After all, that’s what I told the patient advocate woman over the phone. To explain why I wasn’t easy to reach, and so my amnesiac wife wouldn’t be hurt by the fact that I didn’t come stalking into her hospital until a week after her fall, I made up some cock and bull story about a separation, an estrangement, before confirming that I’d be there to visit her, that I’d take care of her despite that.
It doesn’t hit me until she frowns, a small wrinkle forming along her brow, that she would take that lie and understand it to mean that we weren’t happily married before now.
Fuck.
Maybe I should have put on a cheap ring. She’s wearing hers, which hopefully she takes as a good sign, but if I want to convince her that we have a marriage that’s worth something, I need to give her a reason to believe it.
No ring, but I can blame that on my ‘job’. I’ll have to come up with reasons why there’s no sign of her in my house, and?—
“That was my fault,” I tell her. “My job got between us. My side hustle,” I add quickly, almost remembering too late that I lied about being a mechanic after letting the cop and the patientadvocate and Lucy think I work in an office building with Adrian as my other buss. Shit. That’s what happens when you never bother lying. Now that I have to, I better figure out how to keep my stories straight.
Especially when she says, “You’re not, like, a hired killer when the sun goes down or something like that, are you?”
That hits way too close for comfort. Giving myself a second to recover, I scratch my thumb along the edge of my jaw. “Shit, Luce. You really don’t remember anything, do you?”
“I’m sorry?—”
“No. Don’t apologize. You were hurt?—”
She gulps. “I was in an accident.”
If that’s what she needs to believe. “I know, baby. And I’m here. Forget why we were apart. None of that matters now. I’m here. I almost lost you, and that made me realize how fucking stupid I was, keeping my distance. I thought you needed space. Maybe you still do, but right now, you need someone who knows you. Someone who loves you.”
Fuck it. I get up from my seat, taking her left hand in between both of mine. Her skin is warm. Soft. One touch has my heart pounding, my cock twitching, and my brain saying that this is the best fucking idea I’ve ever had.
“You need your husband, Lucy. You needme.”
Two days later,when Lucy is finally being discharged from St. Luke’s, Detective Hargrove doesn’t try to shake my hand. Instead, he stands in the hallway outside her room, the same notepad from the other day tucked under his arm, eyes searching for something I won’t let him see.
The detective showed up earlier today to have an official interview with Lucy about the morning she fell. He wasted his time. Lucy’s trauma-induced amnesia hasn’t shown any improvement, and because that’s the worst of her lingering injuries—and the hospital has no idea when she’ll start to recover—she was moved from the monitored ward the day I arrived at St. Luke’s, then told at sun-up today that she would be discharged so long as there was someone willing to assume the responsibility of her care.
Me. That wasme.
It took everything I had to convince Adrian to return to Harmony Heights. Now that Lucy is under the impression that I’m her husband, they’d have to sedate me and drag me out of the hospital to get me to leave her side. I have no fucking clue what the visiting hours are like here, but from the moment I walked into her room, I wasn’t leaving it except to grab a bite to eat.
I freshened up in the attached bathroom. I bought a fresh shirt at the hospital gift shop on the first floor when I snuck out to grab an energy drink and a bag of chips last night. I slept in the chair next to her bed, and when she was awake, I answered any and all questions that my sweet Lucy had.
For the most part, I tried to be honest. Not easy when the basis of our current relationship is built on a pretty big fucking lie, but I tried—and, yeah, I pretty much failed.
She didn’t know better, though. I kept thinking that someone would call me out on it. Nope. As though they just wanted someone to pawn her off onto, I was allowed to play the part of Lucy’s husband all the way up until they released her from the IVs, checked her vitals, and decided it was worth letting the detective ask her a few questions about what happened to her.
She couldn’t help, and it bothered her that she didn’t remember more. For Lucy’s sake, I insisted on sitting in on theinterview, and while Detective Hargrove wasn’t happy about it, when he saw her getting agitated, he allowed it so long as I kept my trap shut.
Now he’s here to see Lucy off—and to make sure I know that he isn’t about to let this matter go just because I’m eager to whisk Lucy away.
I don’t give a shit. If he wants to investigate Lucy’s ‘accident', he can go right ahead. Me? I’m pretty sure I know what happened, and I already plan on handling it on my own…
“We’ll keep in touch,” Detective Hargrove tells me, more of a warning than a promise, and completely unaware that I’m mentally picking out a dumpsite for Julian Fairchild’s body. “If there are updates. Or if there’s a witness who comes forward.”
That earns him a little effort on my part. Sticking my hand out, I wait for him to take it. The older cop doesn’t resist, pumping my arm as I say, “I appreciate it. I want to make sure that, if someone did this to Lucy, they pay.”
“We’re agreed on that,” he says before he turns to face my new wife.
She’s standing beside me in borrowed hospital sweats, discharge papers folded in her hands like they’re her new lifeline. Her hair—washed in the bathroom sink and freshly combed—falls loose around her shoulders. She looks smaller than she should, and I can’t wait until I can get her in the Fortress where I can call down to the kitchen and order up whatever she wants to eat.
Hargrove’s gruff manner softens slightly when he speaks to her. “You take it easy, Ms. Wright.”
Ms. Wright. Not Mrs. Fairchild. Not Mrs. Collins, either.
