Clutching my phone, I stare at Dad in the sparse contact list, gearing up the courage to send the call.
I want to go home.
Not forever, just a few days, one weekend. Two nights. I know Dad will immediately say no, so I’ve been crafting a fool-proof plan, hoping he’ll agree.
I need to see my room, our house, him. I want to sift through my personal belongings and find out if anything triggers a relevant memory.
The flashback with the gun haunts my sleep, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t remember any more details. The more I push it, the further from an answer I drift.
My mind’s not playing ball.
I’ve been getting different memories of Alex back lately, shifting from the painful and gruesome ones that set off panic attacks, to those that leave me melancholic. Those that don’t mention the case he’s been working on, the girl he fell in love with, or the risks he was taking. And I know the risks, the case, and the girl are what’s important.
Not the beginning of our relationship when he sent me to the hairdresser and bought me pretty dresses and jewelry. None of that matters.
If I go home, see my room, maybe find Alex’s t-shirt in my wardrobe, I might get back on track.
I need a catalyst like the gun was. Something powerful.
Maybe Alex will find out I came to visit and he’ll stop by? God knows I don’t want him anywhere near me, but I bet he’d trigger a lot of memories.
Still, it’s wishful thinking. Dad would never let that happen. If—and that’s a huge if—he lets me come home, he’ll probably board the windows and chain me to the radiator, so I can only move inside the house.
I made a mistake telling Dad and Matthews about Alex and me. Now they’ll keep him away at all costs.
Over the past few days I’ve begun to understand the progression of our relationship. My diary’s half full, the flashbacks hitting daily, sometimes a few times a day.
I had a crush on Alex. He was there for me when no one else was. When my dad worked fourteen-hour shifts, leaving me at home alone. Still grieving my mother, I kept to myself at college. Alex was the only bit of meaningful human interaction I had for months. He listened. He asked questions about Mom. He helped me navigate the pain and come out on the other side almost unscathed.
Almost whole. Enough that I’d trust him while he disassembled me, then put me back together, adding the pieces of the girl he really wanted.
We kept our relationship a secret because of the age difference and his job. And it was a relationship. I remember the hours we spent on the couch, watching TV, cuddling and kissing while Dad wasn’t home, and the stolen, longing looks whenever he was.
I remember how gentle Alex was with me at first, but I don’t remember how we went from whispered I can’t wait until we’re alone, sweetheart in passing while Dad sat watching TV after dinner, to you’re a dirty fucking slut.
The clock on my nightstand clicks another minute over. I don’t have much time before I have to haul myself across campus for my morning acting class. It’s a miracle I’m alone; Nash rarely lets me out of his sight.
He worries what will happen when a bad memory pulls me under. At least he hasn’t witnessed my sleep paralysis yet.
It’s eased off lately, right about the same time I started getting less traumatic memories back.
With a deep breath for courage, I slide my thumb across the screen and press the phone to my ear. It rings once, twice—
“Morning, sunshine,” Dad chirps. “Everything okay?”
I usually call in the evening while I’m lying with my head in Nash’s lap, the conversations short and clipped.
“I’d like to come home for Halloween weekend,” I say before I lose my nerve. “Just two nights.”
He sighs deeply, a sigh I know so well. The sigh of a father explaining the same thing for the hundredth time.
“You know that’s not possible.”
“My head’s fine now. You know that. It’s been weeks, there’s no swelling left, I’m okay. I can handle coming home, Dad. I remember the house. My room, the kitchen, the living room… I remember. Seeing it won’t hurt me.”
“That’s not for you to decide, Hailey, you—”
“Then have Dr. Phillips check me over. There’s a hospital in town. I can get a brain scan done today.”
“This isn’t just about your head. You’re safe at college. Your accident…” Another sigh. Deep, defeated. So pained it tears at my heart. “It wasn’t an accident.”
No shit. I figured that out a while back, yet hearing him say it still knocks the breath out of my chest.
“I wasn’t driving,” I add what little information I have, my stomach roiling. “You lied.”
“I know, sunshine. I’m sorry. You have no idea how much it cost me to lie to you after I promised I never would, but I had to. It’s for your own good. I’m trying to protect you.”
I’ve heard it all before. Alex said the exact same thing the night I threatened to tell Dad about his involvement with the mystery girl. She’s the key. If only I knew her name…
“You can’t come home. Not until I know you’ll be safe here. I’m working on it, I swear, but I can’t tell you everything.”
“You mean anything,” I snap, flinging my bag over my shoulder. “Whatever happened involves me, Dad. Maybe if I remembered, I could help? Have you thought about that?!”
“That’s all I think about,” he admits quietly. “But I won’t risk your life by bringing you home unless you’re not safe where you are.”
Nash’s face flickers on the backs of my eyelids. The anger in his eyes when he saw me hurt, how obscenely protective he is, how unhealthily possessive and territorial.
I am safe.
He won’t let a hair fall off my head.
“I’m safe,” I murmur.
“Then you’re staying right where you are until I know I can bring you home. I’m doing everything to make that happen as soon as possible, sunshine. Just… give me a bit more time.”
All the battle seeps out of me when Dad’s voice cracks. This is as hard on him as it is on me. Probably ten times worse because he knows what he’s up against. He’s out there, fighting, while I’m cocooned in this safety net he and Nash have woven around me.
“Okay,” I mutter, closing my eyes. “Okay, I’ll stay here.”
◆◆◆
“What’s wrong?” Nash asks when I barge into his room later in the afternoon, after another line-reading session with Chloe. “Were you crying?”
I shake my head, biting my lip. “Not yet, but I’m this close.”
He sets his laptop aside, making room on his lap, and takes my wrist, tugging until I straddle him, my head in the crook of his neck, first tears stinging my eyes.
“I don’t know why I’m this upset. I knew he was lying the whole time,” I mutter, sniffling pathetically. I kept it together all day, but the moment the last bell rang, I folded under the weight of Dad’s confession. “It’s just… I could hear the fear in his voice and it dawned on me how bad things must be if he’s this scared. He’s never scared.”
“You called your dad,” Nash guesses, brushing my hair over my ear. “What did he say?”
“That the accident when I lost my memories wasn’t an accident. That I’m not safe, that—”
“You’re safe,” he cuts in, pushing me away enough to cup my face. “I keep you safe, pretty girl.”
“You don’t even know what’s happening. I don’t know what’s happening. I keep trying to remember but it’s not coming back. Nothing important has come back since I saw your gun.”
I sit up straight, eyes wide, an idea striking me like a stone dropped in a well. Swatting my tears away when Nash’s hands fall to my thighs, I scrunch my nose, wondering if he’ll agree.
“You want to see my gun again?” he asks, inching his fingers higher under my skirt.
“Could I? It’s the only tangible thing that’s triggered any memories. Maybe if I see it again, I’ll remember more. Something important, not meaningless cuddles and kisses.”
A muscle feathers his jaw, eyes darkening faster than I can blink. “I fucking hate that he touched you first.”
“He didn’t, you did.”
He lifts his hand, brushing his thumb over my lips. “He kissed you, Hailey. He held you, touched you, spoke to you.”
“He wasn’t first,” I blurt out like that’ll help. “I had my first kiss when I was sixteen. It was bad.”
Nash closes his eyes briefly as if reining his flaring temper, and I take the opportunity to distract him with a kiss.
He moves his hands to my hips, yanking me closer, and he takes. He pours his frustration into the kiss, his hot tongue tangling with mine, every lick and nibble a statement. A claim. I’m his and he knows that, but it doesn’t tame his territoriality.
If anything, it grows more vicious every day.
As much as I want to keep going and let our clothes fall away, I close his lips, skimming my nose up his cheek until I press a soft kiss on his forehead.
“The gun?” I whisper, tangling my fingers in the short hair at the back of his head. “Please.”
“Only if you promise you won’t ask questions about it.”
I nod, sliding into the seat beside him.
“And you do as you’re told,” he adds. “Close your eyes.”
A small eleven crawls onto my forehead. “Why?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “You need me to spell it out? What happened last time you saw it?”
“Okay, closing my eyes.”
He waits until I do, then moves about the room. He makes sounds all over the place, a rustle here, a faint tap there, a muffled thump near the door. A maze of noises designed to disorient my sense of direction, so I can’t pinpoint where he keeps the gun. I didn’t think he had one here.
Is it the one from the glovebox or does he have two?
And why would he have either in the first place?
I push the question away when Nash stops opening drawers and banging the closet door.
“Keep them closed,” he reminds me, his voice softer, closer. The cushion dips beside me. “Come on.” He grips my forearm, helping me until I’m between his legs, my back against his hard chest.
He cinches his arm around my middle, a fistful of my dress grasped in his hand. A soft kiss lands on the nape of my neck, sparking a pleasant shudder, and I lean back against him.
I didn’t realize how tightly I’d wound myself up until that kiss dissolved the tension.
“Open your eyes,” he says, his breath warm against my skin, his arm molding me harder into him.
My eyelids flutter open. He holds his free hand out, the gun resting on his palm. The cold metal gleams in the daylight. It’s smaller than I remember. Either my imagination’s exaggerated the size, or this isn’t the same gun.
My breath catches in my throat at the absent serial number. My dad’s a cop, I’ve seen guns before. Legal guns. This doesn’t fall into that category.
The chill that was lurking in my spine spreads quickly. Questions multiply, dancing along my vocal cords, but I swallow them all. I can’t ask. And to be perfectly honest… I’m not sure I want answers. Not yet.
One thing at a time.
My hand inches toward the shining steel, led by curiosity and hope that touching it might trigger a memory, but before my fingers get anywhere near it, Nash draws away, gathering more of my dress into his hand.
“Careful, Hailey. It’s loaded.”
I hold my breath when he moves his hand back, letting me drag my index finger along the barrel.
Nothing happens.
Undeterred, I grasp the handle. The gun’s heavier than I anticipated but feels oddly good. Cold and deadly, but good.
Still, no flashbacks.
A pervasive sense of failure catches in my throat, swelling into a lump of frustration. I thought it’d work. I thought touching the gun would be enough to unlock those firmly shut doors in my mind.
“Nothing,” I whisper. “I guess it was too easy.”
“You can’t force it.” Nash takes the gun, leaving it on the armrest, out of reach, his arm around my waist relaxing.
I close my eyes and the first thing I see is that memory. A chubby finger pulling the trigger, the bullet leaving the barrel as if in slow motion, a small explosion puffing around it.
An idea strikes me. Desperate but clear.
“Could you… could you shoot something?” I ask, the words tumbling out before I think them through.
Nash stills behind me, his chest expanding as he takes a deep, measured breath, his shoulders squaring.
I turn, climbing onto his lap, straddling him again. “Please.”
“No.” He spits the word out the same as when I first ran into him in the cafeteria. “No fucking way.”
“Pretty please? The flashback I had… it was concentrated around the bullet. Maybe if I see that again, if I see it now, not in my head, it’ll trigger more.”
Epic poems could be composed about the conflict burning through Nash’s face. About his clenched jaw and the turbulence in his dark, unforgiving eyes.
He’s always so confident, so unshakably in control, but now, a flicker of doubt shines through. A battle rages in his mind. I see it clearly. A battle between his overprotective instinct and the part that wants to help me reconstruct my past.
That’s a perfect opportunity to strike again.
I lay my hand against his chest, over his heart, over the piece of me he has tattooed there. “I’m tired of guessing. None of the small pieces fit together. This is the only idea I have. I can’t go home, I can’t see Alex, I don’t have anything else to release the memory I’m after, but this…” I glance at his gun. “This might be it. I need this.” I lean over, my thumbs swiping the soft skin under his eyes. “Please. One shot.”
For a long moment, he studies me, searches my face, that battle raging inside him escalating to all-out war. Then, slowly, he exhales, breathing out a silent surrender.
“Fuck,” he grits out. “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that? One shot, pretty girl. And you follow my every order.”
“I promise.”
