Chapter 5
NATALIA
The surf shop two miles down the road opens at eight.
I’ve never had a reason to go inside before, but Johnny’s been barefoot since I dragged him off the beach, and my flip-flops aren’t going to cut it for a man his size.
So I went. Grabbed him a couple of t-shirts while I was at it so he’s not living in his only one, and then stopped at the drug store for some basics.
The house is still quiet when I slip back in. No sound from the guest room. I set the bags on the island and start the coffee, and I’ve almost convinced myself this is a normal morning when he appears in the kitchen doorway.
Even in my too-small sweats, even with his dark hair wrecked and wild from a bad night’s sleep, the man looks like someone a casting director would find on purpose.
Noted, filed, and immediately shoved into the mental drawer marked Things That Don’t Matter When You’re Playing Nurse To A Stranger With No Name.
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.”
The please is 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 said Nat. 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 the never part.
“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.
Johnny’s quiet beside me, matching my pace. The new flip-flops don’t love the sand, though, and after a minute he kicks them off and carries them, walking barefoot like the cold doesn’t register.
“You’ve been doing this every day?” he asks. “The beach walk?”
“Almost every day for two months. Missed a couple when I was sick.”
“Two months?” He glances at me sideways. “No job to get back to?”
“I don’t have a job. Never have.”
He lets out a low whistle. “Two months on the beach, no job, family bankrolling you. That’s a hell of a vacation. I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little jealous.”
I squint at him. “You kind of have the same thing right now.”
He laughs, short and surprised. “Yeah… I guess you’re right. I’m completely free until I remember what I’m supposed to be doing.”
He says it like a joke, but the word lands wrong. Free. I’m smiling like it’s funny because the alternative is explaining that some of us know exactly what we’re supposed to be doing and wish we didn’t.
“So why no job?” he asks. “Ever?”
“My father is…” I search for the word that tells the truth without telling any of it. “Traditional. He wanted sons to carry on the family legacy. Got my brother, and then got me.”
“Traditional,” he repeats, like he’s turning it over.
“A daughter’s role in his world is very specific,” I say. “He decided what my life would look like before I could walk. And I don’t get a say in it.”
Johnny’s grin fades. “What does that mean?”
I should stop there. I know I should. Smile, change the subject, ask him something about the water or the weather. That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done. Safe answers. Practiced deflections. The kind of surface-level conversation that keeps people from asking the next question.
But he’s watching me with this quiet, steady focus, like nothing exists outside of what I’m saying, and I am so dangerously starved for someone to actually listen that the next sentence is out before I can stop it.
“My mother died having me.”
The wind fills the space after my words. A wave breaks hard enough to send foam skidding up the sand toward our feet. I stare at it and wait for him to do what people do. The careful face. The soft I’m so sorry. The pivot to something less uncomfortable.
He doesn’t. He just keeps walking beside me, near enough that his arm almost brushes mine, and waits.
But that’s worse. Because sympathy I know how to handle. Silence that feels like an open door is something else entirely.
“My father never forgave me for that.” I hear myself say it and think stop talking. “I’ve been a disappointment from day one. The wrong child, the wrong gender. A problem to be managed.”
“Nat…”
There’s that nickname again. “He doesn’t want me to have a life. He wants me to serve a purpose.” The wind cuts through my sweatshirt, cold against my neck. I fix my eyes on the waterline. “Sorry. That’s a lot for a beach walk.”
“Don’t apologize.” His voice has gone quiet. No jokes in it now. “That’s fucked up.”
The bluntness of it hits me sideways. Not sympathy. Not careful phrasing. Just that’s fucked up, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
And maybe it is. Maybe I’ve been too close to it for too long to see it that simply.
But there’s something disorienting about hearing someone name it, because it means every person who’s watched my father treat me like inventory and said nothing was making a choice.
Every polite smile at every dinner, every associate who looked through me like I was furniture.
They all knew. They just didn’t care enough to say it out loud.
A man with no memory and no reason to give a damn just did.
“Why don’t you leave?” He says it gently, like he’s trying to hand me something fragile. “If he’s that bad, just go.”
I stop walking.
It’s a fair question. A logical one, even. And the concern on his face is so genuine that it makes my throat ache, because he actually thinks it’s that simple.
But I’ve never tried. You don’t have to build a prison with walls and guards. You just have to find the one person someone loves most and use them as a pawn. My father figured that out a long time ago.
“It’s not that simple.” I’m amazed at how steady my voice sounds. “I have someone who depends on me.”
I leave it there. No details or names. Just the shape of the cage, visible enough that he can see it without me having to describe every bar.
He doesn’t rush to fill the silence. He watches the waves for a long moment, hands in his pockets, and when he finally speaks, his voice has lost the flatness from this morning.
“I don’t remember much. But I know a father who doesn’t want his daughter to be happy is wrong. Full stop.”
I have to look away. Out at the water, at the gray line where the ocean meets the sky, at anything that isn’t his face right now. Because if I look at him I’m going to cry, and I will not cry in front of this man.
“We should head back.” I start walking again, faster. “We’ve gone pretty far.”
He falls into step beside me. For a few seconds neither of us says anything, and I’m grateful for it.
“Wow.” He speaks eventually. “And I thought I had problems. At least I have the excuse of brain damage.”
It’s such a perfectly stupid thing to say that a wet laugh escapes before I can catch it. I swipe my eyes with the heel of my hand and hope he thinks it’s the wind.
Johnny drifts toward the waterline, crouching to look at something the tide dragged in. I keep walking.
I’m so far inside my own head that I don’t notice the runner until he’s already beside me.
He’s wearing a tank top in November, which tells me everything I need to know about his decision-making. Tanned. Built like a guy who spends more time flexing in front of his phone than actually doing anything. I make the mistake of glancing over as he passes.
“Hey there. You’re up early. Lucky me, right?”
God. I’ve been dealing with men like this since I was old enough to fill out a dress at my father’s parties.
The ones who take up space like they’re owed it, who read disinterest as a challenge.
At least my father’s associates had the decency to only stare.
This one plants himself in my space like he belongs there.
“Let me buy you a coffee. There’s a place just up the road.”
“Not interested. Thanks.”
“Come on, don’t be like that. I’m just trying to be friendly. What’s your name, sweet—”
He doesn’t finish. Johnny’s there and everything shifts. He doesn’t touch the guy. Doesn’t puff up or say anything clever. He just steps between us.
“She said no.” Quiet. And dangerous.
“Easy, man. I’m just being friendly.” The runner tries to square up, but Johnny has two inches and something far more dangerous than height on him. Something in Johnny’s posture shifts, barely visible, like a safety clicking off.
I’ve grown up around men who do violence for a living. I know what it looks like when someone stops deciding whether and starts deciding how.
The guy lasts about two seconds.
Then his hands come up, palms out, and he’s jogging down the beach like he just remembered somewhere else he needs to be.
Johnny watches him go. It takes a few seconds for his shoulders to drop, his hands to unclench. Wherever he just went, he doesn’t come back from it easily.
I should be unsettled by that. A man I found bleeding on my beach two days ago just made a stranger retreat without lifting a finger. I search for the fear and come up empty. I don’t know what to do with that.
When he turns back to me, the coldness is gone. What’s left looks almost confused, like he startled himself.
“You okay?” He’s searching my face like he’s checking for damage.
“I’m fine.” And I mean it.
He puts his hand on the small of my back, light, barely there, just enough to steer us toward the house. And I don’t flinch.
That catches me off guard more than anything the runner did.
My father’s hand on my shoulder has always meant move where I tell you. Nikolai’s grip on my arm means don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Every touch I’ve ever known from the men in my life has come with instructions.
Johnny’s hand isn’t telling me anything. It’s just there. Warm and steady against my back, asking nothing.
I don’t pull away.