So she ran.
The facts rain down on me like bullets, each one cutting through flesh and splintering bone.
Tatiana endured unspeakable suffering to protect me. In turn, I added to her pain. I might as well have held that whip in my own hand. Now the pain is mine, the knowledge a torment I’ll live with for the rest of my life.
Staggering like a drunk man, I clamp my hands on my head as if it would help if I crushed my skull like a nut when the image of those scars is burned into my brain. “I always cared about her.”
Jasper’s chuckle is wry. “I’m not the one you have to convince about that.”
She turns on her heel like a person who can’t look at my face for another second and walks away, leaving me alone with my gut-wrenching guilt.
Chapter
Eleven
Tatiana
* * *
I wake up groggy and thirsty. “So thirsty.”
The skin on my knees and palms burn, and my temple throbs.
Dante appears in my vision, holding a cup with a straw to my lips. “Here you go, darling.”
He helps me to sit up. I’m in the same big bed as earlier, but now I have a drip in my arm connected to a transparent bag of fluid hanging from an IV pole that stands next to the bed. The curtains are open, letting the golden light of the afternoon sun filter into the spacious room.
I look down at myself. I’m wearing a nightdress I don’t remember.
“I washed and dressed you,” Dante says as if reading my mind. “Here.” He brings the straw to my lips again. “You need to keep hydrated.”
Sipping a few small mouthfuls of the cold water, which is just about the best thing I’ve ever tasted, I take him in.
The new ink on his hands is alluring but also unsettling because I don’t remember those tattoos. His hair is tousled, and a couple of days’ worth of stubble darkens his jaw. His handsome face is familiar but older. Laugh lines crease the outside corners of his eyes. Or maybe they’re from frowning. He’s always been a charmer on the surface but way too serious for his own good.
I glance around me. The room is still strange. Something about being here frightens me. It feels… wrong.
My question is tremulous. “Where am I?”
Brushing back my hair in a tender gesture, he offers me a patient smile. “At our home.”
“Our home?” I look at my left hand where the diamond twinkles on my ring finger. A wedding band fits against the engagement ring, spelling out the answer. “We…” I continue uncertainly. “We got married?”
Even though his smile doesn’t falter, his tone is strained. “You don’t remember?”
Panic rises inside me again. “N-no. What happened to me? Why don’t I remember?”
“Shh.” He strokes my hair. “That’s all right. Tell me what you do remember.”
My brain feels fuzzy. I try to think. “The night we planned. My father was going to a party. You were going to come back when Mom was asleep and sneak me out so we could spend the night together.”
He tries hard not to show his feelings, but he can’t hide the shock and concern that flash through his amber eyes. “What about the accident?” He puts the cup on the nightstand and gently traces the plaster stuck above my temple. “Do you remember anything about the event that gave you this wound?”
I do my best to recall what happened to me only to pull a blank. “I just remember running into that store and asking the sales lady for a phone.”
“And you don’t remember anything between that and the night I was going to smuggle you from the condo?”
I shake my head, spiraling down a black, bottomless pit as my anxiety escalates.
