Chapter 14 #2
“Your medical expenses are being processed through the trucking company’s insurer and your workers’ compensation claim. Your personal bills are set to automatic payment. You still receive salary while the claim is pending.”
“I pay rent?”
“You contribute to the mortgage and household costs.”
“How much?”
“I can show you everything.”
“Now?”
“You’re already tiring.”
I hated that he was right.
My words had begun to slow, each one requiring a fraction more effort.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll ask Dr. Whitcomb how much practical information she wants us to tackle at once.”
“That makes me sound incompetent.”
“It makes you someone recovering from a serious injury.”
“Same result.”
“No.”
His voice carried enough force to make me look at him.
“You are not incompetent.”
“I can’t choose lunch.”
“You recognized a damaged outlet downstairs without seeing it. You remembered a signal no one had used in weeks. You transferred into that chair without help.”
“I used to repair complete electrical systems.”
“And you will again.”
The certainty in his tone reached me before doubt could block it.
I looked down at the soup.
“Will you be at the appointments?”
“All of them.”
“You have work.”
“I arranged coverage.”
“Again.”
“Yes.”
“Caleb and Owen are going to replace you.”
“They have discussed it.”
I smiled.
Reid’s thumb moved across the table until it touched mine.
He did not take my hand.
He waited.
I turned my palm over.
His fingers threaded through mine.
The pressure in my skull eased slightly.
Not because he fixed anything.
Because I no longer had to hold myself together alone.
“I dreamed about you,” I said.
Reid went still.
“What kind of dream?”
“The apartment was flooded.”
“That sounds inconvenient.”
“You were not taking it seriously.”
“I’m trying not to decide what it means before you tell me.”
I watched our joined hands.
“The rooms kept changing. I couldn’t find the door.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Not exactly.”
“What happened?”
“You whistled.”
His fingers tightened.
“I followed it.”
“Did you find me?”
“You touched my neck.”
I raised my right hand and placed it at the base of my skull.
“There.”
Reid’s gaze dropped to the gesture.
“And?”
“I knew you.”
He did not breathe.
“There wasn’t a face,” I continued. “I didn’t see you. But I knew the hand was yours.”
His eyes shone.
I regretted speaking only because I saw how much it meant.
Not because he had no right to feel it.
Because I could not promise the dream would become more.
“I wrote it down.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know.”
He lifted our joined hands and rested his mouth briefly against my knuckles.
The kiss was not sexual.
It still sent warmth through my chest.
“What are we doing tonight?” I asked.
Reid’s eyebrows rose.
“The date.”
“I remember.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you might have decided I need rest.”
“You always need rest.”
“That sounds romantic.”
“I have adapted the plan.”
He reached for another piece of bread.
“Dinner here. Something easy. We can sit near the windows if the rain stops. Then a film with no complicated plot.”
“What kind?”
“I considered an action film, but explosions may be unpleasant.”
“Yes.”
“A comedy might require too much attention.”
“Probably.”
“So I found a documentary about a man restoring an abandoned lighthouse.”
I stared.
“That sounds aggressively calm.”
“You like lighthouses.”
“According to you.”
“According to your face the first time I took you inside one.”
I tried to imagine it.
Stone stairs.
Glass lenses.
Reid beside me.
No image came.
Only the awareness that I wanted the story.
“What are we eating?”
“Moroccan food from the place near the ferry terminal.”
“Do I like it?”
“I have no intention of telling you.”
“Why?”
“You are going to decide.”
The request would have irritated me if it had come from anyone else.
From Reid, it felt like a gift small enough to hold.
“Fine.”
“And I bought something for dessert.”
“What?”
“A surprise.”
“I hate surprises.”
“You love this one.”
“That is exactly the kind of sentence you’re not supposed to say.”
He laughed.
The sound warmed the room.
I finished half the soup.
That seemed to satisfy him, though he did not comment.
We worked on the puzzle while he ate the rest of his lunch.
Reid found a piece of sky and tried it in seven places.
“You’re bad at this,” I said.
“I manage a marine service yard.”
“That does not require visual reasoning?”
“Apparently not.”
I turned the piece in his hand.
It belonged near the harbor mouth.
Reid pressed it into place.
“You did that.”
“You held it.”
“Team effort.”
He looked pleased enough that I let him keep the victory.
The clock above the kitchen reached one.
Reid’s phone vibrated.
He checked it and sighed.
“Supplier?”
“Caleb asking whether I know where we keep the stainless terminal blocks.”
“You do?”
“Of course.”
“Where?”
“Your bench.”
I laughed.
“Then he deserves to suffer.”
Reid typed a reply.
“I need to go back down.”
The calm in my head shifted.
It happened every time he left.
Not panic.
A thinning.
As though the room’s walls moved half an inch farther away.
He noticed my silence.
“I’ll be directly below you.”
“I know.”
“Call me.”
“I know.”
“Marlowe is here.”
“I know.”
Reid stood.
He gathered the dishes.
I watched him carry them to the sink.
His back filled the blue shirt. The muscles beneath it moved when he reached for the tap. A thin scar crossed one forearm. I knew, from photographs, that he had other scars.
I knew his chest.
I had kissed him.
I had slept in his arms.
Yet every departure still felt like an experiment in whether trust remained when he left the room.
“Reid.”
He turned immediately.
I pushed the chair back from the table and stood.
The movement was awkward but steady.
Reid set down the bowl.
He did not rush toward me.
“What do you need?”
“A hug.”
The words made his face soften.
He crossed the room.
I put my right arm around his waist. My left remained supported in the brace between us. Reid folded himself around me carefully, one hand wide across my back and the other at my neck.
The dream came back through my skin.
Warmth.
Pressure.
The exact place his palm belonged.
My body relaxed before I told it to.
Reid’s chin rested against my hair.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
I breathed him in.
Cedar dust.
Rain.
Soap.
Something metallic from the workshop.
The smell had become part of how I recognized safety.
“You can hold tighter,” I said.
His arms closed more firmly.
My forehead rested beneath his jaw.
The world narrowed to the shape of him.
No hospital.
No missing years.
No questions.
Only the steady rise of his chest and the strength he gave without making me feel weak for taking it.
When he loosened his hold, I did not release him.
“Not yet.”
“All right.”
He waited.
After another minute, I stepped back.
“You make that work too well.”
“What?”
“Holding me.”
“I have practiced.”
“With me.”
“Only with you.”
Heat rose beneath my skin.
His hand remained at my neck.
I leaned into it.
Reid’s gaze dropped to my mouth.
He waited.
I kissed him first.
A brief touch.
Soft enough to be uncertain.
His beard brushed my chin.
When I drew back, his expression had become almost unbearably tender.
“You should go,” I said.
“I should.”
Neither of us moved.
“Caleb is probably destroying something.”
“Likely.”
“Go.”
Reid kissed my forehead.
Then he collected the dishes and left.
I stood until the stairwell door closed.
Marlowe looked up from the rug.
“Don’t.”
His tail moved.
I returned to the couch.
The apartment did not become frightening without Reid, but it became more effortful. I turned on the television and immediately turned it off again. Too many images. Too many voices.
I tried the puzzle.
My concentration lasted six minutes.
I drank water because an alarm told me to.
I wrote in the journal:
Ask about money.
Ask what I own.
Ask if Reid is losing work because of me.
Ask about driving.
Ask when I can work.
Ask what happens if memory never returns.
That final question sat on the page like a hole.
I added another beneath it.
Ask what Reid wants now, not before.
My hand ached.
I put down the pen.
The spare-room door stood open at the end of the hall.
Reid still used it, though he had begun sleeping in our bed after I asked him to stay. His clothes remained folded on the old desk. His shaving kit was in the bathroom, but his phone charger and work papers still lived in the small room.
He had not moved back fully.
Perhaps he was waiting for me to invite him.
Perhaps he was protecting himself.
I wanted to know more about him.
The journals and photographs told me what we had done together. They did not tell me how Reid lived when he was alone.
I transferred to the chair and drove down the hall.
The spare room smelled faintly of him.
The foldout couch occupied nearly the entire floor. A desk stood against the wall, crowded with invoices, marine catalogs, a broken printer, and a framed photograph turned toward the wall.
I lifted it.
Reid stood beside a much younger Caleb and Owen in front of the newly painted yard doors. All three were wet from rain and grinning. Reid’s hair was darker. His face looked less guarded.
On the back, in black ink, someone had written:
First day under the new name.
He had built this place.
I knew that fact.
Seeing the younger version of him made it real.
A dark sweater lay folded over the desk chair.
I picked it up.
His scent remained in the collar.
The need to be near him came over me with enough force to be embarrassing.
I sat on the edge of the foldout bed.
The mattress dipped badly.
“This is terrible,” I told the empty room.
Reid had slept here so I would not feel trapped in a bedroom we once shared.
He had folded himself onto this narrow wreck of a bed because I had awakened afraid of him.
I lay back, still holding the sweater.
The ceiling sloped above me.
Rain moved over the roof.
I intended to stay for only a minute.
Long enough to see whether the room gave me anything.
A flash.
A feeling.
The certainty that I had entered before.
Nothing came.
Only Reid’s scent.
Only exhaustion.
I closed my eye.