“Brando?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“What happened to your lip?”
He shook in my arms, a combination of residual sadness and a bit of mirth. “I can afford to do that now. Laugh.” He sighed. “You want to know what happened to my lip, but not your head.”
“I’m afraid to ask about my head,” I admitted.
He took a moment to relax himself and then lifted us both, setting me on his lap, keeping me close. His entire body still trembled. “I’m trying to decide how much to tell you.”
I squeezed him tight, the reaction panicked. He flinched, a shadowed memory passing across his eyes.
“Everything,” I said. “I need to know everything.” I refused to allow him to shoulder this alone—whateverthiswas.
He looked into my eyes, searching. “How much do you remember?”
I told him everything I had remembered in the bathroom, and then I hit the gap and became huffy. It was a bit like knowing you had something but couldn’t remember where you had put it for safe keeping.
“Nemours. He gave you—” he gritted his teeth and his jaw ticked “—drugs.”
“The man who poked me—” I closed my eyes, seeing his distasteful face. “No, no, no…”
“He’ll never hurt you again.”
I saw something on his face then, something beyond anger—satisfaction.
He launched into the story after that. I had danced, but after he came for me, I didn’t know who I was or who he was. I had been haunted by whatever had been going on inside of my mind. I couldn’t seem to escape it.
“I had gone outside of the bungalow to wait for Dr. Sala. To see what was keeping him.” He nodded toward the door, meaning the man who had been doing his crossword puzzle. “Violet had fallen asleep. Mick had gone to retrieve their things from their bungalow, since we were all moving into the central building because of the weather. You are so lithe that she didn’t hear or feel you get out of bed.
“I saw a flash of blue, just out of the corner of my eye, and I knew—it was you. I felt you moving away from me. I went after you, but you were scared, so you jumped into the water. You were headed that way, but our running for you made you do it in a panic. The water was rough, dark, and it took me a minute to locate you. It was a fucking minute that seemed to span years. Before I could bring you to me, the waves threw you into a rock.”
He reached up and ran a tender finger along the cut on my head. His touch was so gentle that it tickled the sensitive skin. “I had to bring you back,” he said quietly, slow tears making their way down his face. “Then you asked me if you were out of their wilderness, if you were clean. You felt—” his teeth clenched “—dirty. You didn’t want me to see you that way.”
“I remembered you then?”
“No,” he breathed. “You kept asking me to bring you to your husband.”
“Oh, Brando—” I couldn’t finish. I hugged him tighter, crying into his shoulder.
“Hush now, Ballerina Girl. Hush. It’s over now.” He stroked my head soothingly. “There’s the story.”
“No.” I hiccupped. “Tell me the rest.”
He was hesitant to do so, but I finally had the answer to why his lip was swollen.
“I bit you?”
“Not the first time.” He shrugged, grinning.
“It seems…tender.” I took the swollen lip in my mouth, sucking gently. “Better?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “But if you do that again, I won’t be able to stop what happens next.”
“That’s the plan. I’m teasing you so you’ll take me.” I kissed his nose. Then I started to laugh like a loon. He released me, letting me rock myself back and forth against the bed. “Did I really say that I felt like a woman in a romance novel?”
“I’m not finding this funny anymore.”
