When Nolan came, it wasn’t all at once. It was slow, pressured, and it lasted longer than I’d known was possible. My name was a prayer on his lips. I rolled forward, collapsing onto his chest, embraced in his strong arms.
I might never move again.
“Baby.” He stroked my spine. “Don’t ever leave me again.”
* * * *
Nolan didn’t so much share the bed as take up all of it. I slept pressed into a tiny corner, half of his body covering mine while he slept so deeply I doubted a bomb going off could wake him. The thought made me shudder. The bomb in my heart was always there…whether I wanted to think about it or not.
Nolan’s hand moved until it covered my breast. I squirmed as pleasure rocked my body. His hips jerked at my side, and I studied his face, still restful in sleep. He had said I was what he dreamed about. I smiled, slipping away from him out of the bed. I was blissfully sore.
“No.” He spoke, and I turned around but he remained as he’d been. We’d get used to each other. Eventually, spending the night with him would be as easy as the others. I walked into the bathroom and shut the door.
The mirror caught my attention and I stared at my reflection. “I’m Melissa Fucking Alexander.”
My words felt phony on my tongue. How had she said it? I put my hand on my hip and tried to put attitude in my eyes. “I’m Melissa Fucking Alexander.”
Still didn’t work. Was Fucking actually my middle name? I laughed at the ridiculousness of my thoughts, a high-pitched sound. “I’m Melissa Fucking Alexander.”
I said it over and over again. At some point I was going to be her again. Shouldn’t I be able to speak the three words and mean them?
The door cracked open and Nolan stood watching me. I turned to him, hand on my hip. “Didn’t you know? I’m Melissa Fucking Alexander. I blow things up.”
He rubbed at his chin. “Are you having some kind of breakdown?”
“I’m trying to feel it. Somewhere inside of me, there has to be that woman. She knows what happened. She knows if Cooper is lying or not. She’d know if he needed to be rescued. She made you all so happy. She wasn’t useless in a crisis.”
“You shot a guy in the head.”
I heard his words, only I didn’t want to let them compute. “I’m Melissa Fucking Alexander.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” He hauled me up and carried me to the bed. “We’re going to talk about Melissa Fucking Alexander, and how ridiculous it was when you said it. How you regretted it as soon as it hit the airways. We had to hide. You had to stop going out in public. Your mother wanted to haul you to The Bridge and lock you up for insubordination. You do have this side to your personality. Sometimes you make large mistakes and nothing can be done to fix them. You fixate. I think you thought that speech funny. Melissa Fucking Alexander. Most ridiculous thing ever.”
Unable to quiet the shaking, I wrapped my arms around his neck. “How many people have I killed?”
“Nope.” He kissed my eyes. “Close them. Tomorrow, we’ll do question and answer. I promise you the middle of the night is not the time for this. Nothing good ever comes from conversations after midnight.”
Artemis flew in space, Geoff sat at the helm, I’d killed someone, but we were safe. Nolan was right. But I didn’t go back to sleep for the night.
* * * *
“I don’t like your blood pressure.” Dane stared at the computer screen over my head.
“Her feet are swollen.” Nolan pointed at them like none of us had ever seen them before.
Dane nodded. “That’s normal. And it’s not a huge amount of swelling. Her urine is clear. No sign of sugar. Under any needless stress?”
C.J. butted in, stepping in front of me. “She shot someone yesterday.”
They were all in the room with me, yet talking about me like I wasn’t there. “Okay.” I pushed at the plastic and it went down. When it was off me, I sat. “Here’s the deal. I need answers. Dane, who’s the father? I know you have it in that machine of yours. No way is it taking this long.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s done, but I haven’t looked at it.”
“Look at it now. Unless you all want to tell me you won’t love her if you know it’s not yours. Or if it’s Cooper’s, and you can’t deal with that, either.” Silence met my statement. “Is that a no? It won’t be a problem?”
Dane walked to the computer. “For my part, I’m hoping she’s not mine. I’d rather be her favorite uncle. I had a public nervous breakdown. She doesn’t need that in her life, a dad who did that.”
“I clearly have issues.” Wes interrupted. “The whole can’t-take-care-of-myself bit. Be better if she didn’t have those genes.”
Geoff snorted. “Half the people in my family die before they’re twenty. It’s a big giant mess. Like worst choices ever. Has to be some genetic issues there.”
C.J. shook his head. “My father was an asshole. My uncles were mostly drunks. No good parenting role models for me.”
“My mother was a whore. I don’t have any idea who my dad was,” Nolan finished off.
Dane cut in. “Cooper’s family has a history of problems on the female line. Too much intermarrying on Ochoa. Cooper’s healthy, but his sister is eighteen with the intellectual ability of a six year old. They’re marrying her off this year. Big, giant genetic mess. His father is a despot and his mother, while intellectually capable, is a raving lunatic.”
I rubbed my belly. Their sad stories didn’t terrify me, although the bit about Cooper’s sister was somewhat concerning, and something about her banged around in my head like I needed to remember her but couldn’t. I sighed. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it. We’d have to deal with whatever happened. “We need to talk about Cooper, later.”
Dane stared at the screen in front of him. I hoped he read the results. There were too many unanswered questions to not have the ones we could. We’d start with the baby’s father and move on from there.
Dane turned around. He took one step toward me and placed his hand on Geoff’s shoulder. “Congratulations, man.”
The room erupted. I’d expected the others might be disappointed, but they weren’t. Lots of hugs and patting him on the back. Even Nolan grinned outright before pulling Geoff into an embrace. I let out my breath.
Any of them would have been great, but somehow it was perfect it was Geoff. He’d come and gotten us—our daughter and me—off Master’s.
“You brought us home. Kidnapped us and…thank you.” Geoff reached me in a stride and pulled me against him. His mouth met mine, and I tasted the desperation on his lips, in the way he squeezed the back of my hair, in the slight vibration of his body. Everyone was happy…except Geoff.
He was scared.
I pulled away to stare into his brown eyes. “This is going to be okay.”
I hoped I wasn’t lying.
He rocked on his feet. “You have to eat more, sleep more, no more risks. You take care of her. We’ll take care of you. No more risks, sweetheart. This suddenly got really real.”
His hug tightened and seconds later even more so. All five of them surrounded me, hugging me, patting my belly, grasping at each other, laughing. Suddenly, I felt like a family. This was what it meant to share with the Nomads—to always be there, no matter what happened.
Tears streamed down my face. “Cooper is missing. We need him. I don’t think he did anything. I think this is all on me.”
Nolan nodded, taking a step away from the others. Eventually they all let me go, except for Geoff who placed a hand on my stomach and rubbed.
“Sweetheart, are you telling us you want us to plan a trip to Ochoa? An actual mission to the heart of hell?”
I laughed. Nolan had a real way with words, now that he spoke to me regularly. “Sounds about right.”
“M, you really know how to make my day.” C.J. slapped Geoff on the back. “Big bombs, my brother. Big bombs.”
Wes cleared his throat. “Would it be an okay t
ime to tell you I know how to block the bomb on your heart? I mean, I could do it right this second. If you want.”
I practically got whiplash jolting to look at him.
Dane grinned from ear to ear. “This has been a great day.”
Chapter 16
The Bomb Removal Squad
“I’M going to encase her with a wireless blocker.” Wes smiled as though he’d just said the best words in the universe, which I supposed they would be if I’d understood them.
Dane rubbed his chin. “Inside her?”
“Yep a wireless blocking bubble around her heart.”
“Interesting.” Dane tapped on the table. “I hate to operate on her at all with the baby still inside. Her blood pressure is already up. The things we can do medically to extend life are amazing…and we’re still hopelessly pathetic in helping pregnant women stay healthy.”
C.J. stepped next to Dane. “That’s all fascinating, but I’d argue the risk is worth it. We’re talking about someone out there having the ability to blow you up from the inside out. Couldn’t you save the baby at this point if she had to be delivered, Dane?”
“I could.” He pointed to the table where I sat. “She might live in there for a while.”
“Why put it inside her at all? Why not just pop a bubble around her altogether? Or all over the ship?”
Wes sighed and placed his hand on my knee, squeezing. I appreciated the contact. It was hard to be talked about like I wasn’t there.
“I worked out several models like that. My concern is they’ll be too weak that way. Let’s face it, a good hacker breaks through firewalls. I want her basically impenetrable. A small, tight, concise wireless blocker right around her heart. It’ll be harder to break. Plus, in order to push through that, it would take such a strong signal, and I’d be more likely to catch it before it happened. We have a big blocker on the ship, and yet Cooper can still find her vitals. And let’s face it, if The Bridge wanted to hack in here, they could. Big blockers are not as precise.”
His words must have made sense to the others as they all stopped arguing.
“Are you okay with this?” Geoff’s gaze met mine. “Nothing happens without your say so.”
Did I want them putting a wireless blocker into my body? No, absolutely not. Did I want a bomb going off, killing me, my unborn child, and possibly everyone near me at the same time? No, I wanted that less.
“Dane.” I caught his attention. He looked away from the screen to hold my eye contact. “Nothing can happen to her. If it comes to it, you get her out of me. She comes first. We don’t do this if that isn’t explicitly clear.”
I hadn’t taken very good care of my little one. She’d been through a tremendous ordeal inside me. Mothers, according to Master’s, were supposed to sit around during pregnancy and devote all of their energy to growing their babies. Obviously, a life of leisure hadn’t been in the cards for me.
“I think I can manage to keep you both alive and just fine.”
I grabbed his arm. “Dane, that was a non-answer.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to promise you anything of that kind. You’re both living through this, end of story. Let’s not start talking about eventualities. I’m not losing you or her. She’s thirty-six weeks. I can keep her in you, or I’ll make her safe and healthy out here. You’re going to be fine. I mean, we’re just talking about Wes attaching a wireless blocker to your heart. No big deal, right?”
Geoff turned my chin to look at him. “Let’s let Dane get ready to do this. He doesn’t do what ifs all that well. You’ve seen him play cards. He never bluffs. He either has the cards or he doesn’t. There’s no pretending.”
I took Geoff’s hand. “How many devices do you think I can have attached to my heart?”
“I knew a guy once who got nearly blown to smithereens in a Noble raid. He had two mechanical chambers in his heart.”
I didn’t know if he’d made up that story or not. Unlike Dane, Geoff could bluff quite well. “Are you lying to keep me calm?”
“No.” He kissed the tops of my hands. “We need to clear out one of the unused bedrooms to make room for her. She needs…things babies need.”
“I’ll build it,” Nolan cut in. “All the furniture. I’ll get it done. Also, the best thing I can do right now, I think, is steer this ship. Going to keep Artemis smooth for you guys.”
He walked over to me and planted a kiss on my mouth. I sighed against him. “I didn’t throw up on the shuttle when you piloted on the way to the station. Later, with C.J., I did. But not with you. Was that because you did something?”
His grin spoke of pure male satisfaction. “Noticed that, did you? It’s just that these guys don’t have the touch.”
“Hey,” C.J. snapped from where he stared at the screen next to Dane. “I’ve got the touch, brother. You just don’t appreciate the beauty of how I conduct the ship.”
I grinned and, next to me, so did Geoff. Nolan shook his head before he stared at me. “This will be nothing, baby. Then we’ll go get Cooper, figure out what that asshole’s been up to, and decide what to do next. Future’s never been brighter.”
Geoff whistled through his teeth. “Wow. What did you do to him? He’s actually human.”
Nolan gave him the finger as he exited the room and everyone laughed. Had it been like this before? Were we always this at ease with one another?
Wes appeared at my side. “This will work. Trust me?”
“Yes.”
His eyes brightened. “Just like that?”
“Should I not be so certain? Because if you think I should say no…”
He kissed me softly on the lips. “I’d never let anything happen to you. Besides, Geoff is here. He can freeze the bomb if it starts to go off.”
My blood pressure must have shot through the roof because the machine started dinging loudly and Dane whirled around. “Oh, what the fuck?”
“Is the bomb going to go off?”
“No.” Geoff shoved Wes in the shoulder. “It’s not. The likelihood of it exploding because we’re in there with it is slim to none. And, as Wes put it, I can cool it if it does that, since you’re already open.”
Dane grabbed something out of a drawer and crossed to me. I stared at the syringe in his hand. “What is that?”
He took my arm gently and pressed the needle into my vein. I jolted at first because of the pinch and then thanks to the slight burn the medicine caused in my arm. “Dane?”
“This is going to put you to sleep. It’ll take a minute or two. Don’t be concerned, this particular drug doesn’t pass through the placenta. The baby will have no idea anything is happening to you other than you’re taking a nap. When you wake, this will be done. No more risk of explosion. I’ll keep your blood pressure better than it currently is while you’re sleeping.”
Wes’ eyes were huge. “I’m sorry I said anything, Mel.”
“You’re forgiven.” I didn’t want him worried while he did whatever he had to do to place the wireless blocker in my body.
Geoff kissed me once before he moved away. “Get some sleep.”
C.J. stood next to him, leaning over for his kiss. “Since we’re all smooching you in front of each other these days, I need my turn. Didn’t used to be this way. We kept our hands and mouths to ourselves outside of your room. I kind of like this free-for-all thing. Goodnight, M. I’ll be sure to let you know if you snore while you’re under.”
I rolled my eyes. Dane had said the drug would take a few minutes, but as the room blurred I had to blink rapidly to keep my vision straight.
“That was fast.” Dane leaned down for his kiss. “I’ve got you. Just a quick nap.”
* * * *
When my eyes opened, an alarm blared around me. I gasped, sitting abruptly. My heart raced, and I stared at myself. My heart must still be inside me, and the baby kicked hard. I wasn’t dead and neither was she.
The blood pressure monitor was going off, but that wasn’t the blaring
sound in the room. No, it was an emergency signal I’d never heard before. The plastic covering of the medical bed disappeared when I touched it, and I swung my legs over the bed, dizziness assaulting me.
My muscles were stiff. What the hell happened? I looked around. The lights in the room had been dimmed. Where was Dane? There was no way he’d left me alone post-surgery.
I stood, gripping the table for balance. “Dane?” I shouted his name but after a second of waiting, when he didn’t answer, I knew he couldn’t be within ear shot. They really needed to give me one of those wrist monitors that allowed them to speak to each other.
Stumbling forward, I made it to the doorway of the medical bay. Lights in the hallway flashed brightly in tune to the shrill alarm. “Dane? Wes? Geoff?” I screamed, but other than the blaring, there was no movement, no indication that anyone else was around.
My heart kicked up, and I hoped it was okay so close to surgery. If they’d all left me alone, they were in trouble. What was the alarm? Were they okay? What was happening? I had to calm down. I needed to think. Damn it, what should I do? I didn’t have a weapon, but I knew where they were stored. I’d proven on Truest that I could wield a gun.
On quiet, yet unsteady feet, I made my way to the weapons locker. It had been left wide open, which only increased my anxiety. I entered the small space. Most of the weapons were gone.
“Shit.” I closed my eyes, trying to catch my breath. What had happened while I’d been under? Why hadn’t they woke me? How much trouble were we in?
I grabbed a small revolver off the ground. It had either fallen or been discarded. I checked for ammo and found it loaded.
Nolan had been piloting when I fell asleep. If I was lucky, he was still in the control center. Or at least I’d get a clue about what was going on there when I arrived.
My knees shook and not from fear. I was weaker than I’d been since I woke up in Master’s. How much time had passed?