Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 34065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 170(@200wpm)___ 136(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 170(@200wpm)___ 136(@250wpm)___ 114(@300wpm)
“Well, I don’t want to be someone’s dirty secret. I thought we were past that kind of thing here on Risda.” I gesture at our surroundings. “No one cares if we’re gay!”
Surprise flashes across her face, followed by annoyance. “Oh, come on. It’s not about us being lesbians.”
“Then what is it?”
Her lips flatten and she’s silent.
I throw my hands up in the air. “Never mind. I give up. Go have fun. Let me know when I get to be part of your life. Then we can talk.”
I wait for her to protest, to say I’ve got it all wrong, but she just gives me the saddest look and then heads on to the cantina, the heavy sheet cake in her arms. I don’t know what to think. All I know is that my feelings are hurt, and yet somehow I feel like the bad guy.
What the hell?
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
RUTH-ANN
I need to talk to my sisters. Desperately.
I drop the cake off in the Sunrise Cantina kitchen, then snag Ruth by the hand. My sister’s been helping out with the food prep every afternoon, and so I drag her out of the kitchen to find Ruthie in the front. I grab Ruthie’s hand, too, and then I lead them both to the booth closest to the door. “We need to talk.”
“This sounds alarming,” Ruthie comments.
“Remember when it was suggested that we get the fake blood markers to hide the fact that we’re clones?” I say, keeping my tone even. “How do we feel about making that happen?”
Ruth frowns at me, glancing over at Ruthie then back to me. “What brought this on?”
“Simone. She doesn’t know I’m a clone.”
Ruthie’s eyes go wide and she leans forward in the booth. “You haven’t fucking told her?”
“Of course I haven’t,” I hiss back. “It’s not just my secret, you know? It’s all of us! Why would I endanger both of you? And the baby?”
Ruth’s hand immediately goes to her incredibly pregnant stomach. “I see your point.” She runs her hand along the curve of her belly, as if comforting herself. “But I’m not going to get the biomarkers done. It disguises that you’re a clone, true, but it shows criminal tampering, and I don’t want anyone throwing me in a prison.”
“Oh please, you can hide behind Straik’s name,” I retort.
“So can you. You’re his sister-in-law,” she shoots back. “That’s not nothing.”
“It’s not the same!”
Ruthie puts her hands up, and I swear she jingles when she does. “I don’t want any sketchy medical junk injected in me anyhow. Kaz will protect me. He’s a clone and I’m okay with being a clone alongside him.”
“But how do I protect Simone?” I ask.
Ruth narrows her eyes at me. “She’s a grown woman. What makes you think she needs protecting? She’s safe here on Risda, just like you are. Lord va’Rin’s name carries even more weight than Straik’s does. And she’s got a carinoux! That thing’s going to be enormous. He’ll eat anything that looks at her twice.”
That makes me pause, because she’s not wrong. Pluto has been cuddly to me ever since Simone told him I was a friend, but I still remember our first meeting and how he’d almost eaten my face. “You think that’s enough?”
“It’s more than most people have,” Ruth says with a practical shrug.
“And look at it this way,” Ruthie chimes in, reaching out to tap the back of my hand. “If you stay here on Risda, that’s the safest place you can be. No one’s going to be coming to this planet without Lord va’Rin’s permission. Even the dock workers won’t make eye contact if they think it’s going to get them in trouble.”
I chew on my lip, considering. “Maybe I need a blaster.”
“Maybe you need to accept that some things are out of your control,” Ruthie says. “Big words coming from me, the anxious mess, but think about it. You really imagine Lord va’Rin would let anything happen to a human here? Even a cloned one? His children are half-human. His wife is a human. More people arrive in Port every week. What’s one clone amongst all the dozens of people here?” She leans back and touches her earlobe, playing with one of her many earrings. “Just stay back and blend in with the crowd.”
“Like…stay here stay here? As in get a house and stay here?”
Ruthie chuckles. “Well, yeah. Were you going to bail out on the cantina? The Scarlet Gaze isn’t going to stay in Port forever.”
I blink at my sisters, because…I hadn’t really thought about it. Not truly. I just pitch in to help with whatever task is at hand, and figuring out the logistics of making the cantina work was a fun puzzle. It didn’t occur to me to think of what my future looks like a year from now, or five years from now. Of course they’re settling down to run the cantina. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”