“We’re not supposed to mess with her. She’s a…”
I interrupted. There was only so much I could take. “A temporary problem until you get your girl back.” They all stopped talking to stare at me. Even Nolan lifted his gaze to meet mine. “Nothing wrong with my hearing.”
Geoff spoke fast. “Then you heard me say I didn’t feel that way, and I doubted Dane did either. If Wes and C.J. were here, they’d probably object, too. Don’t mind Nolan. He has permanent foot-in-mouth problem when he’s mad, afraid, or his back is to the wall.”
If Nolan would have answered, I didn’t want to know. He didn’t want friendship, he’d been very clear. “He’s right.”
“He is?” And “I am?” sounded at the same time. I nodded, pushing the plastic off me.
“My shoulder feels much better. I don’t need any help. I think I just jammed it. Don’t bother.” I stood, proud of myself. The last time I’d been so stressed in the medical area, I’d fainted. “The second I get in that mind machine and I get my memories, I’m gone. This version of me, the one I know, leaves forever. She’ll come take my place, this woman you all want, and I’ll be dead. A temporary problem.”
I rubbed at my stomach. Some version of me would exist in the world, or at least a woman wearing my body. Would she make the same choices I had for my daughter? Would she make such large mistakes?
“I go in there to get her memory, and I die.” I turned to Dane for agreement and he nodded. That was all the confirmation I needed.
“You’re not real.” Nolan had the good taste not to look at me when he delivered his verbal blow.
“I feel real. I think, I make decisions. I’m growing life. I can cry. I can faint, as you keep pointing out. I can make large mistakes that land me in a room with a psycho wielding a gun. I can…have a really good night followed by a terrible morning.” My head hurt and it wasn’t from me trying to recall something about my life.
Dane reached out to take my hand, but I didn’t let him. I knew it would hurt his feelings, and I didn’t want that, so I looked directly at him. “I promised you truth. Right now, if someone touches me I’m going to scream.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Fair enough. I’d just like to remind you of what I told you last night. You don’t have to get in the machine. In fact, if I can be even more explicit, please don’t.”
“What?” Nolan was on Dane before either I or the doctor saw it coming. “You don’t get to do this. You always wanted her all to yourself. Found a way to get it? To turn her against us and take her?”
Dane wrenched himself out of Nolan’s grip. “Why the fuck would I do that? You want to have that conversation with someone else. You’re all my brothers. You want to ask someone why they took her and ran for who knows where? You find him and you ask it. I would never do that to all of you or to her. We’re talking about not putting a woman we’re in love with into a machine that hurts her. What are you afraid of? She’s still Melissa. Everything that made Mel is still there.”
“No.” Nolan’s voice bare rose above a whisper. “I can see it in her eyes. My Melissa isn’t in there.”
“Okay.” Geoff shoved himself in between the two of them. “Let’s take a deep breath.”
No one needed me for this conversation, and I had to escape. With their backs to me, I walked out the door of the medical bay. My shoulder ached, but I hadn’t lied to Dane when I’d told him I really was fine. My baby kicked me, and I patted her before I rounded the corner. If I ran to my room, I’d spend the day obsessing.
There wasn’t a single thing I could do to make this better, other than to retrieve my memories. My daughter wouldn’t be safe unless I did. Something happened to put me in this position to begin with. I needed to know what.
Fear couldn’t rule my decision making.
Eventually
, I found my way to the control room. I walked through the door, not surprised to see Wes sitting in a chair staring at a large screen in front of him. He hadn’t seen me yet and I took the opportunity to look around the room. Seven chairs were placed in front of computer consuls with the one Wes used out in front. He had a small tablet in his lap and the viewing screen showed blocks of color in various grids. I didn’t know what any of it meant.
The room had seen better days, as had everything on Artemis, so I wasn’t surprised. The ship jolted and Wes hit on a button on the tablet before he leaned back in his seat and put his feet up.
He hadn’t been in the medical bay, hadn’t seen Nolan and Dane fighting. He didn’t yet know I realized the truth.
I didn’t know him well yet, but I could tell he didn’t hate me the way Nolan did.
“Any way you can make it stop jolting around?”
He swung around to look at me, a smile lighting his face. “Hey, you. What are you doing here?” He stood and dragged a chair closer to his own. “Come sit.”
I made my way over and collapsed as much as sat where he indicated. “Seriously, every time the ship shakes, I think we’re doomed.”
“It’s just space shakes. Nothing to worry about whatsoever. I turned us a bit. Looks like there’s an abandoned Noble ship with some stuff we can salvage on our way to the space station.”
Wes’ clean smell met my nose and before I could overthink it, I got out of my chair and sat on his lap.
“Hey.” He wrapped his arms around me, as best as he could considering my large stomach, and pressed me close. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Am I hurting you? I realize I’m huge.”
He touched the side of my face, bringing his gaze to me. “You’re still tiny. Big belly, small body. No, you can’t hurt me by sitting on my lap. Talk to me.”
“When I get in the machine to return my memories this part of me will die. I’ll basically be gone. She’ll be back. I know I have to do it, to give you your wife. She seems like she was very important. So much so that Dane and Nolan are shoving each other in the med bay over her. And it’s going to hurt. It’s kind of hard to live with the idea that I’m basically a temporary inhabitant of her body. Nolan hates me. I ended up getting pushed into a wall.” I buried my face in his shoulder. “Long morning. Is it okay I came here or does seeing me just remind you of all that you lost?”
Kidnapped by Her Husbands (Wings of Artemis Book 1) Page 13
