3. Valentina
VALENTINA
Pain lances through my temple, blinding me the second I try to open my eyes.
Every part of me throbs like a huge bruise, from my lips to my stomach to my knees.
The softness dips beneath me as I shift, fighting between a desperation to see and the pain racking through my body that forces me to move slowly.
Where am I?
Nothing but fuzz buzzes in my mind, like a flood of static pouring between my ears and clouding all thoughts other than ‘ow’. Placing my hand to the side, I lean back as I open my eyes, but there’s nothing to support my palm.
I topple right over the side and crash down onto the floor.
“Ahh!” The impact sends shockwaves of pain throughout my entire body and my breath catches in my throat as I tense up, too scared to move. Wave after wave pulses from head to toe in time with my racing heartbeat.
My only comfort is the cold floor pressing against my cheek.
God… what the fuck happened?
I blink, and suddenly, black socks appear in front of me, leading up to ruffled jeans faded with age.
Someone’s here?
Unable to make a noise because I’m too pained to breathe, only a grunt escapes me when the stranger steps closer, scoops me up into his strong arms, and sets me gently back down on the bed.
A buzz of noise reaches me, but I can’t decipher anything about it through the drum of my own heartbeat and the static in my mind.
“What?” I croak out eventually after a few seconds of lying back on the bed gives my pain a chance to ease and air to filter back into my lungs.
“I said,” the man repeats, distancing himself to the bottom of the bed, “you need to be careful. You’re pretty badly injured.”
My vision fogs with a shimmer of red. Placing one hand on my abdomen, I tense my palm, as if pressure can ease how soupy my guts feel, and force myself into a seated position.
“Who…” Dryness scrapes my throat and my words dissolve into coughing, coughing that rattles my bones and sends sharp stabs of agony to every corner of my soul. “Who are you?”
No sooner have the words left me than the man vanishes and an empty room stares back at me. Did I dream him? I didn’t see him move, didn’t hear him leave, either, but he’s gone and I’m alone.
In the next sluggish blink, he’s back and standing closer to the bed with a glass of water in one hand.
“Drink,” he says in a deep voice, one that’s soft but a little rough around his Rs. “Slowly.”
Refusing isn’t an option, given the barb sensation caught in my throat, so I grit my teeth and lift my arm, then freeze. Dark bruises dot my forearm down to a ring of bruising around my wrist.
“That wasn’t me,” the man says immediately. “I swear.”
With buzzing in my ears and pain racking me with every breath, I momentarily ignore him and take the glass of water.
My first mouthful tastes like bitter copper and I screw up my face, instantly regretting it when blinding-sharp pain lances through my temple.
Once I’ve started drinking, though, I don’t stop until I empty the glass with a wet gasp and the man catches it when it slips from my weak fingers.
“Who are you?” I gasp again with words much stronger than before.
“My name is Diego,” he replies, setting the glass aside. “Kind of insane that you’re only asking me that now, but I suppose we haven’t really had much of a chance to talk.”
Diego.
Nothing familiar resonates in my mind at that name.
“How—” I press my lips together and swallow hard. “How did I get here?”
“I drove.” Diego moves back to the edge of the bed and crosses his thick arms over his broad chest. Muscle bulges out from the hem of his T-shirt as he sighs deeply. “Don’t worry. I got rid of the car.”
“The car?” Each blink is painfully slow and a knot forms in my chest as I gaze up at him. “What car?”
“The car. Their car. You saw what happened to mine. There’s no way it was driving again.” A shadow passes over his face and he shakes his head. “Someone’s probably found mine by now, though.”
“I don’t… what?” Why are we talking about cars? How is that relevant to… to… wait. Something isn’t right.
Diego squints at me, then the corner of his mouth pulls in slightly. “What’s your name?”
Our eyes meet. His striking emerald eyes stand out like glittering gems from his warm, bronzed skin. A shadow of dark stubble hugs his square jaw, caressing around his plump lips, while medium-length, dark curls drift across his forehead and rest atop his ears.
He’s very handsome, but nothing about his face is familiar.
“My name?” I repeat softly. “M-My… my name…”
It’s not there.
There’s nothing there.
Only static that hums a little louder the harder I try to recall my name.
The knot within my chest tightens and I screw up my eyes, wading through sluggish, half-finished thoughts for any kind of information.
Unfortunately, everything slips away from my focus like curls of smoke as if I’m chasing the remnants of a dream.
“You don’t know your name?” Diego’s tone sharpens. “Do you remember how we met?”
Slowly, I lift my gaze from where it drifted down to his T-shirt and meet those vibrant eyes again. “I… no. I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Shit.” He straightens up suddenly. “That’s it. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“No!” The cry escapes me like an explosion and I shift forward on the bed, instantly regretting it as pain quakes through me once more. Wincing, I gasp and sag back down onto the bed. “Y-You can’t!”
“What? Why not?”
“I—I don’t know!”
“You can’t remember your name or how we met, but you can remember that you don’t want to go to the hospital?” Disbelief weighs down his words. “That makes no sense.”
“We can’t go there,” I gasp, deafened by the alarm bells ringing in my mind. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“Why can’t we go there? I wanted to take you last night. Hell, I even wanted to call the cops, but you wouldn’t let me. Now you’re unable to tell me your name, but you remember that?”
My mind is a mist-covered lake where the sensation of danger still lurks in the waters. I just can’t see clearly enough to pinpoint exactly what the danger is. Closing my eyes, I press my lips into a firm line and wrestle with the growing nausea in my warm gut.
“Please,” I gasp, opening my eyes. “I don’t know.
I just… you said it and I knew I couldn’t.
Please, I don’t know why, but we can’t, okay?
I can’t!” Erupting into a coughing fit, it takes me a few long minutes to calm myself and catch my breath.
By the time I calm, Diego rests on the edge of the bed.
“This makes no sense,” he murmurs. “Do you really not remember me? Or anything about last night?”
I shake my head.
“What about before last night?”
Another no.
“High school? Childhood? Anything at all?”
The ache behind my eyes grows bigger the harder I try to think. It’s like wading through syrup and by the time I finish and come up with nothing, I’m slightly breathless. “Everything is fuzzy. Like… like trying to see through a fogged window.”
“And we can’t go to the hospital?” Diego rubs a hand over his jaw.
“None of this makes sense.” After a few seconds of silence, he faces me fully.
“Last night, you leaped into my car and turned a gun on me, demanding that I drive. So I did because I was pretty scared you were going to kill me. We drove, you bled all over my car, and then we ended up getting run off the road by two assholes who I’m pretty sure were going to beat us to death.
One of them was about to kill you, I think, so I just—” He cuts himself off suddenly, and a flash of pain blooms in his eyes.
“I killed them instead. Does any of that sound familiar?”
None of it. Shaking my head slowly, warmth pricks behind my eyelids. “I-I’m sorry. I don’t remember any of that. You… killed someone?”
“Two. They were going to kill you and I stopped them. But you remember you don’t want to go to the hospital or let me call the cops?”
“It… It’s like a feeling, right here.” I press one trembling hand to my chest. “You mentioned it and it was like I was falling off the bed again.”
His hard expression suddenly melts into something softer and he drags his hand through his dark hair, shifting the curls with his knuckles.
“Well, no one’s ever accused me of taking a lady somewhere she doesn’t want to go.
But I’m not a doctor, okay? I manage a bar.
My name is Diego Pérez, I’m thirty-three years old, and I have no idea who you are but…
” He sighs deeply. “I did what I could to patch you up last night. You look like you went through hell so… maybe it’s expected that you don’t remember anything. ”
Should I be scared of this man? Waking up here without a thought on my tongue and only a sense of danger in my chest, maybe I should fear him. Except that he exudes a certain warmth while keeping his distance, and nothing about the details he’s given me has caused any other alarming sensations.
“I don’t… I don’t know what to say,” I admit softly, then another wave of pain forces me to double over. “Ow.”
“I’m sorry,” Diego says immediately. “I don’t have any painkillers here, but I can get some.
I just… I don’t want to be responsible for your death, Lady.
What I did last night is… I can’t even spare the thoughts for it right now, but my mother raised me to be a gentleman.
Maybe some painkillers, rest, and some food will unlock that mind of yours, and I can call someone?
Do you remember anyone? Friends? Family? ”
A warm sensation enters my chest when I meet his eyes once more, and part of me wants to say yes. Those people do exist in my mind, but when I try to remember a name or a face, there’s nothing there. An empty weight that fades the harder I try to focus on it.
“No,” I murmur. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.
” Glancing down at myself makes the back of my neck throb, but I endure it to take in what I can see.
Dark bruises on my legs disappear under the hem of an old T-shirt.
Both my arms are bruised and both wrists have the same looped bruise.
Several cuts and scrapes are clean and covered in tape. “You did all this?”
“Yeah,” Diego sighs. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you’d been through hell.
As respectfully as possible, I cleaned you up and stitched what I could.
Your head wound is the worst of it, so please make sure you move slowly.
If you start throwing up everywhere or you fall asleep and I can’t get you to wake back up, I’m a thousand percent taking you to the hospital. ”
That cold fear swoops into my chest again and I want to tell him no, but both those options sound like I wouldn’t be able to say a word, anyway. Instead, all I say is, “That’s too dangerous.”
“Mmhmm. The hospital and the cops. Dangerous.” His brows twitch together, then his eyes widen. “Wait! I never checked your clothes. Wait here.” He’s at the door before he turns back to me with a soft, boyish smile that softens his entire face. “Not that you can go anywhere, but y’know…”
He vanishes, and silence closes around me like a cold blanket.
Heat radiates through my body with every subtle shift and twitch of my limbs as I test just how pained I am.
Pressing on my bruises does nothing to ignite a memory, nor does running my fingertips over stitched cuts or the wad of gauze taped to my hairline.
By the time Diego returns, I’ve pulled the blankets over my legs to protect from the cold. He sits beside me with a white basket on his lap. Inside are a pair of ripped, blood-soaked jeans and an equally ruined T-shirt.
“Those… were my clothes?”
“Do you remember them?” Diego asks while nodding.
“No.”
“Damn.” He picks up the T-shirt, turns it over quickly, and then abandons it for the jeans.
Rummaging in one front pocket, he finds nothing.
Same for the second. One of the back pockets makes his brows lift, though, and after digging deep, Diego pulls out something that he rests on the palm of his hand.
Two gold rings.
“Are those… mine?”
“They look like wedding rings,” Diego murmurs, and he examines them closer. “They’re engraved.”
“What do they say?”
“Rus—Ruslan? And Ivy.” His eyes flick up from the rings. “Is that your name? Ivy? Do you feel like an Ivy?”
I shake my head. “No… that doesn’t feel right.”
“Try them on?” He offers the rings to me, so I take them and examine the gold bands for a few seconds.
Diego returns to my jeans and rummages in the pockets, but the only other thing he finds is a sleek, black card about the size of a credit card. It’s completely blank on both sides. He flips it over several times and then shrugs.
“Weird club card, maybe?”
I remain focused on the rings and then, after a few shaky breaths, slip them onto my fingers.
Both rings are loose on all my fingers.
“Damn,” Diego murmurs. “I guess you really aren’t an Ivy. Unless whatever happened to you happened over a really long period. Unlucky, I guess.” He hesitates suddenly. “Sorry.”
“For what?” Our eyes meet as I pass the rings back to him.
“I dunno. Feels like I should apologize. I mean this is… you’re in my apartment with no memory, only a fear so strong that you won’t let me call the authorities. This whole thing is so… insane. And here I am making dumb jokes.”
Slowly, my lips pull into a slight smile. “I get it. It’s weird. I feel it too. I wish—” Pain cuts me off and I yelp softly, clutching at my abdomen and then my head. My noise sends Diego up from the bed.
“Okay, I’m going to get you painkillers and we’ll just pray you’re not allergic to anything, okay?”
“Okay,” I gasp, cradling my head in both my hands. “Oh, God.”
“Just hold on,” he says, his voice fading as he heads for the door. “Oh, for ease too, I’m going to call you Amber.”
The wave of pain subsides after a few seconds and I slowly lift my head back up. “Amber?”
“Yeah.” He flashes me a quick smile. “Because of your hair.”