“I’ve been busy,” he said, and immediately regretted it. Forget justifying himself to her.
Adam puffed his chest out and did his best to stand up straight. The world seemed to slide on its axis and she looked at him with her big, dark eyes. Really, really dark eyes. Her coat was still on. His gaze lingered on the clips keeping it together.
His wife’s coat. On his wife.
No, bad idea. Don’t go there.
The door slid shut behind him, sealing them in, and something started pounding deep inside his head.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
His stomach roiled in a nauseous, nasty manner and if he wasn’t mistaken his hands had started to shake due to a case of the DTs. He needed to escape—now. “I’m going to shower, hit the sack.”
The woman turned and blinked at him, shoulders rising on a breath beneath the padded, knee-length jacket. Her elegant mouth opened the minutest amount, as if she were about to speak and—fuck it—he fled. His feet were off and carrying him toward the bathroom, hands pushing back his coat and dumping it on the end of the bed as he raced right by. Speed was of the essence. He had to get away.
It wasn’t until he was encased in the sterile white space of the bathroom that he could breathe again, safe from her scrutiny. This was not going to work. Not a chance.
Adam braced his hands on either side of the basin, cracked his jaw and braved a look in the mirror. Because how bad could it be? His eyelids flew back and his nostrils flared, hands holding on for dear life.
Ouch.
Well. He had looked better. That much was true. His eyes were a sea of red and his pupils like pinpricks. It hurt to see them. But then, everything had started to hurt.
He turned his back on the mirror, tugged his long-sleeved T-shirt over his head and cringed. Not the sweetest smell. Maybe she had been right to hang back. She couldn’t possibly think it was his fault that she had arrived early and caught him unprepared.
Still, maybe he should go and apologize. Explain. And say what? Sorry they assigned you to a drunken wreck? Sorry your other husband died? What a fucked-up situation.
Adam dealt with the buckles on his boots and toed them off, stripped down and shoved his clothes into the launderer. One good thing about Esther—it had icy lakes in abundance and none of the over-population issues of Earth. He had a whole new appreciation for water since the accident.
The shower unit hummed to life and he groaned out loud when the hot water hit him, sluicing over his body and washing his cares away. The burn marks on his shoulder were a glossy, candy pink. Nowhere near as bad as a week ago. His hands looked almost normal and he could still pilot. It was only surface damage. The med unit knew their stuff. Soon enough it would all blend in with the old wounds from the Continental War. On his back were some laser burns and even the pucker of a good old-fashioned bullet hole.
He soaped himself up thoroughly, scrubbed where necessary and stood beneath the spray. Stayed there until his fingers were wrinkled and his skin saturated. He propped himself up against the cubicle wall with eyes closed and his thoughts in freefall.
Maybe she would be asleep when he went back out. Adjusting to gravity could be a bitch. She would have to take off her coat to go to sleep. Which nixed the issue of what hid beneath same and led straight to thinking…what did she wear to bed, his wife?
Taka had confided that he and Rose had a strict no-clothes policy when they were alone. What an excellent idea. But Rose had gotten off the ship, taken one look at his friend Taka, and swooned. Louise had not swooned. Louise had looked stunned, if anything. Horrified.
Why couldn’t he have gotten someone like Rose? Someone open minded, willing to give the situation a go?
He shook his head in dismay, which hurt, gave in and got out. Hiding out in the shower like a little girl wasn’t going to help shit. He dried off beneath the air wave then wrapped a towel around himself for modesty’s sake.
Everything was silent in the apartment. The lights were low and the air chill. The dividing screen had been pulled out partway, acting as a buffer between the bedroom and the lounge where she sat. A com unit in her hands lit her face with a warm glow.
Her head rose when she heard the bathroom door open but she didn’t turn around. Didn’t kick-start any awkward conversations that in all likelihood neither of them wanted.
Adam swapped the towel for a pair of soft pants and slid into bed. Shut his eyes and did his best impression of sleeping. She was harder to ignore than he had imagined. She breathed so loudly. Or she seemed to. All the little noises she made as she moved around the apartment. His wife.
Sleep took forever.
The dream never varied. It remained excruciatingly exact, each and every night.
The fire started in the right-hand corner of his field of vision, roaring into life and engulfing Gideon whole. The man never stood a chance. Adam’s lungs burned, the fire so hot, so instantaneous. He raced back to the digger for the Halon but it was already too late. Gideon had become a pillar of fire, arms waving as he crashed to his knees.
In reality, he hadn’t seen those parts. He’d had his back to the scene. But every night it played out in horrific detail inside his head like a documentary stuck on repeat.
Farris tried to help the burning man but he could hardly get near him. Then the fire hit Gideon’s canister of oxygen. They all carried one, ten minutes’ worth, which would only prolong the inevitable should anything go wrong in a mine so deep. But that was the company, always putting a good face on things. With an almighty
whoosh
the fire exploded, overtaking the other man, and Adam took flight as if he’d grown wings. He crashed into the side of the transport and lay crumpled, in a world of pain, concussed and with one collarbone snapped.
Farris staggered toward him, burning up. Gideon had already hit the ground, a charred corpse. Adam forced himself up. The pain in his head and shoulder burned as bright as any flame. He tackled Farris. Took him down and rolled him in the dirt.
Then he started to burn too, explosive agony eating him whole.
Adam jack-knifed upright in bed, his lungs afire and his chest…shit. It felt as if each and every rib had been cracked in two and his heart still pounded into them, reducing them to kindling. He had to breathe, to focus. In and out, slow and slower, just like the shrink had said. He’d only attended the mandatory three sessions but all the bullshit advice could be simmered down to one simple trick. In and out, slow and slower, breathe through it.
He didn’t need a hug. He just needed to breathe.
The sheets clung to him, his body slick with sweat and way too warm. The whole thing felt like a fever dream, only the sickness was in his head, stuck in his memories. This new horror melded with the old superbly, all the things he’d seen and done during the war. Fifteen years on and it all felt fresh again, horribly so. His dreams were cluttered with Russian and Mandarin. Words he’d thought forgotten.
Fuck.
The room seemed as dark and cold and silent as space. It took him a moment to place the presence of another body on the far side of the bed.
The woman thankfully remained asleep. She lay curled up on her side, facing away from him. Any farther over and she might fall off the mattress. Her coat had definitely been removed. The sheet had been pulled up to her waist and a tank-top covered the rest. He watched the slow rise and fall of her shoulder. Her white skin was so vivid in the darkness that he couldn’t help but latch on to it. Because giving in to his fears and turning on the light was going too far. He’d lived through a war. No way would he be defeated by bad dreams. For fuck’s sake—next he’d be trying to hide under the bed.
Her porcelain-perfect shoulder was the most he’d seen of her. Mesmerized, he watched, matching his breathing to hers. Hers was calm and even. Steady. He found it surprisingly helpful. In and out. Slow and slower.
Eventually, everything slowed. He kicked back the sheet and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The floor felt blessedly cool beneath his feet. It was tempting to get down and press his cheek to it, but he didn’t. The heat gradually dropped out of him and sank into the floor.
The air cooled off through the night—typical mining corp saving money where it could. She’d get cold, exposed like that. Last thing he needed was her waking up, bitching about the lack of heat. Adam tugged up the blanket and carefully covered her, just in case. There, all better.
She didn’t stir. She was probably exhausted.
He waited until he was certain his legs would hold him, then he let his feet carry him toward the nearest bottle of liquor.
Chapter Two
Day Two
Louise snaked a hand out from beneath the blanket to test the temperature on the other side of the bed. Cold. She was alone. Her body sagged into the mattress. After snaring her elbow to break her fall, he hadn’t tried to touch her again. Thank the gods. Everything ached, the muscles in her neck and back rigid from the shift in gravity. At least her stomach had settled.
She rolled onto her back and stretched, staring at the ceiling. Let her mind wake at its own pace. There was none of the din of traffic from back home. It seemed almost preternaturally quiet. Goose flesh covered her arms from the chill in the air.
Back on Earth, the district attorney had moved her through a series of squalid holes in the last year and a half, always with security hovering. Guards had become the one constant in her life. Alone time had involved shutting herself in closet-sized bathrooms, surrounding herself with peeling paint and mold. For her sanity’s sake, she’d learned to live in her head and to imagine herself far, far away. This domicile looked nice, comfortable if a little bland with its china-white walls and pale synth-wood surfaces. Larger than the studio apartment she had shared with Con for all those years.
Tempting to hide out all day, but the DA had been specific in his instructions. Act normal. Show an interest. Mingle and blend. Blending sucked.
She got up and drank a cup of coffee. Put on the ugly and oversized clothes the DA had gotten her and headed out. The clothes and a new com unit were the only things she owned. Nothing remained of her past.
The colony had been built eighteen years ago in a pre-existing cave system due to hostile weather conditions up top. There were sections of gray and brown wall polished to a perfect sheen, but others were rough, natural. Population just over a thousand, eighty percent company staff and the rest civilians. Males outnumbered females eight to one, hence the marriage contracts. Women spent years on waiting lists so they could travel through space and live on a moon with a man they’d never met. But the district attorney had dealt with everything, shoved her on the ship and told her to keep her head down.
Louise wandered through myriad corridors. There were many, many men. Each and every one nodded to her, though not all smiled. She heard much “ma’aming” going on. Not a word she was used to. Very old-style manners seemed the go. Men even stepped out of her way, as if such a thing were a matter of course, due to her because of her minority sex.
And lots of eyes lingered on her long after they shouldn’t have. What if they recognized her? What if they’d found her? Louise’s stomach cramped and dread crept down her spine.
No. Not possible.
She dared a look back and found a man staring at her ass. When he realized, she watched his puffy cheeks turn pink. He muttered a “ma’am” and turned and fled.
Git.
She jammed her clammy hands into the pockets of her cargo pants. Her crappy clothes couldn’t have provided much of a view. She was safe. Just not from being ogled, apparently.
She let her feet lead her, since it didn’t much matter where she went. She was out and mingling, blending…sort of.
Something drew her up ahead, a change in the light and a mystery fragrance. It smelt far from unpleasant, closer to tantalizing. Not quite foreign but not exactly familiar, either. It smelled like a…like a garden. Scents of earth and foliage grew stronger until she emerged onto a massive platform. The place looked like a hive with the middle removed, giving way to a sprawl of rising jungle. A jungle secreted beneath the ground.
Louise stopped dead and stared in slack-jawed wonder. Some of the trees reached almost to the lights embedded in the ceiling three flights above. Amazing. A garden grew up through the center of the colony.
With a flash of color, a bird took flight, disappearing deeper within the tangle of greenery. She had never seen anything like it. On Earth, only the rich had access to anything like this. It was unprecedented.
Louise rushed to the platform’s edge and gripped the metal railing, hanging over it like an excited kid. Her short hair brushed against her cheeks and the blood rushed to her face. How glorious. There was about a two-story drop to the garden floor. There had to be a way down. Her com would have maps. She patted down her pockets.
Damn it.
She’d forgotten it.
But the lifts would get her there, surely. Yes. She needed to see the garden close up. Needed to walk under the boughs of the trees and feel the grass beneath her feet. The grandeur of nature had seemed a thing of the past, like a myth.
A lift opened and a miner in a gray corp suit stepped out, giving her a wide berth when she nearly stumbled into him in her rush. The silver doors slid silently shut and a woman stared back at her. A stranger. She frowned so hard at herself that she screwed up her face. Wrinkled her nose and skewed her mouth. It wasn’t her anymore.
She
wasn’t “her” anymore. Her father’s green eyes were gone. So too were the red curls care of her mother’s side of the family. Her eyes were dyed dark and her hair too.
Normally she avoided mirrors. They were just a reminder that she would never get to be herself again. Never see her family or friends. That life had passed.
The silver doors parted and she exhaled in a rush. Everything seemed green and lush and perfect. Everything was alive and growing. The scent of it filled her. She breathed deeply, taking in the damp, rich smell of the soil and the heady fragrance of flowers. Over and over again she took it all in. Her cheeks hurt from smiling.