by Jenna Black
“Fine,” she said with a frustrated huff. “I’ll change clothes.”
“A good choice,” Mari commented smugly. “I’ll wait outside while you change. You can put your street clothes in the locker for the duration of your stay. Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll give you the tour, then show you to your room.”
Nadia couldn’t manage a gracious response, so she settled for saying nothing.
* * *
Nadia drew the line at changing into Tranquility underwear. She donned the powder-blue tunic and pants, which, as promised, fit her perfectly. Fearing Mari might check and notice that the undies were still in the locker in their sterile plastic packaging, Nadia unwrapped them and stuck them in the generous pocket of her pants. The bra made an odd-looking lump, but she hoped the tunic would hide it sufficiently.
Closing the locker, Nadia rested her forehead against the cool metal, trying to compose herself before she had to face the smiling demon again. There was a part of her that couldn’t believe this was really happening to her. She’d always believed that Executives who were forced to hide away in retreats had brought it on themselves, had scorned them for their lack of self-control or social skills. She’d suffered from the quaint delusion that at least some part of her future was under her control. Now she knew how wrong she had been. About everything.
Fighting off her sense of impending doom, Nadia let Mari know she was ready, and they began their tour.
If Nadia had checked herself into the place voluntarily, she might have found the Tranquility Retreat appealing. The grounds truly were beautiful, and the array of spa services available was almost dizzying. She could spend all day every day being shamelessly pampered, without a duty in the world. She could take a dip in the heated pool, steam her pores in the sauna, take yoga and aerobics classes, or just sit around doing nothing. She could eat in the grand dining hall, or at one of a handful of smaller outdoor cafes with lovely views and impressive menus. There were movies every night—shown from disc, naturally, rather than streamed from the net—and an impressive library brimming with books. But whereas many of the guests at Tranquility probably enjoyed being completely cut off from the outside world, Nadia already felt like she was suffocating.
The main building housed the administrative offices, the guest rooms, the library, and the dining hall. Another building about fifty yards away housed the spa and the entertainment center. There were two other buildings that Nadia could see as Mari dragged her along for what felt like an endless tour. Those buildings were much more utilitarian in form, plain rectangles with regularly spaced windows and only a few embellishments here and there. They were also a considerable distance away, and Mari ignored them as if they didn’t exist. Nadia suspected those were the psych and rehab facilities, where the “guests” were literally prisoners, unable to leave of their own free will.
“What are those buildings?” Nadia asked as Mari led her back to the main building at the end of the tour. Although she’d already guessed for herself, she was curious what Mari would say.
Mari kept smiling away, nauseatingly chipper. “Those are for our guests who require extra care,” she said breezily. “Everything you need will be in the main building or the spa, so the extra-care facilities aren’t included in the tour.”
“Could I go there if I wanted to?”
Mari looked at her as if she might be going nuts. “You could go to the lobby during visiting hours, if you wanted to, but there’s nothing of particular interest to see. Unless you know someone who is staying there?”
Nadia shook her head. The only person Nadia knew who’d spent any time in a retreat was Nate’s mother, and she barely remembered the woman. Nadia had been only six when Eleanor Hayes had entered an upstate retreat as a permanent resident. The Chairman Spouse had not been seen in public since, nor had she communicated in any way with Nate—or anyone else in the outside world that Nadia knew of.
“Speaking of visiting hours,” Mari continued, “they are Wednesdays from five P.M. to eight P.M., and Sundays from noon to three. You’ll be eligible for visitors after you’ve been with us for five nights, although we encourage friends and family to give our guests at least two weeks of complete peace before visiting.”
Mari beamed, as if the idea of being completely cut off from friends and family for two weeks were her idea of pure bliss. It took everything Nadia had to keep the barrage of scathing remarks that came to her mind from spilling out of her mouth.
CHAPTER TWO
Nate awakened from a deep, exhausted sleep to a bedroom that was still dark. The first hints of feeble light peeked around the edges of his curtains, but Nate wasn’t an early riser under the best of circumstances, and after the day he’d had yesterday, he was sure he could sleep for a week. He groaned and let his eyes blink shut for a moment before his sleep-fogged mind remembered that something had woken him up. A change of pressure, and the soft squeak of mattress springs.
Nate was lying facedown on top of the covers, having fallen into bed last night without even bothering to get undressed. The aftermath of Nadia’s arrest and their subsequent standoff with his father was draining the life out of him, and he fantasized about banning all reporters from the planet. They’d been after him all his life, but they were positively hounding him now. His neck was stiff as hell from lying in one position too long, but he slowly and painfully cranked it around to the other side.
Without the light on, Nate could only see a shadowy form sitting on the bed beside him, but something deeper than his conscious mind knew exactly who it was, as impossible as it might be.
“Kurt?” he asked in a hoarse croak, blinking a few times to try to force his boyfriend’s features to come clear.
Kurt reached out and brushed away a lock of hair that was plastered to the side of Nate’s face, a gentle, familiar touch that immediately made Nate’s heart—and other parts of him—ache with longing.
“You look like shit,” Kurt said with a shake of his now-bald head. “Your new valet allowed you to go to bed with your clothes on?”
Nate let out a soft snort. The idea that a valet could “let” the Chairman Heir do anything was laughable, though he had to admit, if Kurt had still held the position, he would have undressed Nate by force, if necessary. He was the bossiest valet Nate had ever met. And he was irreplaceable.
“I didn’t hire a new valet,” Nate admitted. He sat up slowly, wincing from the lingering effects of the beating he’d taken a few days ago. A beating that Kurt had ordered, though he’d paradoxically done it in an attempt to protect Nate. “What are you doing here? And how did you get in? Please tell me nobody saw you.”
The deal Nadia had negotiated with the Chairman had included complete amnesty for Kurt, but Nate didn’t trust it. When Kurt had been accused of murdering the original Nate Hayes, Nate—who, though he was a Replica, had all the knowledge and memories and feelings of his original—had made it dangerously clear to his father how much Kurt meant to him. If the Chairman could find a way to hurt Nate through Kurt, he’d do it in a heartbeat. The old man was a vindictive son of a bitch, and he wouldn’t forgive Nate and Nadia for having won their battle of wills.
“How did I get in?” Kurt asked with an exasperated expression Nate could make out even in the darkness. “Do you really have to ask me that?”
Before he’d become Nate’s valet, Kurt had been a Basement-dweller. Basement-dwellers learned thievery, breaking and entering, and drug dealing when respectable citizens were learning reading and arithmetic. Breaking and entering when he already had a key to Nate’s apartment and knew exactly where guards and security cameras were located probably hadn’t been much of a challenge. Not to mention that the two of them had made a habit of sneaking in and out together for forbidden jaunts to the Basement.
“All right, skip that. Tell me why you’re here.”
Enough light from the rising sun filtered through the curtains that Nate could now see Kurt’s face more clearly, could see the litt
le smile that curved his lips.
“Well, first of all, for this,” Kurt said, then put his hand behind Nate’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss.
Nate made a little sound of protest. His mouth had to taste disgusting right now, and he and Kurt had about a thousand unresolved issues between them. But Kurt didn’t seem to mind the taste of his mouth, nor did he seem to care much about the issues. With anyone but Kurt, Nate was too much of a take-charge kind of guy to give in on even the most trivial matter, at least not without a fight. But giving in to Kurt had always been frighteningly easy, and he did so now, abandoning his commonsense objections and losing himself in the moment. Kurt was the best kisser Nate had ever known, though there were other things he was equally good at.
The kiss ended way too soon, and the possibility of progressing to “other things” faded away. Kurt kept his hand on Nate’s neck, kneading the tight muscles there as he stayed intimately close.
“You gotta know that you came first,” Kurt said, looking intensely into Nate’s eyes. “I was already with you when the resistance asked me to take advantage of it.”
So much for ignoring the issues that lay between them. Nate’s chest hurt, and he dropped Kurt’s gaze, hardly able to swallow the truth that he had learned: Kurt—his valet, his friend, and his lover—had spied on him for some shadowy resistance movement Nate hadn’t even known existed.
“How can you expect me to believe that?” Nate asked, his hands clenching into fists in his lap. “You’ve obviously lied before.”
“You think I could have guessed where things would lead when I hooked up with you at Angel’s? I thought you were just some uptight Exec kid looking for a good time. No way I expected us to hit it off and that you’d actually hire me.”
Nate was glad for the semidarkness, which might help hide the redness of his cheeks. Theirs had not been what you’d call a storybook romance, and he wasn’t exactly proud of how it had begun. There was a time not that long ago when he’d treated the Basement—or Debasement, as its residents called it—as his own personal playground, taking advantage of the unfortunates who lived and worked there without really thinking about what their lives must be like. He’d never been cruel or unfair to any of them—at least, not that he knew of—but his well-meaning ignorance was a source of shame anyway. How could Kurt possibly have loved the privileged, self-centered bastard he had been before the rude awakening of his death?
“So you weren’t a member of the resistance when we met?”
Kurt looked away briefly before answering, and Nate braced himself for a lie. But Kurt was a master of not doing what was expected.
“I was,” he admitted. “But I wasn’t active. What’s a teenage whore going to do to help bring down a government?”
Nate flinched. “Don’t call yourself that!” He had no illusions as to what Kurt’s former profession had been, had known it from the moment he’d first laid eyes on him prowling the club, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
“What? A teenager?” Kurt grinned at him. “I suppose I could be as much as twenty, but I’m pretty sure it’s more like eighteen.”
Just another indication of how different life in the Basement was from the life Nate had always known. He couldn’t imagine not knowing how old he was. “You know what I mean,” Nate said with a tired sigh.
Kurt patted his thigh. “Yeah. But I’m not ashamed of it, like you are.”
“Kurt—”
Kurt silenced him with a brief kiss. “It’s all right, Nate. I get it. Really, I do. But I stopped being a whore the day you hired me. And I came to your bed because I wanted to, not because it was part of a job. I love you, you idiot.”
Even in the midst of his turmoil, Nate couldn’t help laughing. “You’re such a charmer.”
“You want charm, marry Nadia. Oh, wait. You will. My bad.”
His words drained every drop of humor from Nate’s body. The fact that Kurt might have been using him all along had certainly bothered Nate, but it was a sin he was prepared to forgive, knowing that however things might have started, Kurt’s affection for him in the end had to be at least somewhat genuine. Other things he had done were far harder to forgive.
“Dante put a tracker on Nadia, and you knew,” Nate said, shaking his head in disbelief. “You set her up so your resistance buddies could kill her.” He wanted Kurt to deny having known, wanted it all to have been Dante’s idea, but he knew in his heart that wasn’t the case.
Kurt reached for him, and Nate slapped his hand away. He might never be able to love Nadia the way she deserved, but she’d been his friend long before Kurt had come into his life, and the idea that Kurt had been willing to sacrifice her like that …
Kurt didn’t even have the grace to look particularly guilty. “From what I understand, having that tracker on her probably saved her life.”
“That doesn’t make it right! But then, you knew that, or you wouldn’t have gone behind my back.”
Kurt’s gray eyes narrowed, and his voice took on a sharp edge. “Uh-huh, couldn’t possibly be ’cause you would have pitched a fit if you knew. You’d never do a thing like that, right?”
Kurt’s words hurt more than the fading bruises. Both Kurt and Nadia had kept secrets from him. Big ones. And both for the same reason: they didn’t trust him. They thought of him as some impulsive, out-of-control child who’d fly off the handle and act without thinking. And the worst part about it, the part that hurt most, was that they’d been right.
“We couldn’t let her be interrogated,” Kurt said a little more gently. “She knew enough to bring down the entire resistance if she talked, and Mosely has … had … a way of making people talk. Besides, we thought that if she got caught, she was going to die anyway. We all thought that, even you.”
Nate closed his eyes, as if that could block out the memory. He had tried everything he could think of to stop Nadia from putting herself in danger. Respecting her decision had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, and when he’d gotten the frantic call from Dante, telling him she’d been arrested …
“You could at least have told her about the tracker.” He opened his eyes to glare at Kurt.
Kurt shrugged. “Who knew how she would react under pressure? I thought knowing about the tracker might freak her out, so I told Dante to keep his mouth shut.”
Kurt had no idea what Nadia was really made of. If he’d seen her standing up to the Chairman and to Mosely under threat of death and torture …
“You don’t know her at all,” Nate said, shaking his head at Kurt. Not that he was surprised. Kurt and Nadia had never liked one another. Kurt saw Nadia as a stuck-up aristocrat, and Nadia saw Kurt as a bad influence. But Nadia had the insight to see past her dislike, which apparently Kurt didn’t. “She never once doubted you. Even after you had your friends beat the crap out of me and tell me you killed me, she was convinced you did it for a good reason.” Kurt had been trying to chase Nate away for his own good, but Nate wasn’t sure he could ever shake the memory of Angel jerking the locket off him and telling him Kurt never wanted to see him again.
“I’m not going to apologize for not trusting her,” Kurt said stubbornly. “If that makes her a better person than me, then I’m okay with that.”
Nate reminded himself that growing up in the Basement must have made it near impossible for Kurt to trust anyone. Despite his hard, sharp edges, Kurt was a good guy at heart, and that was an impressive accomplishment, considering his background.
“Her family sent her away to a retreat because of all the things she did to try to help you.” Just thinking about it made Nate’s blood pressure rise. How could her own family do that to her? She’d said in her phone message that it would only be for a week or two, but he’d heard the doubt in her voice.
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s a real hardship.”
Nate struggled against his urge to snap back. He was hardly surprised at Kurt’s lack of sympathy. When your own life had included not knowing where y
our next meal was coming from and selling your body to make ends meet, being trapped in a luxurious spa where you were waited on hand and foot didn’t sound so bad. Even so, Nate bet Kurt wouldn’t like being imprisoned there much more than Nadia would, at least once the novelty wore off.
“So are you gonna stay pissed at me?” Kurt said. “Or are we gonna kiss and make up?”
“Can’t I do both?”
Kurt laughed softly. “Are you too pissed to want this back?” He reached into a pocket inside the ratty jacket he wore and pulled out the locket.
Nate’s heart squeezed in his chest. Angel had broken the chain when she’d yanked it off him, but Kurt had either repaired the damage or gotten a new one. Nate had worn that locket against his skin every day since Kurt had given it to him, and he’d missed its comforting weight since it had been taken from him. He held out his hand, and Kurt laid the locket in his palm.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Kurt said, curling Nate’s fingers around the locket.
“And I’m sorry I took you for granted,” Nate responded, his throat almost too tight to let the words out.
They sat like that for a long moment, their eyes locked, their hands clasped around the locket. Nate yearned to kiss Kurt and drag him down onto the bed, but too many things still lay between them.
Nate slipped the locket on over his head, pressing the skin-warmed gold against his chest. Then he straightened up and met Kurt’s eyes again, this time in a challenging stare.
“All right. Mushy time is over. Now tell me why you’re really here.”
Kurt rubbed a hand over his bald head. He’d shaved off his hair when he’d gone into hiding, and he looked older and more sinister without it. Nate hoped he’d let it grow back.
“I’m gonna guess that the news feeds have it all wrong about what happened,” Kurt said. “Except for the part about Mosely being a murderer, that is. Thought you might be able to clear some things up.”