by V. K. Ludwig
Ruth
The door fell into the lock and woke me. A whiff of beard wax spread across the room, like honey and green tea, telling me Adair had returned. A recording of someone’s wedding still played on the TV in front of me, and I pulled the black fleece blanket over my shoulder.
“You’re back,” I mumbled, my eyes still heavy with sleep.
Adair’s feet shuffled over the living room floor as he stomped out of his boots and unzipped his jacket.
“You fell to sleep on the couch again?” he asked. “Don’t come complaining later when you have back pain.”
I snuggled my face into the soft pillow. “How was it? Did you bring Max’s dad with you?”
No answer came.
I pushed myself up and wiggled out of the blanket, which fell to the ground. A grayish mud had soaked the hem of his sweater, tinted with red on one side of his stomach.
Shivers crept up my legs.
“You’re bleeding!”
I hurried over and let my hand dart for him.
“Don’t.” He took a step back. “It’s just a scratch. I’ll go take a shower and clean it out.”
“That needs proper sterilizing, Adair, or all those bacteria will cause an infection.”
He gave a scoff and let his gaze flick upward. “I don’t need you to tell me what bacteria can do, considering I breed them down at the lab once a week.”
“Wow, what happened out there that made you so grumpy?”
“First, it’s none of your business. Second, I’m not grumpy. I was out all night, and I am tired and drained. Third, it’s none of your business.”
His shoulders slumped as if he offered it as an apology without having to say the words. A gray-purple haze layered underneath his eyes.
“Where’s Hazel?” he asked.
“Left early. You should let her check if this needs stitching once she’s back.”
“She left you alone?” He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, neither should you.”
I grabbed the blanket from the couch, folded it, and placed it against the armrest.
Adair raised his strong arms behind his neck and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he looked down at himself and lifted the bottom of his shirt, revealing a deep puncture wound right next to the small set of squares on his stomach.
“What on earth did that?”
His gaze seemed to drift out of focus. “A rock.”
With each expansion of his chest and stomach, a small amount of blood-tinged fluid leaked from the gap, putting a twist in my guts.
“Any signs of Max’s dad?” I asked once more and searched for his eyes.
“No, but we found a couple of clues, and I already called River so we can get together later and discuss it.”
His words had come out dense as if the exhaustion sitting around his puffy eyes had also settled on his voice.
“If you take your shirt off, I can throw it into the soaking bucket with the other stuff,” I said, a tingling sensation radiating from my chest. “Your pants, too.”
He quickly dropped his shirt, his furrowed brows scolding how I had caught a glimpse of his masculine body. A shallow laugh followed. “No thanks, I’d rather undress in the bathroom.”
“Why? It’s not like you would be naked. Besides, I’ve seen naked men before.”
“And did you stare at them, too?”
“What?” Something inside me flinched as if I’d lost at a round of hide-and-seek.
He took a step toward me, far away enough to keep him alive, but still close enough to make heat rise to my cheeks. His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “The last time I took my shirt off in front of you, you wouldn’t quit staring at me.”
I shrugged. “So? What’s so wrong with me looking at you?”
“It makes me uncomfortable,” he said and backed away from me once more.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It just does.”
I stared into his light-blue eyes, one iris split in two by how a strand of his platinum blond hair had escaped the bun at the top of his head. “Maybe I liked what I saw.”
He turned away and rubbed the center of his forehead as if warding off a headache. “I’m not in the mood for your games today, Ruth.”
“What games?” I asked, forcing my voice into something innocent.
“You know exactly what I mean.” He turned on his heel, marching straight for his room. “Sometimes I wonder what I ever did to you that you hate me so much.”
I hurried behind him but stopped right at the door frame. “I don’t hate you. Why would you think that?”
“Because you obviously want me to get in trouble. You’re teasing me all the fucking time ever since you got here. It might have been fun at first, but now it’s just exhausting me.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He flung his arms in front of his chest. “Because I’m here to protect you, and you’re teasing me with something I can’t have.”
I took a deep breath and blurted the words out with as much determination as I could muster. “But what if you could?”
The firm stance he took might have emanated confidence if it wasn’t for the way he kneaded his fingers inside his fists.
There he stood in front of me, tall and muscular. Even covered in filth and blood, Adair had an intelligent and calm air around him.
And there was something else he had. Something I wanted: an awareness and understanding of the attraction between a man and a woman.
No matter how many books I had read about it, I still couldn’t grasp the concept. What if he could teach me?
I shifted my weight toward him one, paced, deliberate inch at a time. “You know I’ve been off the water for quite some time now.”
He straightened his posture, each of his slow, deep inhales rising his chest a bit higher now and letting it drop even deeper.
His eyes wandered down the side of my neck and caressed my collarbone for a while, making the tingle inside my chest spread its roots to something deep-seated, then his eyes jumped back up. “And?”
“Assuming I’ve developed needs that haven’t been there before…” I let my whisper trail off as if not telling the entire truth would somehow make it less real. But the way my body reacted now whenever Adair came around me was hard to ignore, and certainly couldn’t be camouflaged with silence.
“And what needs might that be?” he asked with a low pitch.
I allowed my eyes to trail across his broad chest. “More like curiosity, perhaps. Now that I’m here… there are things I want to understand.”
He released a slow, deep moan and let his lips brush against each other. “And you want me to show you?”
“Yes.”
My heart clattered against my throat, and I feared he might hear it. No. I hoped he heard it, and would finally believe that I meant what I said.
Heat grew from somewhere below my bellybutton and trailed down between my legs, unleashing a primal desire onto me I couldn’t control or otherwise satisfy. I had tried that on my own, but it did little to distract me from that one thing only a man might give me.
He lowered himself down to me, his eyes stuck to my mouth. I did everything the old books and magazines had taught me. I cocked my head and revealed the side of my neck. I licked my lips. I readied my body to fall into his arms.
“Oh, you are gooood,” he whispered. Then he shook his head, took a step back, and turned on his heel. “Damn you’re so good, I almost fell for it. You better don’t try that with another guy, or I swear not even I can protect you from him. Maybe you can rip those jokes with dudes from the Districts, but out here they will either get you raped or married.”
He disappeared into his room, and I remained rooted. “But I don’t want to marry. I want —”
“I already told you my room is off-limits to you,” he said, then he slammed the door in my face.
The tingle inside me dissolved into nothing.
This
wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I betrayed the council. Infiltrated the people of the Districts. Fled my home. All to learn more about the nature of human procreation.
Ayanna and Autumn had it make look so easy, but here I stood, with a door inches away from my nose.
“Are you guys arguing again?” Hazel asked and placed a bag next to the coffee table, layers of snow slipping off her boots and onto the beige tile floor. “I went to the village and borrowed us the best movie. If we get Adair to tell us where he hides his dried seeds, maybe we could make it a movie morning with popcorn?”
I looked down at my holo-band. “It’s not even eight yet.”
“So? Everything goes on Sundays, right?” She walked up to me, gave a quick knock on Adair’s door and let her voice grow into a shout. “You up for a movie morning? They had the Marvel collection down at the village.”
“Give me ten,” came back. “I gotta get a shower.”
Hazel gave a pat on my shoulder. “Go check the cabinets in the kitchen for dried corn while I take my jacket off. This is going to be fun. Who knows if I’ll have the chance to do these kinds of things once I moved?”
I nodded and strolled over to the kitchen, rummaging through shelves and opening flip-top lids. “He got injured, and I think you should check on it. It’s pretty deep, and I’d say it needs stitches.”
She slipped out of her boots and hung her jacket by the wrought-iron wardrobe. “I’m sure he’ll tell me if it’s that bad. I met one scout on my way down. Apparently, things didn’t go as planned, and there’s no sign of pastor William.”
“I feel sorry for Max, I can’t imagine what it is like to lose a parent.”
“But you said your mother died.” She walked over and grabbed a large pot from the cabinet beneath the sink, placed it onto the stove and covered the bottom with a thick layer of oil.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t even three yet when it happened. Not sure how conscious I was of it at the time.”
“And your dad?”
I flipped the top of one of the canisters open, looked inside, and handed it to Hazel. “Never met him. He was a donor.”
“And the information is anonymous?”
“No. But it’s not common for children to have a relationship with their donors. And we have men at our community homes who help raise the kids, so I never saw a need to get in touch with him.”
She gave a deep sigh. “That’s sad. Family is everything to us, you know. Our dad was an asshole, but at least we got a chance to grow up with our parents for the majority of our childhood.” She hovered her hand inches above the oil. “I think it’s hot enough now. Do me a favor and pour in two handful. Make sure you spread it out evenly.”
Doors opened and closed behind us as Adair left his room and went to get his shower. A few minutes later he came back out to corn popping against the metal lid, nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist and three bandaids covering his wound.
“Ruth said it needs stitching?” Hazel asked.
“Nah, this should do. I disinfected it as well.”
The moment he caught my gaze trailing across his chest, he rolled his eyes and turned toward his room, his feet squeaking inside his shower shoes with each step he took.
“You can start the movie if you want to. I’ll be there in two,” came from him, then he disappeared behind the door.
“If I put butter on it,” Hazel said with a raised brow, “are you still going to eat it?”
“Yeah. It’s the meat I can’t get used to.”
“That’s because you’ve got it all wrong beyond that wall,” Adair said and walked up behind us.
He had trimmed back the stray whiskers of his beard, the fruity scent of his wax once more filling the room along with traces of soap and iodine. Dressed in shorts and long sleeves, he pressed his hands onto the butcher block and leaned into the island.
“Animal agriculture is harmful to the environment,” I said. “It requires deforestation and causes pollution.”
“With that, I agree. But there’s lots in between large animal agriculture and not eating any meat at all. Our families only raise as much livestock as they need to substitute for whatever we couldn’t hunt.”
Hazel picked up a huge bowl filled with popcorn and walked over to the couch. “Please don’t turn this into another Sunday with political debates. I just want a nice movie marathon.”
Adair and I exchanged a quick smile and joined his sister. Hazel chaperoned in the middle with the bowl of popcorn on her lap, while Adair crossed his legs on top of the coffee table.
We took turns grabbing handfuls of popcorn, the butter covering my hands in grease. At each kiss in the movies, my thoughts trailed to Adair who sat less than three feet away from me, yet entirely out of reach.
Another kiss.
Sweet nothings whispered into ears.
I let my fingers dive into the bowl. Instead of popcorn, I found Adair’s hand, and two of our finger intertwined. An electrifying sensation shot along my arm and jumpstarted that desire inside of me once more. Our eyes locked.
He leaned slightly forward and shook his head, his lips forming a rough-edged but silent STOP IT.
I pulled my hand out and a fistful of popcorn along with it, crunching every single one of them down with such force, my gums ached. If Adair refused to help, then I needed to find someone else who would.
“Adair, can you take me to the store tomorrow?” I asked.
He didn’t turn to look at me. “Why?”
“Because I’m getting cabin fever, and I want to browse what they got. Please?”
“I can take you,” Hazel said.
“No, I’ll do it.” Adair shoved in his seat. “Need to check in on some probes, anyway.”
I gazed over to him once more and how he had crossed his arms in front of his chest now, as is my fingers had somehow spoiled the popcorn. His thumb rubbed against his index finger repeatedly.
This village had almost two-hundred clansmen without a partner, and I got stuck with the one who refused to touch me.
Chapter 4
Adair
Three women from the Districts joined our Clan. Three! And I got stuck with the crazy one.
Now she paced back and forth the length of the lab’s workstation, her hand sliding along the countertops and jumping over the deep iron sinks.
“Have you thought about making a brochure to point out the benefits of the program?” Ruth asked Max, who sat on his desk with one eye glued to a microscope.
“Yeah,” he said, “but I worry nobody will read it unless Rowan publicly endorses it. Most people don’t seem interested in how their genetics are going to influence the health of a potential child with their partner.”
The exchanger by the boarded window hummed a fresh breeze of air into the otherwise stagnant room, and a whiff of formaldehyde still clung to the walls.
I placed the Petri dish back into the cooler and walked over to my whiteboard, adding to the formula I had started weeks ago.
“Most of the villagers worry about where their dinner comes from and how many cords of wood they’ll need come winter, Max,” I said, pulled off my rubber gloves and dumped them in the yellow hazard bucket. “They won’t listen to scientific theories; only life-facts.”
“Hey,” Ruth called out and waved her hand at me. “Why don’t you join his databank? You were part of the Newgenics program, right? I saw your profile once along with your hologram.”
The black tip of my felt pen took a dive and scribbled a long, jagged line down the whiteboard. All the while, the blood sucked out of my limbs. “You saw my profile?”
“Uh-huh. You’ve got great genetic material, and the people here respect you, don’ they? So why not let Max add you to his program and encourage others to do the same?”
“No, thanks.”
Max and Ruth exchanged a glance.
“Why not? What’s the difference?”
“Because here I still have the chance to find a wife one day,
and I don’t want her to choose me because I’m approved breeding stock.”
“Well…” she said but let her tight voice trail off. Then she tugged on her boring hair updo and shoved stray strands back into formation.
No other words followed. Instead, she continued her pacing, and I was suddenly struck by how distant she had been all day.
“How is the training going?” I asked Max, distracting myself from the fact that Ruth once had access to everything there was to know about me.
“Hazel mentioned I’m learning fast. She even thinks I might be done sooner than needed and mentioned she could leave for the Clan of the Mountains earlier than planned.”
“She said that?”
“Uh-huh.”
Something cold swept through my chest, and I knew exactly where it came from. In less than six months, my sister would get married, leaving me behind. A twenty-nine-year-old guy with no wife, no kids, and no family left.
For once, the thought of protecting Ruth offered some small comfort — even if the game she played exhausted me, and her flirting took every single fiber of self-control I had in me.
I couldn’t help but stare at how my shaky hand rested pressed against the whiteboard. The same hand that had touched hers inside the popcorn bowl yesterday.
She had no idea how my body reacted around her. Nor did she understand how much it took me not to act on it. But Rowan ordered me to protect her.
Protect — such an honorable word to punch me in the balls like that. River might have been stupid enough to break the rules, but not me.
Come to think; it kinda worked out well for him. My lungs struggled across my next breath. What if this wasn’t a game for her after all? What if she wanted me… or at least something of me?
If that night out by the burn pit taught me anything, it was that life is short. Why not give in to her?
No, no, no.
Get a grip, Adair.
I took a deep breath and put my felt-pen down. This was nothing but a silly game to her, and forgetting that, might cut my life even shorter.
“Are you done?” she asked in a bored tone.
“Yeah. Let me wash my hands, and then we can go to the store. I hate the smell of rubber on my skin.”