Beyond Innocence

by Kit Rocha

  He passed the fuck out.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Regeneration technology was one of Eden's true miracles.

  The moment Jared slumped into Lili's arms, Gia had pulled out a tablet and sent a message to the O'Kanes. By the time the car pulled into the O'Kane compound, someone had already been dispatched for the doctor.

  Lili's composure, which had survived Eden, negotiating with a councilman, and waiting outside a torture compound to see how much of Jared was left to save, nearly shattered when Dallas tried to peel her away to discuss her meeting with Markovic while the regen tech worked.

  Lex's swift intervention had bought her a respite. Gia's strong arm around her waist while they waited held her together.

  The O'Kanes rallied. They always did. Within hours, Jared was tucked into Lili's bed, asleep and breathing easily. Lili listened dully to the list of complications to watch for, promised Dallas a full report first thing in the morning, and closed the door on the world.

  And then she watched him breathe until she believed he wasn't going to slip away.

  Regeneration technology was miraculous. But the worse the damage was, the worse the scarring it left behind. Jared's perfect body was a latticework of pain, some marks white and barely visible, some pink, some red and angry.

  Each an accusation. If she had trusted herself sooner. Moved faster. Spoken with more conviction. She hadn't believed in her own power, so she hadn't used it in time to spare him this abuse.

  She wouldn't make that mistake again.

  As much as she wanted to curl around him, she couldn't crawl into bed with him. She'd been too selfish to let him sleep under anyone else's care, but the fury in his eyes before he'd passed out haunted her. She didn't have the right to hold him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  Lili sat at her piano instead. She stroked her fingers over the keys and remembered the way he'd smiled at her on the day he'd given it to her, as if being the one to introduce her to the possibilities of a better world had truly pleased him.

  "Lili?"

  His voice was hoarse and broke on her name, but Lili didn't care. She spun on the seat, her heart kicking violently when she saw his eyes open. The clock beside her bed, illuminated by the soft glow of a candle, told her hours had passed since they'd tucked him beneath the sheets.

  Time was an odd thing, bending and twisting—unsurprising, when she hadn't slept in nearly two days. Her own voice was as rough as his. "Jared. Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine." He struggled into a sitting position. "My head hurts."

  Lili hurried to his side and indulged herself by settling another pillow behind his back. "Dallas called a regen tech. She said that's natural, and that you'll be tired and hungry for a few days."

  He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. "What a fucking mess."

  She reached for his shoulder and froze, her fingers hovering over his skin. "I'm sorry. I did what I had to, Jared. I couldn't live with knowing you'd died while I sat at home, waiting."

  "But I'm supposed to live with knowing you put yourself in danger, in Eden, for me?"

  "Yes." She let her hand fall to her side. "Because you ask the same of me."

  "I wasn't in Eden for you." He turned his head. "I was there for myself."

  Pain was seeping through the ice, and she'd been wrong to think she understood the reality of it. A life of pain without joy was a life blissfully ignorant of everything you were missing. She could never reclaim that innocence.

  This broken heart was going to hurt so very, very much. "Help me understand," she whispered.

  It took him a long time to answer. "Twenty-two years. That's how long I was in the business. Don't do the math on it unless you want to puke." He glanced at her, but only for a split second. "Twenty-two years, and I never, ever thought about trying to bring that place down. Not once. I just smiled, did my job, and got paid."

  She didn't know what to say, because words couldn't make the ugly truth of it any better. "We survive however we can," she murmured, hating how shallow it sounded. How patronizing.

  "Sure, maybe. That was what Ace did, you know—survived long enough to get the hell out. If I'd done that, I think I'd give myself a pass. But I didn't just survive, Lili. I thrived. I got rich." He finally turned to her, his eyes alight with intensity. "Did you know Lex is a thief?"

  She shook her head.

  "Not so much anymore, but at one point she was damn prolific." Jared leaned closer. "You know what she did with the goods and money she stole?"

  "No," she whispered, though she could guess just from the tortured look in his eyes. Something noble, heroic. Something that made Jared feel less than worthy.

  "She gave it all away. To people who needed it."

  Lili could have told him that Lex was hardly a saint. The O'Kanes did good things, but they indulged themselves without guilt or shame. Lex could give away every credit she stole because Dallas O'Kane had so many already, and his people spent them recklessly in pursuit of passion and pleasure.

  But this wasn't about Lex, not really. It wasn't even about Lili, a realization that threatened to shatter her bruised heart, because it would have been so much easier to come to terms with knowing Jared hated her.

  She didn't know if she could survive knowing he sometimes hated himself.

  Moving slowly, she settled on the edge of the bed and cupped his cheek. "You took a risk no one else could, and now you have a chance no one else has—to be a bridge between Dallas and Markovic."

  The first hint of a smile curved his lips. "You did well, Lili. You were smart."

  "I was, a little." She touched his lower lip. "But I cheated. I remembered overhearing my father, gloating to Logan about how he'd put a man right under Dallas's nose."

  "Noah?"

  "Mm-hmm." Her father had been so proud of himself, too egotistical to imagine a world where he'd been fooled. "My first night here, I went to Dallas and told him there was a spy. And he just smiled and said, 'So Noah had everyone convinced, did he?'"

  Jared clutched his side and winced through a laugh. "Double agent, huh? I guess that's something he and I have in common now."

  She let herself touch his shoulder this time. Softly, ghosting her fingertips along his arm until she could twine her fingers with his. "It works for a reason. None of them understand loyalty the way Dallas does. None of them believe another person could be worth dying for."

  He fell silent, and his hand tightened around hers. "Would you do it again?"

  She wet her lips. "Every night, if you'd let me."

  His eyes shuttered, and he pulled away. "I was afraid you'd say that."

  Lili grabbed his hand again, clinging to it too tightly. "I'm not asking for an answer tonight. You need to think about what you want to do, and whether you want to go back. No one would blame you for wanting to just disappear."

  "Of course I'm going back," he told her. "But nothing's changed, Lili. I can't be there and be worrying about you and what you'd risk if something happened to me. I can't do it."

  As if he could stop her from risking herself for him. It was the culmination of all those steps down the path he'd guided her along, the one toward claiming her own strength.

  "So bring me with you," she said, trying to smile to soften the steel in her words. "I'll keep anything from happening to you."

  "It's not a joke to me, Lili."

  "No." She released his hand and rose, because if she kept touching him, she'd buckle under his pain. "If I thought you just didn't believe in me, I could deal with that. I could try to prove myself. Because I can do this, Jared. I know I can."

  "So do I." He moved slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed until his feet rested on the floor. "It's never been a question of what you can handle, love."

  "Then let me love you." Her voice wavered, tears dangerously close. "Let me be your partner, that's all I want. To be yours, and to have you be mine."

  "I'll always be yours." The way he said it, it was more t
han a promise. It was fact, pure and simple.

  And it still sounded like goodbye. "Jared…"

  "Just—" He held up a hand. "Leave me alone with it for a while, Lili. Let me try to think of a way it won't kill me to have you there. For you to—" His voice broke.

  Her heart was bleeding. It had to be, for the pain in her chest to be so acute. She choked it down and walked back to the bed, pressing gentle hands to his shoulders. "Lie down," she whispered. "You need rest. I'll go, just...take care of yourself. Promise me."

  "Yeah." He rolled to his side and faced the wall.

  On the worst night of her life, Lili had killed a man and walked through the slums of two sectors with his blood splattered on her nightgown.

  The short walk to Ace's room seemed longer.

  He answered on her second knock, took one look at her face, and went ashen. "Is Jared—?"

  "In my room," she cut him off, barely recognizing her own chilly, remote voice. Everything was remote. "He needs someone. Someone who isn't me."

  "Hey." Rachel edged in front of him and wrapped her arm around Lili's shoulders. "Come on. We'll make you some tea, okay?"

  Ace stepped aside, and Lili gave in and let Rachel guide her deeper into the room. Her eyes burned, and she couldn't tell if it was the exhaustion crashing down on her or the inevitable tears.

  The room blurred, and she stumbled. Rachel caught her, and Lili turned blindly into her friend's strength as the last of her protections crumbled. "It's hopeless. We're killing each other."

  "No, you're not," Rachel soothed. "You're figuring some things out, that's all. Like a puzzle, right? Sometimes you have to turn the pieces different ways before they fit."

  She shook her head, because she didn't want to give voice to the words on the tip of her tongue. And sometimes they're from two different puzzles.

  The one thing Jared wanted was the only thing it hurt her to give. And she could try, she would try, but that was the curse of a lover who could read your pleasure and your pain. He'd know how much it was killing her to stay behind.

  And he'd hate himself more for it.

  The tears broke free, hot on her cheeks, silent even as her shoulders shook with her sobs. Distantly, she heard murmured voices, the door whispering shut, and she knew Ace had left to watch over Jared.

  She tried to stop crying. She tried to pull herself together, to be cold and hard again, but pain was like pleasure. Now that she'd started feeling it, she couldn't stop. It bubbled up and up until it boiled over, a lifetime of hurts she had never let herself feel, a string of losses that had seemed inevitable until she'd woken up in a world where everything you loved wasn't doomed to die.

  Lili cried for Jared's pain. She cried for the things he'd endured in Eden, for the things he'd endured for twenty-two years, getting rich while his heart bled. She cried for her family, whose deaths she'd avenged without letting herself feel, because the helplessness of the loss had been too great.

  Her tired mother, who had never been warm because warmth might have given Lili a false sense of hope. She'd prepared her as best she could for the only life she knew—a hellish one. Her older siblings, already growing wary with the world. Her younger siblings, who barely remembered laughter because it had been five years since Lili had been there to share it with them.

  The baby, who'd never had a chance.

  She cried until she was empty, until she was hollowed out inside, too tired to sob even as the tears slipped over her cheeks. Then she buried her face in Rachel's lap and let the woman's soothing murmurs and comforting touches coax her into the only sort of relief left to her—numb, exhausted sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  After getting the shit beaten out of you by Eden's finest, even ink on the delicate skin of your inner wrists was a piece of cake.

  Jared watched the last of the lines take shape, the O'Kane logo centered on an elaborate shield, like the crest of some adventuring medieval knight. Crossed swords completed the design on his inner arms, connected to the shield by twisting vines bearing flowers just shy of bloom. It was beautiful work—but then, Ace's ink always was.

  "There we go." Ace sat back and admired his work, a pleased smile curving his lips. "Perfect. How could it not be?"

  "The artist at work." Jared turned his arm, admiring the shiny black lines. "Thank you."

  "I've been wanting to do these for years." Ace rolled his stool to a cart and rattled around in a drawer until he came up with a tube of med-gel. "I tweaked the design a little, though. Now that you're a big badass hero."

  "I thought badass heroes rode in on white steeds to save the day."

  "Surviving even one hour with one of Eden's counselors qualifies," Cruz said from the door. "Surviving five is damn near unheard of, outside of Special Tasks recruits."

  It was so quintessentially Eden that Jared rolled his eyes. "Why am I not surprised to learn they put their own men through systematic beatings?"

  Cruz shrugged. "It's easier when you know they won't kill you at the end. Of course, they know that, so they get a lot meaner."

  "Fine, you're both badasses," Ace grumbled as he smoothed the gel over Jared's wrists. "Panties fall off when you enter a room. Virgins swoon."

  "Don't worry, Santana," Jared said dryly. "You're still the king of disintegrating lingerie."

  "He doesn't care," Cruz said, curling a hand around the back of Ace's neck. "He prefers taking it off with his own two hands. Or his teeth."

  "See?" Ace grinned. "He gets me."

  Ace was doing his best to keep the mood light, but the unmistakable sympathy in Cruz's gaze was impossible to ignore. Jared looked away as Cruz leaned down to kiss the top of Ace's head. "I need a few minutes with him. Work stuff."

  "Sure." Ace rose and leveled a finger at Jared. "Don't mess up my masterpiece, or I'll kick your ass."

  "Yes, sir." Jared picked up the roll of gauze and began to loosely wrap his wrists.

  When Ace was gone, Cruz pulled something silver from his pocket and held it out. It was Jared's lighter, the one with Noah's data device secreted inside. He'd left it in his jacket back at Council headquarters, but it was no big mystery how Cruz had obtained it.

  He took the lighter and ran his fingers over the delicate raised filigree. "How long have you known Lieutenant Malhotra?"

  "I can't remember not knowing him." Cruz claimed the stool Ace had abandoned and took over wrapping Jared's wrists. "There are different classes of soldiers on the Base. I'm the kind prepared from birth to be the perfect weapon. I was elite. Ashwin Malhotra is the kind they started preparing before birth. He was...more than elite."

  "So he's your contact in the city." So many things about it made sense—especially Cruz's certainty that he could handle any trouble Jared ran into within Eden's walls. "He was very careful with me. But he wasn't about to intervene to save my life."

  "Soldiers like Ashwin don't get distracted by emotion. They have missions, and a sense of honor tied to their understanding of the mission. Ashwin won't save your life out of affection for me. I don't even know if he can feel affection."

  The thought was enough to make a man's blood chill. But Jared was too focused on what Cruz hadn't said to linger over Ashwin's capacity for love. "And if saving someone was the mission?"

  "You can't change his endgame. But if he thinks you could be useful to his goals…" Cruz trailed off and met Jared's eyes. "He respects you now, Jared. That doesn't mean he'll save someone for you, but it might mean he'd save someone for you—for a price."

  "What sort of price?"

  "A favor." Cruz smoothed the end of the gauze into place, his gaze fixed on his fingers, his eyes shadowed. "He's the reason Ace is alive. Someday, Ashwin will need something, and I'll have to hope it doesn't break me to repay. But I'd do it again."

  He didn't have to ask if it was worth it. The fact that Cruz and Rachel were still laughing, smiling, breathing—that was all the proof anyone could ever need.

  Cruz had traded his favor for
Ace's life. Jared would gladly trade his for a promise.

  But first, he had to know. "And this is part of his honor system, delivering for these favors?"

  "Yes, but you need to understand what you're asking. Ashwin can be painfully literal." Cruz's lips tilted up, not quite a smile. "You can ask him to keep Lili safe if something goes wrong, whatever the cost, and that's what he'll do. Whatever the cost. Whether or not she fights him, whether or not it means leaving you to die. Even if he has to cut down enemies and friends on his way out of the city."

  "I can be pretty goddamn literal, too." Knowing there would be someone there to protect Lili if things went south meant the difference between being terrified of her being in the city and welcoming her help. And, if worse came to worst, that was all Jared cared about—nothing else, no one else, not even himself. "You know him. What would he want from me?"

  "The same thing everyone wants. Information." Cruz took a deep breath and glanced around Ace's studio, as if making certain they were alone. "I have a gut feeling. Bren, Dallas, and Lex are the only ones who know. But if Ashwin asks questions, pay attention to what he's asking. It may tell us if my gut is right or not."

  It raised the hair on the back of Jared's neck. "You think he's planning something."

  "I think the Base may not be under Eden's control anymore." Cruz rose. "And since soldiers like Ashwin seem to be putting their support behind men like Nikolas Markovic, I think the days of corrupt politicians running Eden into the ground may be numbered."

  "Then I'll tell him any damn thing he wants to know." Hell, he'd do that for free.

  "Good." This time Cruz's smile was unmistakable. "You may not be in as much danger as you think, you know. Apparently Markovic is clever under pressure. He called a meeting of the full Council before you'd even cleared the city, presented his triumph, and gave Peterson credit for figuring out a way to lend you the last bit of necessary credibility to infiltrate Dallas's inner circle."

  Which meant Peterson's star was now tied to Jared's, and pursuing his vendetta would hurt him. "Clever, indeed."