filled her eyes. Her body stiffened.
He quickly explained before she might come to the wrong conclusion. “I will get you back to them. It’s just that it’s going to make me sad when I do. You probably don’t want to hear this, Hailey…but I have feelings for you. And it’s more than just physical. I realized how much it’s going to hurt when I can’t be with you anymore.”
“Oh.” She sighed and buried her face into his shoulder. Her hands slid up and she hugged him around his neck.
He tilted his head, pressing it against hers. “I’ll deal with it when the time comes. I’d never keep you with me against your will.” He swallowed. “Even if I wish that I could.”
“Oh, Blade. I know.” Her word came out muffled against his shirt. “I have feelings for you, too, but I’m all my parents have. They’d be devastated if I didn’t go home. Did I tell you that they wanted to have more children but couldn’t?”
“No.”
“There was an accident at the mine right after I was born. It was a cave-in, and my dad was trapped. You know how I told you childbearing women can’t work there? Well, it turns out that if a man has any open wounds and is exposed for a long period to the gasses found in the mines, they can become sterile, too. Dad and his crew were down there for three and a half days before they were able to dig them out. Three out of his sixteen member crew were cut up pretty bad by falling rocks. Him included.”
He stroked her back. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too. It made my parents kind of cling to me, I guess. I can’t tell you how many times they’ve said I was everything to them. It’s why I never put my foot down about them inviting men to dinner. I hated them interfering in my life like that, but I know they just wanted me to find a loving husband.” She rubbed her face against his chest. “To have what they have. Plus, they really want grandchildren.”
He flinched. Children were something he could never give Hailey.
She must have felt it, because she lifted her head. She studied his eyes, then paled. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I’m sterile. It’s a fact of life. Your parents would never want you to be with me, even if it were possible for me to move to Prospect. Which it isn’t.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Don’t cry, baby. I’ll be grateful for the time that we have together. You’re a blessing to me. I never thought I’d feel this way about anyone.”
“Me either.” Tears slipped down her cheeks.
He reached up to wipe them away. “We’ll make the best of whatever time we have. Let’s just live every day as though it’s our last. I will get you home to your parents. Big will help me figure out the safest way to do so. He’s pretty smart. We can also reach out to the others. Between the six of us, we’ll come up with a plan. Do you want to hear about the other clones?”
“Yes. Please.”
She didn’t protest him changing the subject, which is exactly what he was doing. “Big and I worked in security together.”
“You told me that he’s taller than you, and you were born in the same year.”
“Produced,” he gently corrected. “Yes. We’re probably the most like brothers because we shared many shifts together, and he slept on the bunk above mine in the dorms. I could always talk to him about anything without any fear that he’d betray me.”
“Clones betray each other?”
“Not generally, but some can get frightened enough to go to an officer to report us if we’re too verbal about our resentments. If a clone were to cause any type of rebellion, all clones associated with him or her are killed.”
She appeared horrified at the idea.
“It’s to dissuade us from even considering such a thing. Humans see rebellion as a disease, or at least the ones in charge at Clone World did. They didn’t want it to spread. So in theory, a clone could tell an officer if they believed another clone was considering causing trouble. To report it would ensure Clone World wasn’t…infected and wiped out.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yes. I never worried about Big, though. We shared our unhappiness and resentments. We got close to Freak—who now goes by the name Free—after we accidently witnessed something that would have gotten him killed. We didn’t report it.”
“What did he do?”
“He