My whole body is a story I can’t read. Every scar is a chapter, every tattoo is a detail, and I don’t have the first clue what any of it means.
I kill the water and step out, grabbing a towel and running it over my hair a few times before wrapping it around my waist.
When I turn to grab the clothes Natalia left, the mirror catches what I couldn’t see in the shower. A tattoo covering most of my back. A snarling wolf framed in ornate scrollwork, with a bold letter A beneath it and a dagger driven through the center. This one feels different from the rest. Less art, more insignia.
Recognition tugs at the base of my skull. A word sitting right on the tip of my tongue that won’t come loose. Faces flicker at the edges. A voice, low and commanding. The smell of cigar smoke and leather.
Then it’s gone. The images scatter like startled birds, and I’m left gripping the edge of the sink, breathing like I just ran a sprint, staring at a stranger in the mirror with no more answers than I had five minutes ago.
The A could stand for anything. My money’s on asshole.
I pull on the clothes Natalia left outside the door. Another oversized t-shirt and a pair of sweats that are a little short in the leg but close enough.
Back in the bedroom, the bed is wrecked with sand. I strip the sheets, bundle them into a pile by the door, and stand there for a moment in the silence.
Somewhere in this body is a man with a name, a history, and a reason he washed up on a desolate beach with a head wound and scars he can’t explain.
I just have to wait for him to show up. But guys with bullet scars and wolf tattoos don’t usually turn out to be accountants.
3
NATALIA
My mystery guestsleeps most of the day.
I check on him twice, pressing two fingers to the inside of his wrist and counting the beats against my phone’s timer. Steady both times.His pupils were equal and reactive this morning, the wound edges are holding under the strips, and he’s not vomiting. All signs point to a concussion that’s tracking toward recovery, not hemorrhage.
Small mercies.
Between checks, I park myself on the couch with my laptop balanced on a throw pillow and work through the anatomy and physiology course I’ve been chipping away at for four months.
Four months into a degree I’ll probably never use, studying a career I’ll probably never have.
Today’s unit covers cranial nerve assessment. Fitting, given the man unconscious in the next room. I pause the video on a diagram of the Glasgow Coma Scale and quiz myself until I can recite the categories from memory.
I shut my laptop and press my knuckles into my eyes. Outside the sliding glass door, the ocean has gone the color of pewter, waves folding over themselves in that lazy, repetitive way that should feel peaceful but just sounds like a clock ticking.
One more day in this beach house. One more day of borrowed time.
My father sent me here two months ago to keep me safe. That’s how he put it, anyway. “Safe.” What he means is intact. There’s an arranged marriage waiting for me back home, and I need to be in one piece when it’s time to walk down the aisle.
So here I am. Tucked away on a remote island where nobody knows my name, with a single standing order: stay put, stay quiet, and don’t do anything stupid.
My father doesn’t know about the coursework. A woman whose future has already been decided for her doesn’t need a career. She needs to sit still, look presentable, and wait to be delivered to a man she’s never met.
My stomach growls loud enough to echo off the bare walls, and I realize I skipped lunch entirely, too absorbed in differentiating the trigeminal nerve from the facial nerve. I head to the kitchen and pull open the fridge. The shelves are sparse. I only ever shop for one, and cooking has never been my talent. But there’s enough vegetables for a stir-fry, so I grab what I can and start heating the pan.
The oil pops and I flinch, which Anna would’ve found hilarious. She always said I was too jumpy for kitchen work.Stand your ground, devochka. The oil can smell fear.
The sizzle of peppers hitting the pan fills the silence, and for a second I’m twelve years old again, burning garlic while Annalaughed and bumped me aside with her hip. The memory surfaces warm and aching before I push it down.
“That smells good.”
I look up. He’s standing in the hallway, one shoulder propped against the doorframe, and the first thing I register is that some of the color is back in his face. Still pale, still bruised, but less gray than this morning. More alive.
The second thing I register is that my oversized t-shirt is very much not oversized on him. I can practically count his abs from here.
Great, Natalia. The man has a concussion and you’re checking him out. Real classy.
