The bruise along his jaw has darkened overnight, spreading toward blue-black at the edges, which is what I make myself focus on. That’s normal for day two. It’ll look worse before it looks better.
It’s his eyes that pull me up short. They’re flat. Walled off. Last night he let me close enough to put my hand on his chest while he fell apart. This morning he looks like he’d flinch if I tried.
“Morning.” His voice scrapes out low. He drops onto a stool and plants his forearms on the counter like he needs it to hold him up.
“Good morning.” I pour his coffee, add a splash of creamer the way he took it yesterday, and slide it across to him. “Sleep any better after I left?”
He takes a beat too long to answer. I know that pause. It’s the one where you’re deciding between the real answer and the safe one.
“Not really.” He rolls one shoulder, winces. “Woke up a couple more times. Nightmares.”
“I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about what you’re seeing? Sometimes working through the fragments can help?—”
“No.” The word lands hard, a door slamming. His shoulders are tight, pulled up toward his ears, and his fingers press white against the mug. “I don’t want to talk about it. Please.”
Thepleaseis an afterthought, tacked on like he heard himself and winced.
Whatever those nightmares contain, they’re rattling him. And a man with scars like his who’s afraid of his own memories should probably scare me too.
But right now, all I feel is the pull to fix whatever’s eating at him. I can’t help the nightmares. But maybe I can help with the rest.
I let the silence hold and push the shopping bags across the counter instead.
“Here. I grabbed you a few things this morning.”
He looks at the bags, then at me. A beat passes before he reaches into the first one. Flip-flops, shirts, a pair of sweats. He pulls each item out and sets it on the counter without rushing, the way you handle things when they’re all you’ve got. Next he opens the second bag. Toothbrush, deodorant, razor. He pulls out the boxers and one eyebrow lifts, the first crack in his flat expression.
“You bought me underwear.”
“Coastal Drug’s finest.”
A ghost of a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth before it disappears.
“Thanks, Nat.” It comes out quieter than anything else he’s said this morning.
“Don’t mention it.” I busy myself refilling my mug, so I don’t have to sit with how that landed. “Go change. Your clothes are in the dryer. Then I want to check your head before we do anything else.”
While he’s down the hall, I wipe the counter and try not to think about the way he saidNat. Nobody calls me that. Nobody except Anna. And hearing it in his mouth, casual and warm like he’d earned it, shouldn’t make my throat tight. But here we are.
When he comes back in his own jeans and one of the new shirts—a dark green that has no business looking that good on a man who looks like he went twelve rounds with a pissed-off grizzly—I’m not prepared for the small, stupid thrill of seeing him in something I picked out. I shut that down fast.
“Sit.” I nod at the stool. “Let me look.”
The stool puts him lower than me for once, and when I step in close to check the wound, I’m suddenly very aware of how little space there is between us. His knee brushes the outside of my thigh and neither of us moves away from it.
I make myself focus. Which is harder than it should be with his knee warm against my leg.
The butterfly strips are holding and the wound is starting to scab. No signs of infection. Better than I expected given what I had to work with that first day. His pupils track my finger evenly, both still reactive, no lag. All the basics are trending right.
It’s the amnesia I’m less sure about. Everything I’ve read about recovering memories says different things—days, weeks, sometimes never. I’m not going to tell him about theneverpart.
“You’re healing well.” I step back before I can think too hard about how close I was standing. “How about some fresh air? I usually walk the beach in the morning.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Then he drains the rest of his coffee and stands, and there’s something slightly less heavy about the way he does it. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.”
The wind has teeth when we step off the deck. Early November on the Outer Banks isn’t the postcard version. The air bites through my sweatshirt, and the sand is cold and firm underfoot.The ocean stretches out flat and gray, blurring into the overcast sky until you can barely tell where one ends and the other starts.
The beach is mostly empty. A few surfers in wetsuits, a couple of runners in the distance. The summer crowds are months gone.
