by Eve Langlais
Jane huffed out some smoke and realized she needed to get a grip. Her jealousy was unwarranted on many fronts. For one, the gal’s husband was standing right there and would kill Adrian if he tried anything. And two, she didn’t care who Adrian rubbed.
She just kind of wished he’d rub her.
“Say hello to the twins.” Adrian’s words drew her attention to the screen he was using, nothing so basic as a two dimensional black and white swirl no one understood. This was state-of-the-art equipment that must be malfunctioning because on screen it looked like a pair of tadpoles were swimming and darting.
“What are those?” she asked, drawing near.
Becky replied softly, “My babies.”
“But they’re…” She trailed off rather than say what she really thought.
Her hesitation didn’t go unnoticed. Jett replied, his words emerging gruff and challenging. “Yes, those are our babies, and yes, they’re a little different than you’d expect. What you might call one of those side effects we were talking about.”
Jane shot Becky a sharp look. “You’re Adrian’s patient, too?”
She nodded. “More or less.”
“And the cure screwed up the babies?” She was blunt, partially due to shock and also because she wanted to understand.
“That’s a harsh assessment. We won’t really be able to judge until the children are born,” Adrian said.
She turned an incredulous gaze on him. “She has a pair of baby frogs swimming in her belly.”
“I assure you, they are not frogs, even if it appears some of the amphibian characteristics Becky imbibed crossed over to the fetuses.”
“You fed her frog DNA?” Jane couldn’t help her disgust, which was probably why Jett snapped.
“I wouldn’t act so high and mighty, Little Miss Firestarter. Why don’t you ask him what animals you’ve got running around inside?”
“Me?” Her eyes rounded as she stared at Adrian. “Did you mess with my DNA, too?”
“Yes.” He held her gaze. “You don’t have any amphibian genes. However, there is a bit of reptile, avian, and a few others that I’d have to check my notes for. I had to be innovative when you didn’t respond to any of the treatments.”
For some reason, when Adrian had spoken of fixing her, she’d not truly grasped it. She assumed he’d used conventional medicine, despite the strange ability for fire she now commanded. But it was becoming clear he’d resorted to something forbidden.
What did he do to me?
Panic fluttered in her breast, and her breathing went short.
No one noticed. Jett held Becky’s hand and shared a soft look with her. Adrian was focused on the ultrasound itself. No one saw the panic in Jane, which meant she had time to calm down and regroup, gather her thoughts enough that she blurted out, “You played god with lives.”
“Hardly a god. I’m a doctor, Jane. I heal.”
“Don’t try and play this down.” Her lip curled over her teeth. “You pulled a Dr. Moreau on us.”
The claim drew his steady gaze, but no apology or refute. “I wondered if it was a good idea to play that audiobook to you while you slept. I’d hoped when you woke it would help you understand because he was part of my inspiration. But whereas he experimented to create new types of beings, I did it to heal.”
“Which makes it okay?” she asked sourly.
He sidestepped. “It was never my intention to change a person’s humanity.”
“Yet you didn’t stop once you did,” she conjectured.
Becky answered for him. “A good thing he didn’t. If it weren’t for Adrian, I’d be dead.”
That drew her attention. “Were you in a coma, too?”
Becky sat up and shook her head. “Lung cancer. I had months, maybe only even weeks, to live when I went to work at Adrian’s clinic.”
“You experimented on your employees,” she accused. Bad enough he’d done it to Jane without verbal permission, but the people he worked with, who trusted him?
“Adrian didn’t do this to me. I did this to me.” Becky lifted her chin defiantly. “I was dying, and he had a cure. I didn’t have time to wait for human trials and the years it takes for new drugs to get approved. So I stole the cure and took it.”
Eyeing her up and down, rudely, but Jane didn’t care. She blurted out, “You look normal even if the babies don’t.”
“Give it a few hours. By tonight I’ll be in our tub, spending the evening underwater. I’m a mermaid.”
“Bullshit.” The expletive had Jane slapping her hand over her mouth. For a moment she felt like a young girl swearing in front of the grownups. Except she was a grownup.
Becky smirked. “I think you meant to say unbelievable, but I assure you, it’s quite true.”
“But…But…You look…normal.” But then again, so did Jane mostly.
“I don’t grow a tail or anything, but when I submerge and breathe water, my skin does get scaly, and I can talk to fish.”
“Seriously?” While some people might have been horrified, Jane was fascinated. As a young girl, she’d been obsessed with mermaids. Watched the Disney movie over and over. Decorated her room in seashells and fishy decals. If someone had told her she could actually become one, she would have said yes without hesitation. “Do you like it?”
Becky shrugged. “It is what it is. Would I prefer to have more control over when I need to go for a dip? Yes. Am I happy to be alive? Very. Would I make it go away if I could?” Again, her shoulders rolled. “I don’t know. I went from being a regular kind of girl—”
“As if you’d be anything so bland,” her husband muttered.
“—to the very first mermaid in existence.”
“Secret mermaid,” her husband amended.
“Why secret?” Jane asked.
“No one knows which is for the best. Can you imagine what kind of circus my life would be otherwise?” Becky arched a brow. “It’s not about fame and fortune for me. It’s my life. Now also your life, because, like me, you’re different.”
Those words resonated in Jane’s head for a while, even after Becky and her husband left, ushered out by Adrian, who then spent time in his lab, doing science-y shit.
Ignoring her. Giving her space. Except she didn’t want space. She wanted answers. After spending time watching television, which only confused her further about this new world, then eating until she could eat no more, she finally gave in and hustled down to Adrian’s lair. Jane found him intent on a computer screen; however the tenseness of his back showed he was very aware of her presence.
“Did you need something, Jane?”
Rather than stall, she said bluntly, “What am I?”
“Extraordinary.”
Not the answer expected, and she blinked, silenced by the one word.
He swiveled on his stool. “But that’s not what you’re really asking. You want to know how you’ve changed. What you’ve become. The problem is there really is no answer to that because you’re unique.”
“I’m a fluke. A freak. Because of you!” she accused.
He took the blame. “Yes. It is my fault because I was determined to help you.”
“Why me? Why help me?”
“You needed it.”
“So do hundreds of other people. I might not have all your medical knowledge, but I’m sure I heard somewhere that most cures, like stem cells”—the knowledge welling up from inside her—“work better on people with a fresh injury.”
“You are correct. But that doesn’t mean a doctor should just give up.”
“You said I was a vegetable. How long? How long before you could even try?” How long since her parents’ deaths?
“A decade in a coma ward and then another in my care, asleep.”
She felt that fluttery panic again as she realized how much of her life she’d lost. She whirled from him, not wanting him to see her agitation as she fought not to explode at the unfairness of it all. “How could you all do that to me? You. My par
ents. You’re the reason I was a prisoner in my body. You should have let me go.”
“I couldn’t let you die.”
“Why not?” She faced him, her expression pleading. “Why try and save me?”
“Because.” He pressed his lips into a firm line.
“That’s not an answer. Trying is you doing it for a few years and then throwing in the towel. You took care of me for a decade. Becky says you kept me in your condo. Not with the other patients. Why?”
He shrugged and wouldn’t look at her. The brash man unable to reply. Which could only mean one thing.
“You did it because you had a crush on me.” She’d kind of guessed when they were together in high school but accepted it as her due back then. Jane was the popular girl who had it all. Looks. Grades. Acceptance to a university on the coast. She didn’t have time for the crippled boy crushing on her from his wheelchair. Why would she? She was dating the star of the football team. The very shallowness of it made her ashamed in the here and now.
I led him on. Her acts of kindness and subtle flirting obviously something he’d taken seriously.
“You were my friend. I cared about you,” he said carefully. “I felt bad about what happened.”
“It wasn’t your fault I was stupid and popped those pills.”
“No, but I’m the reason why you overdosed. Those blue pills Benedict shared were mine.”
Chapter Fourteen
“What do you mean they were your pills?” Jane’s query emerged slowly. He wanted to dig a hole and bury himself in it, knowing that any progress he’d made with her was about to come to a halt.
“The pills you overdosed on were mine. Benedict stole them.” Which didn’t absolve Adrian of the guilt. It came rushing at him like a tidal wave, making him regret for the millionth time his actions that night.
“You need to explain.” She crossed her arms and regarded him with a flat expression. Her lips pressed into an uncompromising line.
Soon that look would turn to hate. Because he was the reason she’d ended up in a coma for too long.
“Remember prom night?” He glanced down at his hands, the fingers long and supple, unlike the gnarled claws of his teen years.
“As if I could forget.”
Heat flushed his cheeks at her dry retort. “Benedict cornered me.”
The bigger guy had done more than that, and it didn’t start with prom.
Adrian dropped into the past as he spoke, that day living infamously in his mind.
June twenty-first. After exams and a Friday. The weather pleasant this time of year. Not too hot. The skies expected to be clear. A perfect night for prom, which Adrian had planned to spend at home, but his foster parents insisted he not miss out on an iconic rite of teen passage. The fact he couldn’t wait to graduate and get out of school didn’t factor into their idyllic vision of how high school should be.
His foster parents, bless their hearts—as Mrs. Kline used to say at least five times a day—remembered it as a special time. Full of friendship and laughter. They didn’t have to deal with the bullying, the snide remarks, the difficulty in getting around. The loneliness…
But since they seemed so intent on the idea of him going to prom, Adrian agreed, which was how he found himself dressed in a tuxedo, his wheelchair all shiny and clean. After they dropped him off, taking pictures that he later burned, he wheeled himself inside, for the most part unremarked. He parked by a wall and watched as everyone else had fun.
There was food he didn’t dare eat out of fear his hand would spasm and spill it on his tux. He didn’t drink either. Just stared and envied the able-bodied.
Look at them dancing after dinner. The girls shimmying their hips, their lips spread in wide smiles. Check out the guys, some of them doing a simple two-step shuffle, but others actually had some groove.
Everyone looked their best. This was their shining moment. They’d spent twelve years in school to get the rinky-dink diploma that called them a graduate. A good chunk of them would now go to college or university. Others would enter the workforce.
Adrian would be going away. A full scholarship from a university that was known to accept diverse students and was particularly pleased to snare one with his remarkable grades. He was sure his life would be about the same. Lonely. Because who wanted to be friends with the cripple? Which, as it turned out, was a high school thing. Once he got among his intellectual peers, no one cared about his body. His mind was his best attribute. But that was later.
On prom night, he was less than a wallflower. Despite the armor he’d used to protect himself over the years, it hurt to watch people he’d known a good chunk of his life having fun with no thought to the boy in the chair. Inclusivity in many ways was just a word. Sure, people said hi to him. The school took its fair share of photo ops to show they were progressive, but in the end, when it came to life…he was always sitting in the shadows.
Unlike Benedict. The guy strutted in as if all eyes should be on him, and many were. If the school hadn’t abolished it, the star of the football team would have surely been crowned king with Jane as his lovely queen. She certainly looked regal in her off-the-shoulder gown made of some shimmery gold material that brought out the fine porcelain of her skin. She’d sprinkled glitter in her auburn hair, the long locks curled and left loose. The strands shimmied when she danced with Benedict. Her hand clutched at his shoulder as he dipped her and drew a bark of laughter. Her perfect full, red lips gasped when Benedict dared to cup her ass. Treating Jane like a whore in front of everyone. Flaunting the fact he was sleeping with the sexiest girl in school.
How Adrian hated that bastard.
But it wasn’t just because Benedict got to be with the girl Adrian adored. It was the name-calling. The bullying. The dog shit left on the front walk that he had to roll through to get to his special needs bus. So many incidents that culminated in the final straw a few days before in the school bathroom. Adrian was about to take his pain meds, the spasms being particularly vicious that day, when Benedict barreled in, his raucous laughter the equivalent of nails on chalkboard.
“If it isn’t my favorite cripple. How’s it going, Wheelie?”
Adrian had learned that replying only prolonged the misery. His only hope was someone else would come in before Benedict got rough.
“What’s that you got there?
Adrian never even thought to hide the pill bottle in the palm of his hand.
“Oh ho. Wheelie’s popping pills. How come you aren’t sharing?”
“These are for my illness,” he finally spat.
“I thought you couldn’t be fixed.”
“I can’t.” And he tired of people asking him if there was any hope. He had none. “I take these to manage my pain.”
Too late, he understood his mistake.
“Well shit, Wheelie. You’ve been holding out on me. All this time you’ve had the good stuff.” Benedict snapped his fingers. “Hand it over.”
“No.” Adrian clamped his hand down. “These are prescription.” Which meant the pharmacist and his doctor counted every one. It wouldn’t do for the sick boy to become addicted.
Refusing only meant Benedict pried open his hand and stole the one thing that made the discomfort bearable.
Benedict hunted him down the next day for more and the next. Having to show up for his exams meant Adrian couldn’t avoid him.
And Adrian had no doubt Benedict would come after him again tonight. After all, prom was the night for teens to go wild. Sex, alcohol, drugs… Was it any wonder every year there was a tragedy on what should be the most triumphant of nights?
But perhaps Adrian wouldn’t have to worry.
After all, Benedict never once looked his way. Just when Adrian was thinking he’d stayed long enough for his foster parents to be happy, Benedict left Jane by the drink table to exit the building with a bunch of his friends. Probably going to smoke some dope in the parking lot. It made Adrian want to call in an anonymous tip to the university
that took Benedict on a football scholarship.
Jane scooped a glass of punch. Then a second one.
To his surprise, she strolled toward him, a goddess in the flesh who looked right at Adrian and smiled.
“Hey,” she said. “You came.”
“Yeah.” He almost did once her perfume hit him.
“Drink?” She held out the glass, and he couldn’t say no.
He grabbed it, willing his hand to behave. Then realized he needed to say something. “You look”—amazing, beautiful, jaw dropping—“good.”
It was apparently enough because she beamed at him. “Thanks.”
An awkward silence fell, mostly because he was too tongue-tied to say anything.
“Wanna dance?” The query from her surprised him.
Angered him a bit, too. Was she making fun of him now as well? “I can’t,” he snapped.
“Of course, you can.” To his shock, she grabbed the glass and put it aside before she sat on his lap. He might have stopped breathing. Surprise. Pleasure. Way too much pleasure stole his voice.
Jane placed her hand on the controls for his chair, sending them into a lurching spin. She laughed. “Oops. Maybe you should be in charge.”
He’d do anything she wanted if she stayed on his lap. He spun them in his chair, doing a quick left and right, a full triple spin that had her clutching at him. Her laughter brushing over his skin. The moment well worth the barked, “What the fuck you doing with my girlfriend, Wheelie?”
Rising with a giggle, Jane put her hand on Benedict’s chest. “Calm down. I was the one who wanted to dance.” She cast a glance over her shoulder. “Adrian was kind enough to humor me.”
“I’m sure he was,” grumbled the athlete.
“Grab me another drink, and then we can have our own dance.” She waggled her glass at her boyfriend, who snatched it and stomped off.
Adrian wished the guy would drop dead.
“He doesn’t know it yet, but I’m breaking up with him before end of summer.” She glanced at Adrian. “Fresh start at university and all.”
The news elated him. “You deserve better.”