Inheritance (47 page)

She slid her arms around him and nestled her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder and took a long, shuddering breath. He squeezed her tighter and said, “I love you too.”

She smiled, hiding it against his shoulder, but she knew he couldn’t mistake the warmth that flared in her. She wanted to stand there forever, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart next to hers.

It was much too soon when he said gently, “We do need to talk about that other thing.”

She disentangled herself from him and he backed away, putting a couple of feet between them. “Okay,” she said nervously.

He reached for his water glass and took a drink first. His cheeks were a little pink. “So, Amber suggested that, um, you could date both of us.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Let me just say this. I know you told her I wouldn’t go for it. She told me that too. And you were probably right. I was—” He hesitated, rubbing his hand through his hair so that it stood straight up. “I was really jealous before. I didn’t like her because I knew how much you liked her, and I couldn’t get past the fact that other people would see you with her and judge me for being—not enough, or something.” The pink spots on his cheeks darkened. “The day we broke up, you said that the way you felt about me should be more important than what other people thought. I couldn’t hear that then. I was too jealous. But now…” He looked at her, and it was obvious how difficult it was for him to say these things. She wanted to reach for him, to tell him he didn’t have to say another word, but as she stepped forward he shook his head.

“You were right,” he said. “The way you feel is way more important than how other people think about me and you. And I know how you feel about me. I
know
.”

“I know,” she said, the words thick in her throat.

He took a quick breath. “I know how you feel about me, and I know how you feel about her, and…” He hesitated. “I know how she feels about you, and I don’t want to be the reason you don’t
get to feel that. But most of all, I don’t want to have to pretend that I don’t love you.”

Reese was astonished. “What are you saying?” she whispered. Every nerve in her body seemed to tremble.

He was backed up against the counter, arms crossed. “I’m saying we can try. If you want to date us both, we can try.”

She stared at his flushed face. She saw the tension in his shoulders. “Are you sure?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, I’m sure. Do you want to do that?”

“I don’t—I mean—maybe?” It was so hard for her to say yes. It still seemed like an impossibility. “I don’t know how it would work,” she said, waving her hands.

“We’d have to talk about that.”

She groaned. “Oh God, I hate talking.”

One corner of his mouth curved up. “I’d say we could
not
talk, but I think it would be better if we said these things out loud.”

She almost said
Why?
The word was on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. She knew the answer. Saying it out loud made it real in a way that
susum’urda
never would—not for her and David. They might be different now, but they had been born human, and they could never completely leave that identity behind. “Okay,” she said. All her disparate emotions seemed to coalesce. She knew what she wanted, and now that she had made the decision, the words came easily to her—as if they had always been there in the background, waiting. “We’ll talk about it. I want to be with you, and I want to be with her, and I want to
try to make it work.” Her legs wobbled as she moved toward him and reached for his hands. “Now can I kiss you?”

She felt the imprint of his smile on her mouth as his hands moved around her waist, the connection opening up between the two of them as she pulled him closer: all of him tangled with all of her, and she wasn’t confused, not one tiny bit.

Amber wasn’t in the bathroom anymore. “Amber?” Reese called.

“I’m in here,” Amber said from the bedroom.

Reese went into Carl Baldwin’s bedroom and saw Amber picking through what appeared to be his sock drawer. “What are you doing?”

Amber pulled out a pair of white tube socks. “I can’t fit into any of his shoes, but I’m not walking around barefoot anymore.” She sat on the edge of the bed and unrolled the socks, giving them a dubious look. “I guess they’re clean enough.”

“You just ran through two dirty fields in bare feet and you’re worried about the cleanliness of these socks?” Reese said, laughing.

Amber arched an eyebrow at her. “You’re in a good mood.” She crossed her right ankle over her left knee and studied the sole of her foot. It was still red and scarred, but the skin no longer appeared to be broken. Amber slid the sock on. “Did you talk to David?”

Reese leaned against the dresser. “Yeah.”

Amber glanced up and then back down at her foot, a faint pink stain on her cheeks. “So?”

“When you first suggested this—last Friday on the ship—you said it wasn’t unusual for Imrians to be in relationships of more than two people.”

Amber seemed surprised that Reese was bringing this up. “Yeah, so?”

“Is it normal?”

Amber pulled on the second tube sock. They came all the way up over her knees, and she tugged the hem of her dress down so that it looked like she was wearing thick white tights. “It’s not uncommon. I have three parents.”

Reese’s jaw dropped. “You mean, Dr. Brand is in a—a—”

“I prefer to not think of my mother too closely in this situation,” Amber said dryly. “But I do have two fathers. They’re back home.”

“Really?”

Amber smiled. “Really. I think you’d like them.”

Curiosity overcame Reese’s self-consciousness. “How does that work with, um, you said the Imria use an artificial womb? Is only one of them your biological father?”

“No, they’re both my biological fathers.” At Reese’s look of confusion, she elaborated. “You always need an egg to begin with, and then genes from all parents involved are added in during conception. It’s like genetic engineering, I guess.”

“So they picked who you would look like and everything?”

“Well, you can’t actually know that for sure, but… sort of. I guess I’d say that Imrian children are deliberately created.” Amber crossed her legs. “But let’s not get off track. You talked about it with David? What did you decide?”

Amber was trying to sound nonchalant, but Reese heard the
anxiousness in her voice. Her dress was smudged with dirt and the right cap sleeve had a rip in it. She must have tried to wash off her face in the bathroom, but traces of eyeliner remained, and her hair was wet.

“You said that you liked me because I made you feel human,” Reese said, thinking back to that afternoon on the beach at Angel Island. “But humans… we don’t normally do this. We have a hard enough time being with one other person, much less two. I know there are people who can do it. But I’ve never thought I could be one of them. I never thought about it, period. It’s scary, you know?”

“What scares you the most?” Amber asked.

“I’m scared that we’re going to screw it up,” Reese said frankly. “That I’m going to hurt one of you, or that it’s just going to be too complicated. And if I start thinking about what might happen when other people—the public—find out, I might have a panic attack. I’ve never done anything remotely like this before. Before I met you, I didn’t think I’d ever want to date anyone.”

“Really?” Amber said, surprised. “You never told me that.”

“Would it have mattered if I did? I don’t think you would have paid any attention.”

A wry smile crossed Amber’s face. “Probably not.” A cautious hope seemed to dawn in her eyes. “But does this mean that you want to now? Date people?”

Reese knelt on the floor in front of her and threaded her fingers through Amber’s. “No,” Reese said, and Amber’s eyes sparkled as she sensed Reese’s feelings spilling through her. “I don’t want to date people. I want to date you, and I want to date David.”

Amber looked as if she could hardly believe what Reese had said. “Really?”

Reese smiled. “Really.”

Amber lifted a hand to Reese’s face, her fingertips tracing Reese’s cheek, and Reese felt the joy that rose inside Amber, warm as her skin and sweet as the taste of her mouth. Amber put her arms around Reese’s neck and kissed her, murmuring, “I love you.”

Reese couldn’t resist. She pulled back an inch and said, “I know.”

Amber’s fingers, twined in Reese’s hair, tightened abruptly. “You did not just say that.”

“Ow,” Reese said, laughing. She pulled Amber off the bed and onto her lap, and as they kissed, Reese told her:
I love you, I love you, I love you.

That’s better
, Amber thought, and Reese ran her hands up Amber’s thighs and felt as if she were floating.

They left a note for Carl Baldwin. Amber found a pen
in the kitchen’s junk drawer and flipped over the electric bill to write on it.

Amber left the note in the middle of the table, weighted down with a fork, and then scribbled Carl Baldwin’s address on a pizza menu and gave it to Reese. “I don’t have any pockets,” Amber said at Reese’s questioning glance. She had given David’s jacket back to him.

“Oh.” Reese pocketed the address. “Ready to go?”

“Don’t forget your guns,” Amber said as she headed for the back door.

David looked amused. He picked up the agent’s gun from the counter and Reese grabbed Carter’s weapon from the table, and they followed Amber out of the house.

The black triangle was far above them in the sky, but its sharp edges were clearly distinguishable. A small dot emerged from the ship and descended toward the field. As it approached, Reese recognized it as the lander, wings extended. It touched down behind the stack of hay bales, and when the door opened, their parents ran out to meet them.

Reese’s mom hugged her so tightly that Reese squeaked. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you? What happened? Why do you have a gun?” her mom demanded all at once. She only let her go when Reese’s dad stepped in to hug her too.

Reese saw Malcolm Todd standing beside the lander’s hatch. He caught Reese’s eye and nodded toward the craft. “We should go,” Reese said, pulling away from her parents. “We’ll explain everything when we get back to the ship.”

Returning to the black triangle felt like arriving at a safe house. Reese had never been so relieved to walk down those corridors before. Everyone was gathered in the dining hall—even Akiya Deyir—where stained coffee cups were scattered all over
the tables, and the screens on the walls showed several different television stations at once. The fancy headline at the bottom of one network’s broadcast, decorated with the crosshairs of a rifle scope, read:
HOSTAGE SITUATION
. The moving text below stated:
Hunt continues for three missing teenagers taken hostage by AHL militia during botched UN bombing
.

“What’s going on?” Reese asked. “What’s the AHL militia?”

Akiya Deyir answered, “Americans for Humanity and Liberty. That’s the name of an anti-Imrian group—the same one that posted bail for the man who tried to shoot you at Fisherman’s Wharf.”

“But they didn’t kidnap us,” David said. “Blue Base soldiers did.”

“There’s a cover-up in process,” Dr. Brand explained. “AHL supposedly bombed the United Nations the day you were taken.”

“Was that the noise we heard in the parking garage?” Reese asked.

“Maybe,” Dr. Brand answered. “It wasn’t a very successful bombing. There wasn’t much damage, but the UN was evacuated and the General Assembly was interrupted. But shortly afterward, AHL—which does model itself on a citizens’ militia group—took credit for abducting you.”

“We think that AHL might have actually pulled off the bombing,” Todd said. “It was a bit clumsy, and they would have needed inside assistance, but it does line up with their anti-UN stance.”

Reese watched another of the TV stations, on which photos of her, David, and Amber were shown while an anchorwoman spoke. The volume had been turned off but the closed-captioning at the bottom of the screen read:
FBI officials declined to release
details on whether they have any leads, but one anonymous agent reportedly claims that the search is fruitless. Imrian ambassador Akiya Deyir has offered assistance to locate the teenagers, but so far the Randall Administration has not issued a public response
.

Deyir, who had seen where Reese’s gaze went, said, “That was right before we heard from Malcolm. President Randall still hasn’t spoken.”

“President Randall ordered the kidnapping,” Reese said.

Everyone in the room stared at her. “What?” Dr. Brand said.

“Are you sure?” the ambassador asked.

“Yes, I heard them talking about it.” Reese thought back to the voices she had heard through the floorboards. “The soldiers said the president couldn’t make up her mind about what to do with us because she’s a woman. I totally remember that.”