Excelsior (39 page)

He stopped beside her and brought his face down to hers, a sarcastic smile on his face. His brown eyes flashed mere inches from her nose. She could feel the angry heat in his gaze. He was just about to boil over. Self-preservation kicked in and she looked away, not wishing to challenge him. He had a temper. She wasn’t stupid. It was best to let him cool down before they discussed anything.

“Let’s not deal with this tonight,” she said, turning away to put her comm band back on the night stand.

He caught her by the arm, his grip painfully tight.

“Let me go,” she said, her own temper rising to pour some heat into her words.

“You’re mine,” he said through gritted teeth.

That did it. “I’m yours because I choose to be. I’m not your property. Maybe I should reply.”

He flinched as if she’d slapped him. She saw his face contort with disgust, and a sick feeling crawled into the pit of her stomach. She’d seen him this way before.

In the time it took for her to blink, a loud slap rang in her ears followed by an explosion of pain in her cheek. She tried counting to ten in her head, taking deep breaths, but it was too late. He’d awoken her temper. How dare he slap her! Making things worse, Dorian was right with them in the room. Catalina’s eyes darted to his crib, suddenly afraid for her son. If David even so much as breathed on him she’d kill him. She turned to glare at him with all the hate she could muster. He stepped back, his lips twisting derisively, his head bobbing as if she deserved what she’d got.

No amount of behavioral adjustment had ever seemed to work with David. This wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. What he needed was for someone to stand up to him. To fight back. She stood straight up, her entire body shaking with rage, and she took a long step toward him. She tried to put coherent thoughts together to say something that would hurt him badly enough. All she could think of was, “You’re right to be jealous. Alexander is a thousand times the man you’ll ever be!”

David froze, a monument of rage. Then he screamed and came at her with a closed fist. A moment later she was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling through one eye, her other one shut in darkness, and feeling like it had been knocked out with a hammer. David went on screaming, but she wasn’t listening. She was too shocked. Too angry and hurt for words to express. What she did hear were baby Dorian’s cries. Their fighting had woken him up.

“Callate!” David screamed at their son. Dorian screamed louder, and Catalina felt another white hot flash of fury. She sat up, watching David through her one good eye to make sure his attention didn’t linger on Dorian for long. David turned from the crib, shaking his head, and began pacing around the room, muttering to himself in Spanish. Catalina watched him carefully, quietly, this time knowing better than to speak.

Tears leaked in warm rivers down her cheeks. Her swollen eye felt like it was the size of a watermelon. Her head throbbed like there was a miniature drummer in there, pounding away. Catalina went to Dorian’s crib and picked him up, shushing him and whispering sweetly that everything was fine. That she was fine. Dorian calmed down, believing the lie despite the tears that dripped onto his baby blanket. She rocked Dorian gently in her arms until he fell asleep once more. She kept half an eye on David; he avoided her gaze, still pacing. Catalina laid Dorian back in his crib and then went over to her bed and lay down, too. She felt dizzy and sick, staring up at the blurry ceiling. Thinking actually hurt. She rocked her head from side to side. Then she felt his hands on her again…

But this time his fists were open, his hands gentle—shaking. It was like being caressed by a snake. She shivered and cringed, but said nothing. She didn’t want to anger him again. He said something to her in Spanish, but she couldn’t understand him. She realized that was because he was sobbing. He was apologizing profusely, stroking her stinging cheek, fingertips tracing lines around her swollen eye.

He said something about hielo—ice, and his weight abruptly left the bed.

In his absence, Catalina’s first thought was to run, to take Dorian and get as far away from David as she could. But right on the heels of that thought was cold, unfeeling reality. Where would she go? And how? She hadn’t worked for six months. She didn’t have a job waiting for her with the Waltons anymore, and getting a job that would pay enough for her to cover daycare and other childcare costs was simply impossible. She’d be lucky to pay for her own living expenses, let alone those of raising a child. There was government help, but too little of it, and there were simply too many mouths to feed. Now, in the midsts of yet another arms race, the Alliance was even less charitable than usual, and if she decided to risk it and appeal for government aid, there was always the chance that they’d take Dorian away from her and give him to some rich gener family who could provide for him.

That was actually a very likely outcome.

She could always run back to the South and take Dorian to her family, but then he’d grow up in a bad neighborhood where half of the kids end up dropping out of school and joining the local gangs for a living. Given that as an alternative, it would actually be better for Dorian to end up with a couple of rich geners.

Her heart would never bear it. Losing him would destroy her. Dorian was all she had left.

David returned with a bag full of ice and applied it gently to her eye, barely touching her with it, but she winced and almost screamed from the pain. Fury boiled once more, but she clamped down on it, forcing herself not to react.

The last thing she wanted from David now was for him to try to make amends—or to hammer her with another blow. This act was getting tired. It was the same thing every time. He saw someone looking at her and blamed her for being too provocative, or he would feel she was being distant and cold, so he went out and got drunk. If he used her roughly when he came home, well it was just because he loved her so much. What were a few slaps between lovers? That was just part of the foreplay.

Catalina cracked a bitter, self-deprecating smile. She was tired of asking him to get adjusted and tired of scanning line after line of adjustment reports that gave her hope where there was none. David was a broken, broken man, and no amount of tampering with his DNA or hormones was going to fix that.

Catalina felt herself growing cold inside, shutting down and blocking him out. She pushed his hands away and sat up. “I need to be alone,” she said.

“Caty, please… I am so, so sorry… Don’t do this. Focus on the good things. I’m human! I make mistakes.”

She took a deep breath. “We all make mistakes,” she said, thinking that hers was meeting him. Her gaze slipped sideways to her comm band as her thoughts turned to Alex. Her way out.

“You are thinking about him.” She heard a bitter edge in David’s voice. “I get it. You want me to leave you alone so you can answer him. Well, I’m not going anywhere. We will watch the message together and we will reply to it together.”

Caty turned to him, incredulous that he could go from apologetic to jealous and demanding in a matter of seconds. He had no right. None. But from the crazy look in his eyes, she knew that if she said no he would fly into another fit of rage, and this time maybe he wouldn’t stop. Maybe he’d feel justified for hitting her, the unfaithful slut.

Self-preservation won out in the end. She nodded and wordlessly reached for the comm band. They watched the message together. Caty through one eye, David through two. Her heart almost broke when she saw Alexander’s face. He was so happy, so excited. Talking about how he couldn’t believe that she was alive, how he couldn’t wait to see her again. Then his smile vanished and he became hesitant.

“I don’t know anything about your life right now… what you’ve been through… I don’t even know if I have any right to contact you anymore. I know I told you to move on. Believe me there have been many many days and nights that I’ve regretted that, and you should know that I haven’t moved on, but if you did, and you’re happy, then…” His brown eyes were bright and shimmering with tears, and his lips trembled ever so slightly, but he managed to smile again. “All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy, so that’s all that matters.

“I wish I could say I’ll see you soon, but I don’t know that yet. They want us to join the fleet to defend Alliance space, and my guess is that it could be another six months before we actually come home, but there’s also a good chance that things go bad. Really bad. Caty you need to—” The message jerked and suddenly Alex’s head appeared in a different position than it had been a second ago. “—be safe.”

That blip brought a frown to her lips and made her swollen eye throb and sting as the skin around it tightened. Something had been cut from his message. He’d been trying to warn her, but he’d been censored. Reading between the lines made her think he was telling her to go find the nearest bomb shelter and check herself in—not that it was even possible with the kind of money they had to live on.

Alexander went on, “I hope to hear from you soon, Caty.” He held up the pocket watch she’d given him, dangling by its chain and swinging like a pendulum. “Your love is my truth. It always has been. I love you.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he stopped himself with a smile, and the message ended there.

Now what?

Caty’s mind raced, bringing her back to her situation. Trapped. Alone. Praying every night to a God she didn’t believe in for some way out. And now that Alexander had contacted her… she felt this crazy, optimistic hope that maybe this was the answer to her prayers. It was a miracle Alexander was even alive, let alone that he’d come home so soon. Maybe he wouldn’t care that she’d moved on. Maybe once he learned about her situation he would understand, and he’d accept and love Dorian like his own son. Maybe…

But he wouldn’t be back for another six months, and he’d admitted that he might not even survive what was coming. With that much uncertainty hanging over them, Catalina knew she couldn’t afford to hold out hope for Alexander, and that meant she couldn’t afford to leave David. All she could do was try to make things work, try not to provoke the beast sitting on the bed beside her, and focus on her son. Dorian was all that mattered now.

“What are you going to tell him?” David asked, breaking the silence that had grown between them.

Catalina shrugged, feeling defeated. “What else? I have you and Dorian now. I couldn’t wait around for him forever.”

David nodded and sighed. She could almost feel the devil slither out of him with that breath, sated for the moment. “We can send him a message in the morning. Lie down,” he said.

Caty shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said. She did her best not to look at David. He sat there, looking guilty and miserable—a little boy staring at his feet. He looked up briefly to try another apology, but she stopped him.

“We don’t need to talk about it. Tomorrow you’ll go get adjusted again. I’ll do my best not to make you jealous, and you’ll have better self-control next time. It won’t happen again.”

He nodded, eyes back on his feet.

Caty swallowed past a painful lump and held back bitter tears. Here she was—one eye swollen shut, cheek red in the shape of his palm, and she was the one reassuring him.

“I’m going to tell him not to contact me again,” she said. The words caught in her throat as she said them, and a deep ache began radiating in her chest, but she knew it was the right decision. Alexander was a sore spot between them. Getting closure once and for all might just be enough to get David to calm down and stop being so jealous.

Now that she thought about it, his jealousy and insecurity was at the root of all of their fights. Take that away, and maybe he’d finally become the man she’d always hoped he could be. Maybe they could make things work for Dorian’s sake.

What other choice did she have?

 

Chapter 37

Alexander fell asleep with his comm band centimeters from his nose, hoping to hear back from Catalina soon. The officer at the comms had orders to wake him with an alarm call as soon as a message came from her. When he heard that alarm trilling, he sat straight up and hurriedly paged through his message alerts. The latest one was from Catalina. Alexander’s pulse quickened, and suddenly he was out of breath.

Grinning, he opened the message and held the comm band upright to watch as her hologram played out above his bed.

His grin vanished the instant that he saw her. She looked almost the same as the hologram in her dossier, except that she was wearing an eye patch and her hair was tied up in a bun. Sitting in her lap was a small baby boy. Sitting beside her was a man he didn’t recognize with unruly brown hair, brown eyes, stubble. He was Latin, good-looking.