“That’s okay.” She squeezes my arm. “Your brain is working overtime. It makes sense that the memories wouldn’t stick yet.”
She’s so gentle about it. So understanding. And every word she says packs the lie heavier, like wet sand filling up my chest.
“My head is splitting.” That part, at least, is true. My skull feels like it’s been used as a kickball. “I just need to lie down.”
“Come on.” She helps me up and ducks under my arm without hesitating, taking my weight against her side. She’s stronger than she looks. I noticed that the first morning, the way she hauled me off the beach on her own.
We make it to the guest room. She flicks the light on with her elbow, but the overhead is weak and the room stays mostly shadow. The bed is unmade from this morning, sheets tangled the way I left them, and I drop onto the mattress like my strings got cut.
“Stay there.” She disappears and comes back in under a minute with pain relievers, a glass of water, and a damp cloth. She presses two fingers to my wrist before handing me the pills, counting silently.
I knock back the pills and lie flat. She folds the cloth and lays it across my forehead, cool and damp against my skin. Her fingers brush my hairline as she adjusts it.
“Thanks, Nat.”
“Don’t thank me. Just rest.”
She settles onto the edge of the mattress, and the quiet stretches out between us. The surf keeps its rhythm outside. Her hand finds my forearm and starts a slow, absent stroke, fingertips trailing from my wrist to my elbow and back. It’s the kind of touch that saysI’m here, I’m not going anywhere, and after the nightmare inside my own head, it’s the only thing that feels real.
I shut my eyes because keeping them open means looking at her, and looking at her right now means confronting the fact that Ichose to protect myself instead of trusting the only person who’s given a damn about me since I crawled out of the ocean.
The lie sits in my gut like a stone. Cold and solid and wrong.
I could still fix it. I could open my mouth right now and say,I saw myself holding a gun and I wasn’t scared of it. I saw blood and I didn’t flinch. I live in Las Vegas and I do things there that require washing evidence off my body. Tell me what that makes me, Natalia.
But if I say that, she looks at me differently. The way she should have looked at me from the start. The way anyone should look at a man who washes up on their beach with scarred knuckles and violence living in his muscle memory.
She’d be right to throw me out. And I’d deserve it.
So I keep my mouth shut and let her fingers trace their path along my arm, and I hate myself a little more with every pass.
“You’ll remember everything eventually.” Her voice goes quiet. “Your brain just needs time to sort through it all.”
I don’t think I want it to.
For the first time since I woke up with nothing, I’m not desperate to fill the blank spaces. Whatever’s waiting in them, my gut already knows it’s nothing I want back.
She gives my arm one last pass before finding her way to her feet. “I’ll let you get some rest. If your head gets worse, come get me.”
She’s halfway to the door when I say it.
“Stay.” It comes out stripped bare, no swagger left to dress it up. “Just to sleep. I just want you here.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes flick toward the hallway and back to me, and I can see her running through every reason she should walk out of this room.
Eventually she lets out a long breath and reaches for the light switch. The room goes dark, just the faint glow from the hallway, and then the mattress dips.
She lies down beside me, leaving a careful strip of space between us. Near enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off her skin but not quite touching. I lift my arm. An invitation, not a demand. She hesitates for one more breath, and then she’s there, fitting herself against my side, her cheek settling into the dip below my shoulder.
Her hair spills across my arm, and a few strands catch against the stubble on my chin when I turn my head. It’s such a small, stupid thing. It shouldn’t make my chest hurt.
Her breathing is shallow at first, self-conscious. One of her hands rests flat against my chest, right over my sternum. Her hip presses into mine and even now, even gutted and lying through my teeth, my body clocks every inch of where she’s touching me. The heat of her palm through my shirt. The weight of her thigh against my leg. The way her exhale lands on my collarbone and my skin tightens in response.
I press my lips to the top of her head and keep them there a beat too long because I’m a selfish bastard and she’s letting me.
The white noise in my head doesn’t stop. But with her body nestled against mine, it dims to something I can almost bear.
Her breathing evens out. Slows. She’s asleep, or close to it, her weight going soft and heavy against my side. I stare at the ceiling and listen to the ocean against the shore.
