Being Amber (19 page)

“Where have you been?” he asked her calmly.

“None of your fucking business,” she hissed back.

“It is my business. I’m supposed to be protecting you.” He watched her as she took the time to inhale slowly, calming herself, and pulling it together before she spoke.

“Protecting me?” She snorted. “You stupid ass.” She was calmer now, except for a slight quaver in her voice that betrayed the devastating explosion of feelings lurking beneath the surface. “You hurt me more than any psycho that’s out there. You pretended to be my friend, made me think I would be okay here. When I was at the most vulnerable and painful point in my entire life, y
ou
hurt me, Xander. You should have told me. You should have told me you have a girlfriend. You should have told me you and Jordan were nothing but my temporary bodyguards, not my friends.” She cleared her throat and looked down at the table in front of her. “You knew I was falling in love with you and you took advantage of that.” She waited for his response.

“Me being your roommate is not temporary. It works like the designations, once you’re assigned, it’s final. At least until you get married…or die.” Jaci couldn’t hide her expression of surprise as he dropped that little nugget of information. “It’s done like that for a reason. It’s designed to be like built-in family. And, like real life, sometimes you like your family, sometimes you don’t. But you can’t change who they are. Just like you can’t change the fact you are assigned to me. It’s my job to care for you and you’re going to let me.”

“Sounds like a lot of backward bullshit to me.”

“Maybe. But this is where you live now and you’ll have to learn our ways and conform to them. This isn’t some arbitrary rule set up by the Gov. It’s done this way for a reason.”

“Which is?”

He sighed and sat down across from her at the table. “When human beings have no control and next to nothing of value in their lives, coping is,” he scowled, “a bitch. But it’s eased by close ties with other people, with family. The problem is, many of us in Circle City don’t have any. This is the next best thing.

Women need to be nurtured. They need to be important to somebody. They need to be cherished and loved. And men need to have some control over their environment and their personal lives, they need the authority that comes with being a man. And since the Gov has taken all of that away from us, this arrangement gives some of it back. You, Jaci, are my number one priority, and other than my job, my only true responsibility. It was the same with Diana. Do you understand?”

“Don’t bother yourself with me anymore. I can take care of myself.” She looked away from him so that he wouldn’t see any of the sadness she felt. “I’m not trying to be difficult. I just don’t think I’ll adjust well to Amber if I’m still living with you.”

He stared icily at her. “You disappear without letting me know where you are again and there will be consequences.”

“You can’t arrest me for staying somewhere else.”

“No, but I will put you over my knee and spank you if I need to.”

The thought of it heated Jaci’s cheeks. She ground her teeth together, trying to stay mad, trying to hate him.

He walked around and gently unlocked her cuffs. “I was doing my job, sweetie. Same with Jordan. I wanted to tell you…” Xander fell silent. He had no acceptable excuse for how things played out.

“Can I go now?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know why we’re following you?

Jaci shook her head. She wanted to defy him. She wanted to hurt him. “No. To be honest with you, I don’t really care.”

He huffed in exasperation. “You
are
in danger. Someone is killing fallows.”

She looked at him with true anger rising, resolute in her conviction. “I should be dead already. Maybe next time it will stick.”

She gained a small measure of satisfaction at the expression of agitation and stunned silence that followed.

He held out his hand and gave Jaci her ear bud. “Keep this with you at all times. Your coms are being monitored and you’re under surveillance. Don’t talk with anyone about this operation. Behave as if you don’t know we’re there. You also need to go back to living in building seventeen. If the offender can’t find you to make his move, we won’t be able to catch him.”

“I wasn’t planning on living in building seventeen anymore.”

Xander raised his eyebrows. “That’s not an option.”

“Fine.” Jaci stood up and started heading toward the door. He reached over her head and slammed it closed as she opened it.

“We’re not done.”

Jaci felt Xander’s breath on the back of her neck. Her back skimmed his chest with every ragged inhale of air. She closed her eyes and just felt, wanting to remember the nuances of the moment. Wanting to remember everything right down to the smell of him. He stepped closer. She drowned in the exquisitely comforting sensation of his broad chest pressed up against her.

“Our official business is done, but we’re not done, you and I,” he growled.

She turned to meet his gaze.

Without warning, a keen sadness replaced her anger. It was so hard to be furious with this man. Cupping his face with a soft touch, she leaned into him and kissed him tenderly. The light sweep of their lips felt bittersweet to Jaci and demolished any anger she had left.

She turned back to face the door before she spoke again. “There is no you and I.” She whispered the words without turning to look at him, and then opened the door and left the room.

Xander followed her without another word.

Hovering near tears, Jaci distracted herself from the dismal atmosphere in the police cruiser on the ride back to Circle City. She listened to multiple coms from Caroline demanding to know what was going on. Jaci called her back.

“Jaci, what the hell? Where have you been?”

“No hi, what’s up? How are you?” Jaci teased.

“Hi, what’s up? How are you? Where have you been?”

“I needed some time to sort things out.”

“Let’s get together. Tonight?”

“Um, tomorrow night would be better.”

“Kay, I’ll be over between six and seven. We’ll do something fun and you can fill me in on what needed to be sorted out.”

“Sounds good. Later.”

Jaci touched her ear bud and disconnected the com as the solar cart pulled up to her work. She exited the back seat of the cart and didn’t glance back at the two men still sitting in the front. She felt their eyes on her, but she resisted looking back at them.

Jordan was sitting in Chet’s office when Jaci got there. She tried to maintain a neutral expression when she walked in. As with Xander, she tried to stay mad. She didn’t want Jordan to know how hurt she felt.

“Well, Jordan said you’d be back. I’m glad you are. I have another apartment that needs to be painted in building twenty-eight.” He handed Jaci the work order. “You probably still have enough time to get the majority of it finished today.”

“Thanks, Chet,” Jaci took the work order, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Jordan and turned to exit the office. Jordan followed close behind. They loaded up their solar cart in conspicuous silence and rode together to building twenty-eight.

As the two of them unloaded, Jaci heard someone call her name. She looked up to see Noel walking toward her, waving.

“I thought that was you. You haven’t stopped by,” she said accusingly with an exaggerated frown face. “And Matt asks me every time he comes back to the apartment. I think he’s worried about you. We’re having another get together tonight. Please come. We could use another girl. Plus, you have to give me my clothes back,” she said, pointing to the clothes Jaci still wore.

Jaci’s first instinct was to decline the invitation, but she stopped herself. She’d already decided during her three days of self-imposed solitude that she needed to make new friends. She never would if she didn’t put herself out there. And if sex became part of the equation, that was okay too. Ambers had a healthier point of view about sex than she did. Plus, it might ease the pain that smothered her when she thought about Xander. It was all win-win. “Sure, what time?”

“Anytime after eight would be good. I’m going to the commissary for alcohol now. I was thinking about making some fancy fruity drinks for us. You up for that?”

“Count me in.”

“Great.” She hugged Jaci. It was a sneak attack she hadn’t been ready for. Some things weren’t second nature to her yet. “Later,” Noel called as she turned to go.

Jordan and Jaci arrived at the assigned apartment and prepared it for painting. Jaci still deliberately avoided Jordan, and she felt ridiculously high school, giving her the I’m-going-to-pretend-you’re-not-there routine. But she honestly didn’t have anything she wanted say to Jordan because frankly, “Were you ever my friend?” or “Did I ever mean more to you than being just a work assignment?” was way too pathetic.

So, while she painted, Jaci concentrated on the get together she’d drop in on that night. Ever since the day Jordan took her around building seventeen for the first time, Jaci’s mind occasionally wandered back to the openness of their sexual culture.

Intrigued from the start, she was positive she’d enjoy it. She needed it. Thinking about the sex brought up feelings within her, the need to be touched, to be loved, cared about. It would be easy to pretend the man who satisfied her body loved her, cared for her. That’s all she needed right now, the temporary illusion that she meant something to someone. Plus, pleasure, even for a few moments would be a blissful escape from her mind’s ruminations.

Jaci smiled to herself. To be able to have sex whenever she felt the physical need was actually a major positive about the Amber Zone. It would be liberating to be able to openly satisfy herself without all of the complications and niceties that came with dating or the judgment that came with what they considered meaningless sex in the Sapphire Zone. Here, it wasn’t meaningless. It was a healthy way of life.

Jaci was excited. A small butterfly of a feeling whirled in the center of her chest. It was anticipation.

“I’m sorry,” Jordan said, interrupting Jaci’s thoughts and pulling her back into the moment.

She didn‘t answer right away. She didn’t know what to say. The sticky strokes of the rollers laying down paint filled the cold silence between them. “Okay, thanks.”

Jordan hesitated before speaking again. “I want us to be like we were before. It doesn’t have to be different. We were friends.”

“No, I was a friend. You were a fake, a character you put on and took off when you needed to. You were a deception. That is not what friendships are based on,” Jaci said dryly.

“Ow. Okay, I deserved that. But Jaci, you had so much going on when you first got here. We couldn’t add to that. I know, we should have told you at some point, but I think, after a while we knew it was too late and nobody wanted you to be mad at them. I love you, Jaci. You are my friend. I don’t want to lose that.”

Jaci stayed silent. Her throat clamped shut. In even strokes, she rolled the fresh white paint over top of the old white paint. Silent tears rolled down her face. “You guys hurt me so much.”

Jordan put down her roller and walked over to Jaci, wrapping her arms around her. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

They hugged each other in the silence of the abandoned apartment for a long time.

“Okay then, let’s get the rest of this done so we can get out of here,” Jaci finally said, straightening her spine.

They spent the rest of the workday talking about the other fallow cases, and Jordan told Jaci exactly what happened the other night with Rock and Asher.

Their friendship was repaired by the time they were done painting and had cleaned up.

* * * *

Jordan handed over the proverbial baton with a quick com to Xander. It was his shift to watch Jaci, and tonight he’d be on high alert. She was on her way up to the apartment and apparently, on her way back out again.

When she got there, she gave him a quick glance and a mumbled, “Hi,” went to her dresser for clothes and then locked herself in the bathroom.

After what he thought was an unnaturally long time, she entered the room looking stunning. Sexy. His eyes took in every detail. She wore her hair long, waving around her shoulders. Her beautiful brown eyes were accentuated and looked even deeper and more alluring than usual. Her strappy, almost see-through shirt left nothing to the imagination. He saw the subtle thong lines underneath the short, black, clinging skirt.