I just don’t know if I want to.
CHAPTER TWO
VALEN
Honeybee.
I test the word on repeat, my lips moving with no sound.
I have no memory of it, but there’s no denying there’s a fondness, a familiarity around it that I can’t ignore.
And something tells me I shouldn’t, so I’ll hold on to it. For now.
A patrol car eases down the street.
It’s not the first patrol tonight or even the second. But that silver sedan three houses down—the one with tinted windows—hasn’t moved in the hour I’ve been here. No lights. No movement. Just sitting there, watching the same street I am. And it’s not my employee, Rip, who’s two cars in front of the suspicious sedan.
I’ve run the plates. They don’t belong to anyone on this street, yet it’s here. Nothing came back in the report either. Nothing I can link to Clover, anyway.
As the patrol car turns down another street, its brake lights glow in the rearview mirror just as an image flashes in my mind.
A small child dressed in white, her long, light brown hair blowing in the breeze. With a smile that scorches my skin.
Fuck me. I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. Is this the childhood I don’t remember? Is this Clover woman—the one who appears to fear her own shadow—the key to all my memories?
I can’t deal with this right now. Roman should’ve given me a warning. Instead, he just threw me into the fire, expecting me not to burn.
A headache looms as I force myself to focus.
Why does this stranger feel like someone I want to remember?
Or is she a nightmare coming back to haunt me?
I despise not being able to piece it all together, but no matter how hard I push myself, all I have are fragments of my lost youth.
Instead, I turn to what I can control.
My tactical checklist—the one that keeps me sane when everything else falls apart. Weapon: holstered, safety off. Exits: two visible, one probable. Threats: none confirmed. Heartbeat: too fast. Breathing: shallow. Fix it.
Memories are locked in my mind somewhere. I know they’re the key to my past and my future. But no matter what I’ve done, I can’t recall more than a snapshot or two about my life until the moment I woke up in that hospital room at seventeen—feeling as though a part of me was missing but not understanding where it went or why it was lost.
Knuckle by knuckle, I unclench my hands from the steering wheel, dragging my fingertips over the leather. The stitching is rough against the grain, and that’s what I focus on—something real.
I gasp for breath—a result of theafter.I may not remember what put me in that hospital as a teenager, but I’ll never forget the pain of it—it’s the one thing I haven’t been able to master.
Movement in Clover’s window catches my eye. It’s as though she’s pulling the oxygen from my lungs with every step she takes behind the blackout curtains she keeps tugging on. I lean forward in my seat—my body reaching for her, telling me to move, to go to her, but I don’t. I can’t.
I have a job to do.
She presses her button nose to the window again, and something in my chest catches. She’s beautiful in her fragility, but it’s more than that. There’s a fierceness underneath, a survivor’s spine holding her upright when everything in her wants to crumble.
I recognize it.
I’ve felt it.
Is she as lonely as I am?
Don’t go down that path, V.
