The Future Chosen [was Anti-Dynasty/Extraordinary]

Broken Chapter 10

The first time it came up as an option, he got her a burger for dinner. The lean kind, baked, without salt. Surely it would have been the worst burger she'd had in years, but something was better than nothing.

She looked at it and told him she didn't eat red meat anymore.

"No." He said it like she had offended him, and maybe she had, he wasn't sure just yet. "Since when?"

"Since...I don't know. More than a year now? Can you get me the fish curry instead please?"

Fish curry. Fish curry. He couldn't get her to put hot sauce on her pizza all throughout college, and now fish curry.

It made him think of what was different about him now, three years later, and if she was observing all these little things and revising a record in her head. They were both older, sure, but not old at all. At twenty-four she was more beautiful than he'd ever seen her, her touch more electric, her body more responsive.

The three years in between weren't all lost. They lived much of their lives in public. He knew about certain things she did, and if he wanted to know more, fill more blanks, all he needed to do was search online. Or ask. But that wasn't what mattered, was it? The only news worth knowing wouldn't be reported.

The things only they would know.

The morning of the fifth day, when he brought in her breakfast, she was sitting up in bed, in the middle of a video call. That was a first; he had never seen her talk to her family the whole time they spent together, though she said that she'd been taking calls. Andres quickly pulled on the mask that covered his nose and mouth, even though the phone was facing her.

"...absolutely not, I said," she said.

"How much medication are you on again?"

"Not enough."

"We'll talk about this later. Or when you're completely off the sedatives."

"My decision won't change."

"It will happen as soon as you come back home and you're going to let it happen. It's the least you can do to help clean up this mess you're involved in. Trust the plan for you, dear. We only want you to go--"

"All the way. I know."

Andres never liked Agnes Riorosa, which was unthinkable to even mention in polite society, because she happened to be the mother of the love of his life. But hell. The feeling was mutual, he was sure. Agnes Riorosa, middle child of the late MLR1, who kept her name and remained childless until the middle stage of her own mother's illness. There was a ruthlessness to her that reminded him of his own family.

He caught Lourdes's eye and she visibly relaxed. "Mom, I have to go," she said. "The nurse just brought in my breakfast."

Totally true. He waited until her phone was back in a drawer that was then shut, before he spoke.

"So how's your mother?"

She sighed. "The same."

Lourdes scooted toward the edge of the bed, and he noticed that she was moving better now, no longer wincing with pain as much. The movement was small, jumpy, hurried, and he realized that she only wanted to reach him as soon as possible. At least this hadn't changed--in each other they found an escape from families that acted exactly the way they wished they didn't. Families that they were fast becoming the centers of.

What hold did they have on her? he wondered. Apart from having her believe her destiny.

Because for Andres the hook was his mother.

Surely it was different for her.

"What are they making you do?" he asked.

He saw a flash of something in her eyes, something he hadn't seen at all while they were together.

It might have been dread.

"It's nothing," she said instead, and he knew she was lying. "I'm not ready to talk about it."

"Right." He handed her that morning's dose, without much thought, the routine of it becoming second nature to him. She hadn't complained about pain all that much, though he saw her flinch every now and then. She was pretty much taking only multivitamins now, but at least whatever was bothering her wasn't that. "Liar."

"Ugh. Hate that you can do that."

"You can read me just as easily."

Lourdes sighed and pressed her face against his neck. "It sucks when you're trying to put a different face on and someone else knows exactly what you're doing."

"Lourdes, please tell me what's going on."