Resistance

CHAPTER SEVEN

Nate buried his head in his pillow and willed himself to fall asleep. It didn’t work this time any better than it had worked the last fifty he’d tried. He flopped over onto his side and glared at his clock, which told him it was almost four A.M. His body felt sluggish and heavy with exhaustion, desperately in need of sleep, but his mind had other ideas, circling endlessly around his fears for Nadia and for his own bleak future with Agnes. He had to find his way out of the engagement.

But even if he did, his father could easily find another would-be bride for him, one with as few redeeming features as Agnes. And Nadia’s reputation would still be destroyed.

It was all so unfair he wanted to scream.

Nate forced his eyes closed and took a deep breath, searching for a sense of calm or peace, but there was none to be found.

If his nerves hadn’t been so taut and his mind so hyperactive, he probably never would have heard the very soft creak of his bedroom door opening, or the even softer sound of footsteps on the carpet as someone entered the room.

Adrenaline jolted through his already-wired system, and he sat up with a startled yelp, suddenly convinced his father had decided to dispose of him once and for all instead of forcing him into marriage.

“Easy,” the intruder said, holding up his hands in a calming gesture. “It’s just me.”

At the sound of Kurt’s voice, Nate let out a shuddering breath. His heart was still galloping, and he wondered if maybe he’d been closer to sleep than he’d realized, his mind right on the edge of a nightmare that Kurt had interrupted.

“Sorry to scare you,” Kurt said as he approached the bed.

Nate would have liked to pretend he hadn’t been scared, but Kurt would never buy the act. “We have to stop meeting like this,” he responded instead, making room so that Kurt could sit on the bed beside him.

Kurt snorted. “It’s like this or not at all. Which would you rather?”

“Don’t be a bastard.”

“But I am a bastard.”

Nate sat up and rubbed his bleary eyes. His mind was too slow and his heart too heavy for banter. He turned on the light beside his bed, though he quickly dimmed it to its lowest setting, to keep his eyeballs from searing.

Kurt was dressed in his full Basement regalia, black leather pants hugging every curve of his ass and thighs, a red mesh shirt displaying the tattoos that covered his chest and abdomen. A silver bar pierced his eyebrow, and Nate could tell by the slight lisp that Kurt was wearing the little silver ball in his tongue. His eyes were lined with kohl, and his head was covered in a dark fuzz that suggested he was letting his hair grow back. He looked wild, and sexy, and mouth-wateringly tempting. And yet …

“You’re wearing this getup for me, right?” Nate asked with narrowed eyes. “Not because you’re living in the Basement and have to blend in. Right?”

Kurt’s smile looked almost sheepish, which was a rare expression for him. “I’m not gonna lie to you.”

Nate resisted the urge to point out how many times he already had. “I thought we had a deal. I give you dollars, you don’t go back to Debasement.”

Kurt reached out and brushed a caress over Nate’s cheek. “I love that you think you’re a man of the world and that you’re really so naive under it all.”

Nate felt the color burning in his cheeks, but the affection in Kurt’s voice took a lot of the sting out of his words. “I’m not as naive as you think,” he said, because he couldn’t resist trying to defend himself.

Kurt raised his pierced eyebrow. “And you thought an unemployed Basement-dweller could find a place to live somewhere other than in the Basement? They check ID if you try to rent or buy Employee housing, you know. Even if I showed up in the system as employed, you wanted me to keep my head down. If I rent a legitimate place, then I’m out there for anyone to find.”

Nate felt like an idiot. He’d never in his life had to fend for himself, and it had never occurred to him that a Basement-dweller like Kurt couldn’t rent himself an apartment just because he had dollars.

Kurt stroked his cheek again. “It’s okay, Nate. I lived most of my life in Debasement. I know how to stay safe there.”

Nate swallowed hard. “At least tell me you’re not working.”

Kurt showed no sign of being offended. “I’m not working. That’s what your dollars are for.”

Of course. If those dollars weren’t going into rent, as Nate had originally intended, then they were buying Kurt some modicum of safety and security in Debasement. Allowing him to pay off whatever drug lords or gang leaders demanded as “rent” or “dues” or protection money. Food and shelter might be free in Debasement, but that didn’t mean a Basement-dweller didn’t need cash. There was a reason Kurt had sold himself before Nate met him, and it wasn’t because he enjoyed the work.

Kurt’s lips lifted in a sudden, wicked smile. “’Course, not working means I’m not getting any.” He raised his hand to the V of Nate’s pajama top, fingers brushing over the exposed skin there.

The touch peppered Nate’s skin with goose bumps and awakened an instant ache. One he had no right to be feeling under the dismal circumstances.

“We shouldn’t—” he started to protest, but Kurt silenced him with a finger on his lips while his other hand slipped the first button of his pajamas free.

“Forget that shit for a moment,” Kurt murmured. “You look like you could use some serious stress relief. Let me give it to you. We’ll talk after.”

Nate found he didn’t have the strength of character to resist.

One thing Nate could say about Kurt: he knew how to deliver stress relief.

Nate stretched languorously and wished they could stay in bed like this forever, never inviting the outside world back in. A little voice in the back of his head whispered that it was disloyal of him to be experiencing pleasure when, thanks to him, Nadia’s life had been ruined. He cuddled closer into Kurt’s arms in hopes of drowning that voice out, but as the sweat cooled on his skin and real life insisted on intruding, the afterglow dimmed.

“Do you know about the engagement?” he asked, wondering if it was a coincidence that Kurt had made an appearance tonight, when Nate was reeling from his father’s cruelty.

“Yeah.” Kurt gave him one more rib-crushing squeeze, then put a little distance between them on the bed and propped his head on his hand. “Dante overheard her folks fighting about it.”

Nate frowned in puzzlement. Dante and Kurt obviously knew each other from their mutual resistance activities, but Nate was a little surprised that Dante found the engagement news so vital that he had to report it to Kurt on the very day he overheard the argument about it.

Grinning, Kurt reached out and smoothed away the frown line between Nate’s eyebrows. “No, he didn’t rush out to tell me the moment he heard the news.” The grin faded. “He went to visit Nadia earlier tonight.”

“What?” Nate yelped, sitting up in a hurry.

Kurt sat up more slowly. “He meets her at the fence line every night. Not anything official—I didn’t know about it until he called me earlier. Says it’s for moral support.”

Kurt was looking into Nate’s eyes searchingly. Nate tried not to show the irrational anger that spiked through his heart at the thought of Dante having secret nocturnal meetings with Nadia.

“You have a problem with that?” Kurt asked, that pierced eyebrow of his arching higher than ever.

“No!” Nate said, a little too sharply to be convincing. He blew out a deep breath. “I’m being stupid,” he admitted. “I don’t like Dante, and I don’t like the idea of Nadia leaning on him.” It should have been Nate she leaned on, Nate who was there when she needed him. For most of his life, they had been each other’s only true friends, their friendship untainted by jealousy or politics or ambition. He hated that Dante had been out to see her, and he had not.

“You’re jealous.”

“No, I’m not.” Nate mentally rolled his eyes at himself for the childish—and even less convincing—response.

“Yes, you are,” Kurt said with a laugh, ruffling Nate’s hair affectionately. Nate batted his hand away, not in the mood for playful gestures. Though at least the playful gesture told him his irrational jealousy wasn’t hurting Kurt’s feelings.

“Like I said, it’s stupid. I don’t want her like that.”

“But you don’t want anyone else to want her ‘like that,’ either.”

The twinkle in Kurt’s eyes said the teasing was still good-natured, but Nate was uncomfortably aware that Kurt didn’t exactly see in him a pinnacle of maturity. Kurt could have been describing a child throwing a tantrum because some other kid was playing with his discarded toy.

“Maybe there’s a part of me that doesn’t,” he admitted reluctantly. “But I don’t want Nadia to be facing this alone.” Nate wondered if there was some way he could tag along with Dante to one of these secret meetings of his, but quickly dismissed the idea. First of all, they’d probably kill each other before getting to the retreat. Second of all, Nate would probably end up feeling like a third wheel, and a jealous one at that. And third, he had to be extra careful with his movements, sure his father had eyes watching him all the time. If he snuck off to visit Nadia in the dead of night, the Chairman would retaliate by making sure Nadia was moved out of his reach.

“Well, looks like you don’t have to worry about her facing it alone after all.”

“You can stop teasing me anytime now.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

Nate couldn’t help smiling. It had only been a couple of weeks since Kurt had been by his side day and night, but it felt like a lifetime ago, and he sorely missed the easy camaraderie between them. Their lives were so different that it was almost impossible to imagine that they could relate to each other in any meaningful way, and yet there had always been a palpable connection between them.

“I miss you,” Nate said softly, his heart aching with the loss.

“Then hire me back. You don’t want Nadia to be alone, and I don’t want you to be alone.”

The temptation to say yes was almost overwhelming. If he had Kurt back in his life, available whenever he needed him, maybe the situation with Agnes would become more bearable. But Nate had just seen a perfect example of how the Chairman could shatter lives, and he didn’t dare put Kurt at risk.

“The guy I was before would have been selfish enough to do it,” he said. “Maybe something got lost in translation when I was made into a Replica, but I feel like that guy, the original Nate, is a total stranger to me. I can’t put you in danger just because I’m lonely. I won’t.”

“You’re the same guy,” Kurt countered. “You’re so much the same I keep forgetting you’re a Replica. You were never selfish. You were just … careless, sometimes.”

“Careless” didn’t sound much better to Nate, but he wasn’t going to argue about word choice.

“Everything that’s happened … It’s kinda opened your eyes. So you’re different, but you’re still the same guy.”

Nate allowed himself a little snort of laughter. Maybe Kurt was right. Maybe the changes in him had nothing to do with being a Replica and everything to do with the crap life had thrown at him recently.

“Does it ever weird you out?” Nate asked, unable to look into Kurt’s face for fear of the answer. “Me being a Replica?”

He saw Kurt’s shrug out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, if I think about it. But I don’t think about it unless you make me.”

Nate supposed that was one way to handle it.

“So anyway,” Kurt said in an unsubtle change of subject, “Dante’s seeing Nadia every night, and I can meet with Dante without either of us being watched. Dante thought you might want us to pass a message to her.”

Nate thought he heard a hint of disapproval in Kurt’s voice, but he chose to ignore it. “So he told her about Agnes?”

“Yeah.”

Nate made a conscious effort to relax his tight jaw muscles before he ground his teeth into dust. Nadia should have heard the news from him, or at least from her family. Not from some resistance double agent with questionable motives.

“You okay?” Kurt asked, laying a hand on Nate’s shoulder.

Nate rested his head in his hands, hating the feeling of helplessness that had plagued him from the moment his father told him the news.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “I’m not okay. My father’s going to force me to marry a girl with the looks and personality of a wet sponge, and Nadia’s whole life is being ruined because of me.”

“It sucks. But you could have been born in Debasement. So could she. How many Basement-dwellers do you suppose would kill to have your problems?”

Nate almost lashed out, stung by Kurt’s apparent lack of sympathy. Neither his problems nor Nadia’s were petty, and even a Basement-dweller might not be so eager to take them on if they knew what was really at stake, if they knew just what kind of threat hovered over their heads. But of course, Kurt didn’t know, and Nate wasn’t planning to tell him.

It wasn’t until he saw the searching look in Kurt’s eyes that he wondered if the comment was meant to annoy Nate into telling him more. There was a time when Nate had felt he could tell Kurt anything, but those days were past.

Kurt sighed, perhaps disappointed with the failure of his fishing mission. He leaned over the side of the bed and rooted around in the heap of clothes he’d left there. Nate took a moment to admire the curve of his hip and the Chinese calligraphy tattooed right above his butt. Kurt had told him the characters said the equivalent of fuck you, though he’d had to take the tattoo artist’s word for it. Who knew that crude words could look so elegant?

Kurt made a sound of satisfaction and rolled back over, a phone in his hand. “I know Dante gave you a secure phone already, but if you want to call me, use this one.”

Nate gave a humorless laugh. “You mean your resistance buddies won’t be listening in on this one?” Despite the little flare of bitterness, he took the phone, relieved that he would finally have a way to get in touch with Kurt rather than having to wait for him to drop by in the dead of night.

“Don’t be a dick. What did you expect Dante to do? Go buy you a black market secure phone with his own money and no strings attached? He convinced the resistance to provide two fucking expensive phones. You’d better cough up some good information for it and quit complaining.”

Nate rubbed his eyes. He’d almost allowed himself to forget that he’d promised information in return for the phone. He’d also forgotten what it was like to be with someone who didn’t hesitate to tell him when he was being an asshole.

“Message received,” he said, though he still found it hard to be all that grateful for a bugged phone. “How much do I owe you? Oh, wait. You bought it with my money, didn’t you?”

“Smart-ass,” Kurt said, punching him on the shoulder. “Now it’s time to spill. And if you’re tempted to screw Dante because you don’t like him, remember, he’s your path to Nadia. You need to get a message to her without making her use her phone and maybe lose it, you give me a call, and I’ll get it to her through Dante.”

Nate didn’t need the reminder. No, he didn’t like Dante, but he needed him, and he knew it. He wasn’t stupid enough to antagonize someone he needed.

Hoping he wasn’t making a big mistake, starting some kind of trouble that would come back to bite him, Nate told Kurt that he was talking to the last Replica that would ever be made.