Chapter Eighteen
AJ
The nurse—Lourdes—ain’t my biggest fan. Grace might have forgiven me for yelling, but Lourdes hasn’t. Every time she comes to check on Grace, she mutters under her breath in Spanish. I know enough of the language to recognize a couple of curse words and marido—husband. The rest is a mystery.
I sit in a hard, plastic chair next to the bed, unable to pull my gaze away from my wife’s face. The bruise spreads from her left temple halfway to her jaw, with a distinct waffle pattern from the sole of whoever kicked her.
On her right cheek, a scar slashes across her pale skin. It’s rough. Not from a knife—at least not a good one. All the shit I’ve seen in my career ain’t doing me any favors. My thoughts ping wildly with possibilities of what she endured the past three years.
My phone vibrates on the little table next to me, and I scramble to grab it before it disturbs Grace. She needs all the sleep she can get.
Jasper: Getting a little worried. Everything okay?
AJ: Grace is sleeping. I’m in the room with her. You can get out of here if you want. See if there’s a motel nearby. Need to talk to the doc before I know when it’ll be safe for her to travel.
Jasper: Do I need to come back there and pull your head out of your ass? No one goes home until Grace does.
I don’t have the words to tell him what it means to have him here. I type and erase half a dozen messages before I give up and set the phone back on the table.
“Senor Stone?” Lourdes hovers in the doorway, a cup of coffee in her hands. Behind her, an orderly balances a slim, black leather recliner on a dolly. “You are tired. That is not good for Grace. Coffee or sleep.”
Her stern stare warns me not to argue with her. Not that I would. She’s right. I can barely keep my eyes open. I might have caught a few minutes of shuteye on the plane, but I’ve been up for more than thirty hours now.
“Both. Gracias.” I accept the cup of strong coffee and step into the hall so the young, dark-haired orderly can wheel the recliner into the room and set it up by the bed.
The idea of sleeping next to my wife—even if I’m in a chair and she doesn’t remember us—has my eyes burning.
Lourdes checks Grace’s heart rate and temperature, then gives me a terse nod. “Rest. She needs you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The chair is heaven—despite its lack of cushion—and I’m about to drift off when Jasper’s uneven footsteps echo in the hall.
“Fuckin’ hell.” He sets Grace’s duffel bag next to me, drops into the hard plastic chair the orderly moved into the corner of the room, and rubs his hand up and down his thigh.
It’s got to be screaming at him. He didn’t get any more sleep than I did on the flight. “She’s been through it, hasn’t she?”
I can’t do more than nod. If I tell him about the past few hours, I’ll crack into a million pieces.
Jasper nudges the duffel bag with his boot. “I thought you might want her things. Maybe somethin’ in there will help jog her memory.”
Fuck.
I didn’t even think to bring it in from the waiting room earlier.
“Parker and Connor are goin’ into town to find some food.
I’m headin’ back to the lobby. The doc has a couple of decent chairs out there.
Better than this piece of shit, anyway.” He pushes to his feet with a grunt, the corners of his eyes crinkling with pain.
“Just…let me know if you need anything.”
He’s my twin. It shouldn’t be this damn hard for me to have an honest conversation with him.
For most of our lives, we were inseparable.
As kids, he was my protector, even though I’m technically five minutes older.
In high school, I was captain of the football team, and he was the star kicker.
We joined the State Troopers together. Applied to the Rangers together.
Hell, it was only his attitude that kept him from making captain with me.
When the Cordova Cartel blew up that warehouse and ended his career, I should have been there for him. But I was in too much pain over losing Grace. I sat by his hospital bed for three fucking days, but hours after he woke up, I bolted.
“Jas…wait.” I run a hand through my hair, grabbing a few of the short strands and pulling to the point of pain. “She can barely string a sentence together. It’s like she’s too scared to speak. And fuck. She was tied up for a long damn time.”
I clock the exact moment he sees the scars around her wrists. His entire body stiffens. “We’re gonna find the assholes who hurt her, AJ. And once we do, they won’t live to see another sunrise.”
The emotion in his voice does me in. Suddenly, I need him to know everything. “She remembers Belle. But not me. Not…herself. We looked at pictures for almost three hours, and nothin’. Her memory… It’s just gone.”
Jasper rubs the back of his neck as he leans against the door jamb. “Give it time, man. She didn’t remember shit when you got here. Belle is a small step, but a good one. Maybe she just needs to be…home.”
I hope to all that’s holy in this world, he’s right.
“When did you become the optimistic one?” I ask.
He chuckles softly. “Nah. I’m still a cynical sombitch. Most of the time.”
“Fallin’ in love has been good for you. Remind me to thank Emi when we get back. And apologize for bein’ so much of an ass I wouldn’t even come to dinner the dozen or so times she’s asked.”
Jasper meets my gaze, all the humor fading from his expression in a heartbeat. “AJ, the night Austin PD suspended the investigation—the night you kicked me out and stopped talkin’ to me—I never should’ve said what I did. I’m sorry.”
Forcing the lump in my throat away is harder than I expect, but Jasper ain’t the only one who needs to apologize.
I reach for my brother’s arm and hold on tight. “You were an ass. But you were lookin’ out for me. I know you went to Harris not long after that and threatened to quit if he chained me to a desk for the rest of my life.”
His cheeks take on a slight tinge and he rubs a hand over his beard. His hair is lighter than mine. A little longer. One of the few differences between us. “Ain’t no thing. You’re lucky he didn’t do it just to spite me. Billings and McGrath heard him yellin’ all the way from the break room.”
“Jas, it was everything. Without the job…I might not have made it long enough to get…here.”
He flinches, and I kick myself for being such an insensitive asshole. Losing his career almost broke him. And since I’d kicked him out of my life, I didn’t know it until he needed my help protecting Emi.
That stakeout would have been mine—should have been mine—but I was still so fucked up over losing Grace, the chief benched me. Instead, I’m still on the job and Jasper’s looking for something…anything he can do to feel…useful.
Before I can find the words to tell him how sorry I am for abandoning him, Grace cries out. I almost trip over my own feet trying to get to her.
“Don’t…I’ll be good,” she whimpers. Tears gather at the corners of her shuttered lids. She’s shaking, her right hand fisting the blanket like it can somehow protect her from whatever’s threatening her in her dreams. Her nightmare.
“Grace?”
Fuck. Do I wake her? What if that makes things worse? She doesn’t know me, but I’ve got to do something.
Taking a chance, I cover her hand with mine. “It’s okay, darlin’. I’m here. You’re safe.”
Grace turns her head slightly. The tension around her eyes eases. With one final, tiny sob, she relaxes.
“Well,” Jasper says from behind me, his voice so low it’s practically a whisper, “if that ain’t proof Grace—your Grace—is in there somewhere…I don’t know what is. She’ll come back to you, AJ. Just give her time.”
Grace
The constant headache I’ve had since I first woke up here is starting to fade. My eyes still feel like sandpaper, and I have to blink hard for the rose garden outside to come into focus.
Something’s…different. A sweet, floral scent wraps around me, and it’s almost…familiar.
I turn my head.
Shit.
AJ. My husband. He’s stretched out in a narrow recliner next to the bed, legs crossed at the ankles, eyes closed. Soft breaths escape his parted lips. He’s asleep, I think. And holding my hand.
I jerk my arm back, then regret the motion as it makes the room tilt on its axis.
AJ sits up so quickly, he practically falls out of the chair.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice rough. He runs his fingers through his dark brown hair.
A memory tries to push through, but before I can grasp it, it’s gone, like a ghost that was never truly there.
“You were havin’ a nightmare, and I couldn’t… I had to try.”
I want to know if it worked—if he kept the monsters away—but fear stops me from asking.
This is ridiculous. He’s my husband. Why am I so afraid to ask him a simple question? To touch him? To let him hold my hand?
“I brought some of your things with me.” He gestures to the bed, where a colorful quilt now covers the dull beige hospital blanket. “Your mama made that for us when we got married. It’s been on our bed at home ever since.”
I run my fingers over the material. Each square has a different type of flower.
Black-Eyed Susans, bluebonnets, sage, golden poppies, lilies, roses.
It’s so bright and happy—such a contrast to the drab sheets and scratchy blanket I’ve had for days.
With the guardrail on the side of the bed down, I can almost imagine I’m somewhere else.
Somewhere that might be a home. I can’t quite close my still clumsy left hand around the edging, but with my right, I lift the quilt to my nose.
“Do you recognize the scent?” Leaning down, AJ rummages in a black duffel bag.
When he straightens, he’s holding a pearlescent glass bottle with a gold top “This isn’t the one you had when you…
were taken,” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“I spray your pillow with this scent every Saturday. It’s the only way I can sleep in our bed without you.
I bought a new bottle last year. Damn near had a panic attack in the store before the clerk told me the company had switched from blue glass to this. ”
He won’t meet my gaze. This man, who traveled all the way from Austin to get to me, sat with me while I slept, and held my hand through a nightmare, is breaking into pieces over a bottle of perfume.
“I almost gave up.” The first tear rolls down his cheek. “So many times. Belle and the job were all that kept me going.”
His pain fills the space between us until I can’t not ask what he means.
“Gave…up?” I fumble for the remote to raise the bed, but it somehow ended up on my left side, and I can’t make my fingers work the buttons.
AJ leans over and eases the small device from my hand. The brief touch seems to settle him a fraction. If I’m honest, it helps me too.
“After we graduated from college, my brother joined the State Troopers right away, but I took a month off and went to Spain with a couple of friends. You were twenty-two, doing a semester abroad, and it only took me a single date to decide I was going to marry you one day.”
His blue eyes light up with the memory, and I wish I could share it with him.
“Grace, you’ve been my best friend for more than twenty years. My wife for eighteen of them.” He’s crying now, his hands balled into fists on his thighs. “And for the past three, I’ve started and ended every fucking day praying you’d find your way back to me.”