The Future Chosen [was Anti-Dynasty/Extraordinary]

Broken Chapter 6

Zamara had called.

He had his phone with him, sure, but stopped regularly looking at it when the stream of work-related messages came in. None of them needed his immediate attention, and he had to learn how to update the damn medical charts first. Besides, he was only part of a team at his actual job, and those people wrote new laws every day.

Emil didn't contact him. He wasn't going to, they agreed, unless it was to warn Andres. Andres himself called Lala a few times already for help finding his way around the island hospital, because it would have arisen suspicion if he asked anyone else on staff.

His call history said Zamara had rung him three hours earlier. While he was serving Lourdes dinner.

Andres called her back. "Hey," he said.

"Enjoying at Emil's?"

He tried to remember the last time they talked. It had to have been a week, maybe more than that. Since the incident at Rose Bridge, he had been trying to put this together, and she had been busy doing the travel show she hosted.

"Zamara," he said, "I...yeah, I am."

If there was one thing that made him feel at all guilty, it was having to lie to his girlfriend.

That was what she was, still, technically. A family-approved match was more accurate, but it wasn't like he resisted the role kicking and screaming. The Javenijk political family was an upstart; the highest position they'd held was in congress. That was Andres's uncle, who had unfortunately died from a heart attack the year after his term ended. The men in Andres's family didn't have a good track record, heart-wise. Hypertension in their thirties, bypasses and angioplasties in their forties and fifties. Lolo J wasn't just a fun lolo, he was the only one to have gotten to his seventies.

But they were a good-looking bunch. Javenijks married beautiful people.

Andres didn't think about it that way. He grew up accepting a lot of things--his mother was a popular actress, his cousin a broadcast journalist, his aunt a socialite, and so on. Then he was introduced to Zamara, a friend of the family, the same girl who was never at Christmas gatherings because of modeling commitments in Milan and New York.

Javenijks, he realized, married beautiful people.

"Well," Zamara said, drawing out the word. "I'm back from Johannesburg on Tuesday."

"I won't be back home until later next week."

"That much fun at Emil's, huh?"

Maybe she already knew. It would save him the pain of having to tell her. The past year and a half with her had been good for them, but he wasn't the best man he could be. He had gone into that relationship thinking he was serving a life sentence, but now he knew he was free.

"Let's talk when I get back," he said. "I do miss you."

"That's nice of you to say so."

His gut churned for a second. When she called earlier, he had been lost in someone else. After bringing her dinner he stayed in Lourdes' room, and they'd shut the light and held each other, kissing like they were teenagers again. Then he sneaked out through the bathroom and into the adjoining room, the one that wasn't under constant surveillance. If someone had been watching the camera stream aimed at the door to her room and never saw him leave it, they might at least think there was a glitch somehow. He made sure he was seen elsewhere in the building and made a show of mentioning to another nurse where he had been at dinnertime.

That was risky, sure, but he hadn't felt this happy in years. If his own heart attack arrived tonight, he'd take it. He felt right again, and understood what it was that he needed to do.

Thatincluded doing right by Lourdes, Zamara, everyone.