The Eve Genome (18 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ADRIANA SINCLAIR

I awoke to Kalan hovering over me, his eyes glassy and bloodshot. I glanced around. Everything in the room was ivory and off-white, from the walls, to the curtains, to Kalan’s complexion. I was in the hospital.

Kalan caressed my cheek with his thumb. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said with a croak. My throat felt raw and hot, like I’d swallowed sandpaper and then sucked on a banana pepper.

“You’re in the hospital,” Kalan said.

“I guessed that much.”

Kalan sucked in a long, audible breath. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better.” I reached up and ran a fingertip over his lips. “And you?”

Kalan kissed my forehead. “One-hundred percent. Rapid healing still works like a charm.”

I tried to raise my head and look down at my body, but my neck was too stiff. “Is there anything wrong with me?”

Kalan shook his head. His chest heaved with yet another long intake of air. “A broken rib that now appears like just a fracture. Some bumps and bruises. You inhaled a lot of dust…”

“A broken rib?” I tried to recall a moment where I’d broken a rib, but I couldn’t. “How did that happen?”

Kalan’s expression drooped. Guilt? The man wore his heart on his sleeve. “It’s my fault. I was doing chest compressions and… I broke your rib. I’m so sorry.”

Chest compressions? The last thing I remembered was running. “Why were you doing chest compressions?”

“You had no pulse. You inhaled too much dust.” Kalan looked like he was confessing to a murder. “But the doctors say your healing rate is faster than normal.”

“Faster than normal?” I asked. “Why?”

Kalan once again had an odd expression on his face. One I couldn’t read at all. He pursed his lips together and then answered, “I thought I’d lost you. I’d been doing compressions for so long… and then I broke your rib on top of it. I… I was sure it was over.” His voice broke, and he completed his words in a near-whisper. “One of my tears fell into your eye, and then everything changed. You started to heal.”

“The tears? Mine burn you and yours heal me?” I could hardly believe it.

Kalan nodded. “Apparently, yes.”

I shook my head. How was this possible? What more could Kalan do that we didn’t know about? What more could I do? My tears burned him, but why?

“Thank you.” I grabbed his hand and squeezed.

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and he blinked rapidly, his eyes glassy. “You’re welcome.” He smiled and his entire demeanor changed. “Anytime.”

“There are so many unanswered questions. Are we ever going to get answers?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question, but it had to be raised.

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

I lifted my head to glance around the room. My neck was stiff and tender. The room was empty. “What about Eros? Was it on the news?”

Kalan nodded. “No survivors. They
’
re investigating foul play. But so far, they’re saying it looks like ‘human error.’”

My neck gave way and my head flopped down on the pillow. “Where’s Marcus?”

“He’s fine. He’s getting coffee.”

I stared at Kalan, to see if he was joking. Marcus stayed at the hospital? For me?

“Where’s Tait?” I asked.

A voice behind Kalan answered. “I’m right here.” Tait stepped into the room and went around the other side of my bed. He sat down beside me and grasped my hand. He squeezed it, a little too hard. “I didn’t mean the things I said. You know that, right?” Tait asked.

“I think you meant it at the time,” I said.

Tait shook his head, his mouth turned down at the corners. “No, I didn’t. I was angry. Angry at Marcus, for the way he used me. Angry at myself for allowing myself to be used that way. And angry at you, for constantly holding a mirror up in front of me so I had to face who I was. I didn’t want to face the truth about myself, and I wanted someone else to share in the humiliation and self-loathing I had at that moment. I was looking for an excuse to lash out at someone, and you just happened to be the person on the receiving end of it. I’m sorry.”

“It didn’t take much to make my self-loathing kick in,” I said. “In fact, the self-loathing has been there every day, every second, every moment since I got that phone call.”

“Adriana, you did nothing wrong,” Tait said. His eyes filled with moisture. “Analiese had her problems. She wasn’t always the best sister, and you weren’t either. None of us are perfect.”

I choked up.

“Will you accept my apology? For abandoning you at the worst possible moment? For being a horrible friend? For taking my pain out on my most loyal, trusted friend? Please, forgive me, Adriana. I’m an ass.”

I chuckled, a strange sound mixed with a sob. “You’re forgiven, dummy.” I ruffled his hair. “Now stop looking at me like that. Or I’m going to start bawling, and I don’t want to do that. Did you know I have killer tears?”

“Thank you.” Tait looked like he was barely containing his own tears. He glanced back at the door. “Look who else is here, lurking around.” Tait moved aside and Zoe came into view. She rushed to my bed.

Zoe grabbed my hand and squeezed it, hard. “I came when you called, like you asked.”

“Thanks.”

Zoe peppered me with questions about how I was feeling, sometimes the same question over and over in that motherly way, as if she wasn’t convinced I felt as well as I claimed. To prove my point, I sat upright in the bed. It hurt like hell. Maybe it wasn’t just to prove it to her.

“There. Satisfied?” I asked. She smiled and rolled her eyes.

Tait’s eyes twinkled. “This is cause for celebration!” He held his hands above his head and spoke in a shrill, nasal tone, one of his many movie voices he liked to imitate. It had a very Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz
sound to it.

“As soon as party girl is ready,” Zoe said in the same high, nasal tone. She did jazz hands for effect.

I smiled, but somehow, I didn’t think I’d be ready for the party scene for a while. Marcus walked through the door, and it was as if his presence cast a dark cloud over the room. He carried two coffees, one for himself, and one for Kalan. He handed Kalan his coffee.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” Marcus said.

Tait stared at him, blue eyes intense, jaw set. “That’s my cue to leave.”

Marcus turned his head to the side, his gaze impenetrable. “Whatever you need, sugar.”

Tait’s nostrils flared and his face flushed hot pink. He didn’t respond, opting to turn his back on Marcus and leave the room. Zoe followed behind him.

Marcus rolled his eyes and walked around to where Tait had stood moments before. “How’s our special girl?” he asked. How did Marcus manage to look and sound cocky no matter what he did?

“Marcus, why are you so mean to Tait?” I asked, straight to the point. “He’s obviously in love with you, and yet, you can hardly bring yourself to be polite.”

“Of course he’s in love with me.” Marcus took a gulp of his coffee. “I’m just adorable that way, I guess.”

I scowled.

Marcus laughed. “What? I speak the truth.”

Kalan shook his head. “Maybe you shouldn’t speak. You’re moderately more tolerable that way.”

I grasped Marcus’s forearm and pulled him down to me. Face-to-face. I stared him straight in the eye and spoke in a hushed tone, my fingers firm on his jaw. “I know you love him. Stop being such a jerk.”

Marcus placed his hand on my shoulder and moved in to me so our faces were barely an inch apart. His eyes were hard and imperious. “I am not
capable
of love, Adriana. Please get that through your head because I’m not going to say it again.” His jaw muscle twitched as he waited for a counterchallenge. I didn’t respond.

Kalan came around to Marcus’s side of the bed and his presence alone spoke volumes. Marcus stood upright and flashed us a big, fake smile. “See you two kids later.”

With his typical arrogant swagger, Marcus strode out of the room. The dark cloud lifted.

“Do you know what I’ve learned from Marcus?” I asked.

Kalan mouth twisted into a wry smile. “What? That people are selfish and unpredictable? That they can be your enemy one minute and your ally the next, if it serves their purpose? I can’t imagine you’ve learned anything of value.”

“I’ve learned there are no truly evil people,” I said. “The things we experience, the trauma and pain, it changes us, breaks us, irreparably. It’s the environment that causes us to behave poorly.”

Kalan’s eyebrows rose. “Poor behavior barely covers the enigma that is Marcus. What about Malcolm? He’s evil personified.”

I shook my head, and pain speared up through my neck. “Malcolm is an example of insecurity, indifference and ambition, all combined to make a person immune to the idea of morality. He’s not so much evil. He just has a complete lack of concern for anyone or anything other than his preoccupation,” I said. “His indifference keeps him safe, because he doesn’t have anyone in his life to worry about or to lose. But it keeps him from connecting with people. Like Genevieve. It keeps him utterly alone.”

Kalan chewed on his bottom lip. “So the question is, was he born indifferent or did that part of him develop as a result of circumstances, being around a distant, alcoholic father who never approved?”

“I would venture a guess that it was the circumstances in his life,” I said. “Have you ever met a child who didn’t respond to love and encouragement? Marcus’s need to push people away is also because of his trauma. He was rejected by your mother, and abused by his adoptive parents,” I said. “We can ask ourselves, would you or I be any different under those circumstances?”

“Personality plays a part, too. Not everyone with mommy issues turns out to be a freak like Marcus,” Kalan said.

“True. But doesn’t at least the foundation of our personality come from our genes? And don’t you and Marcus have the exact same genes?” I asked.

Kalan chuckled. “You’re good. Did you study the Socratic Method, or what?”

I smiled. “Of course. That was back in the days when I was thinking about going into Law School.”

“Oh, Christ. I’d hate to be cross-examined by you,” Kalan said. “I’d get mesmerized by your beauty and then forget everything I was going to say.”

“I would have made a terrible lawyer. But guess what? I think I finally know my major.”

His brow quirked. “Oh?”

“I want to know if there are more of us out there, like me, Analiese, your mother and you. And I want to fully understand my mitochondria and its implications. I want to go into Genetic Sequencing,” I said.

“Isn’t it a little too close to home?” Kalan asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. After all we’ve been through I can’t imagine that studying anything else would hold any interest for me.”

“I can see why.” Kalan paused, and then opened his mouth again as if he was going to say something. Instead, he closed it.

“What is it?” I asked.

His lips pursed together. “You know the embryos are gone, right?”

I nodded as I felt the familiar stinging in the back of my eyes. It was stupid. “They were never meant to be. I realize that now. They weren’t real people, and my trying to preserve them… It wasn’t about the embryos at all.”

“What was it about?”

I swallowed. “Keeping the embryos alive won’t bring Analiese back.”

Kalan’s lips flattened, pressed together. “You’re right. I’m so sorry you lost her, Adriana. There was unfinished business between the two of you.”

I blinked back tears. “Isn’t that the problem with life? Or, more accurately, death? We’ll always have unfinished business, things we’ve said, or didn’t say. Things we’ve done, regrets that will haunt us.”

“I never got to know my mother at all,” Kalan said. “There were so many things I wanted to say to her. So many things I wanted to ask. Now, I’ll never get to.”

I squeezed his hand. “Maybe one day you will?”

His head jerked to look at me. “You still believe in Heaven, after all you’ve learned, all you know about genetics?”

“If we don’t have Heaven, what do we have? A dirt hole? Worms to turn us back into dirt?” I shook my head. “I can’t accept that.”

“So this is about hope and faith?” Kalan asked. He eyed me with a strange kind of intensity.

“In the end, hope and faith is all we’ve got,” I said.

“Wow.” He pushed a stray hair from my face. “I never would have predicted that following the decision to go into genetic sequencing you’d make a declaration of religious belief.”

“I’m full of surprises, Kalan. Just wait.” I stroked the growth on Kalan’s jaw and savoured the downy softness. “There’s another contradiction I’ve come to grips with.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” I hesitated. “I have realized through all of this that I need people. I spent my whole life wanting independence, to not need Analiese. When she died, I was lost, directionless. I couldn’t face life without the one person I’d spent nearly every day with, the person who was part of me. I realized then, it was a gift. We were created as one, and even though we’d split apart in utero, we were both one-half of the other. I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t face life without her by my side. I raged against both my need for independence and my weak, crippling need to depend on her.”

“You are independent, Adriana. Look at what you’ve been through. If you were a weak, dependent person, you never would have gotten through it all.”

Tears built up in my eyes once again. I didn’t fight them. “But don’t you understand? It’s not about that. I can have it both ways.”

“I don’t get it,” Kalan said.

I giggled, a strange choking sound from the tears gathered in the back of my throat. “I need people. I need to lean on others as much as I need to be able to stand on my own two feet. There’s no requirement in the rulebook of life that says we must be able to withstand life’s pressures and pain by ourselves. This is what I’ve come to understand. I’m allowed to need other people, for my survival, and it’s not some kind of weakness or flaw. It’s human nature. Just like our need to rely on the idea of Heaven, despite not having any evidence to prove its existence.”

“I’m happy you’ve figured this all out—”

“Kalan,” I interrupted, “What I’m trying to say is… I need you. I need you, more than I wanted to admit out loud. But after everything that has happened, I don’t care anymore. Life’s too short to deny our true feelings. I need you so much, it hurts.”