Chapter 6 Johnny
JOHNNY
No memories means no baseline.
No little voice in the back of my head going relax, you’ve done this before, this is normal.
Nothing about me is normal right now. Pretty sure that’s established.
So I have zero frame of reference for whatever took over my body on the beach this morning.
That jogger wasn’t a real threat.
I know that now. But in the moment, something ancient and practiced kicked in, and I stepped between him and Natalia like I’d been doing it my whole life. No thought. No decision. Just instinct and three words coming out of my mouth in a voice I didn’t recognize.
The guy left. Fine. But I stood there for a few seconds afterward with adrenaline singing through me and nowhere to put it. It wasn’t fear. Something closer to hunger. Like my body wanted the guy to push back so it could finish what it started.
That’s the part that won’t leave me alone. Not the protectiveness. The eagerness underneath it.
The memories from last night keep circling, too. The boat. This house. Her house.
I tell myself it’s a coincidence. But my gut doesn’t buy it, so I bury the thought before it can take shape and turn my attention to Natalia instead.
Two pills and a glass of water appear on the counter in front of me. I look up. She’s already turning back to the stove, like she didn’t just sense a headache I haven’t mentioned and decide to fix it without a word.
I haven’t earned a single thing this woman’s done for me. I showed up on her doorstep with no name and no story, and she treats me like I’m worth taking care of.
What kind of person does that?
I watch her move around the kitchen. Bacon popping in the pan. A spatula in one hand. Her hair pulled into a messy knot that’s already losing the fight, pieces falling around her neck. She hums something tuneless while she cooks, and I don’t think she knows she’s doing it.
Morning light fills the kitchen in pale gold slants through the salt-streaked window. It catches the side of her face, and something about the angle, the way her lashes cast tiny shadows on her cheekbones, steals the air from my lungs.
She reaches for a plate on the high shelf, and her shirt rides up just enough to show a sliver of skin above her hip. Golden and smooth and warm-looking, and I grip the edge of the countertop and drag my stare somewhere safe.
It doesn’t stay there.
My eyes find her again like they’ve got their own agenda.
The dip of her waist. The way her jeans fit like a second skin.
She turns to check something on the stove and the fabric of her shirt pulls across her breasts, and I shift on the stool because my body is responding to this woman in ways I can’t hide much longer.
She’s making me breakfast, and I’m thinking about what’s under that shirt. I need to get a grip.
Instead, I replay the walk home this morning. My hand finding the small of her back. Barely any pressure. I didn’t even realize I’d done it until she leaned into it instead of pulling away. Just the faintest shift of her weight toward my palm, and yeah. I was done for.
I can’t stop replaying what she told me, either. A mother she never knew. A father who only sees what she’s useful for. A life she never got to choose. She said more than she planned to, I think. Looked almost annoyed with herself by the end of it.
Everything she described landed somewhere deep and familiar. Like my body knows what that feels like even though my brain can’t tell me why.
She’s still holding back, though. I could feel it. Whole chapters of her story are locked behind that flat it’s not that simple, and I want them so badly it’s moved past curiosity into something I don’t have a name for.
Fuck. This is getting complicated.
There’s a notepad next to her phone charger. One of those yellow legal pads with the spiral binding, a pen clipped to the top. My fingers find it without permission, and I’m turning to a blank page before I’ve decided to do anything.
Lines first. Just the scratch of ballpoint on the page. My hand moves like it knows something I don’t, the pen tracing shapes that aren’t random. A curve. An angle. The suggestion of something taking form.
I glance up. Natalia is stirring the eggs now, head tilted slightly, a crease between her eyebrows that makes her look lost in thought. Another piece of hair slips free from her knot and falls along the side of her neck, and my hand moves faster.
The slope of her nose comes first. Then the line of her jaw. Her lips, slightly parted, the top one just as full as the bottom in a way I keep staring at.
I’m not thinking about it. That’s what makes it strange. My fingers know the weight of a pen, know how to layer shadow and shape, how to suggest depth with crosshatching.
Muscle memory. Same as on the beach this morning, my body moving before my brain gets a vote. Whatever I was before all this, I spent serious time with a pencil in my hand.
Her eyes are the hardest part. She has these wide, expressive eyes that hold about fifteen things at once, and I keep looking up to get the proportions right, the way they tilt slightly at the outer corners, the kind of blue that shifts depending on the light.
She doesn’t notice. Too busy plating the food, sliding bacon onto paper towels, moving through the kitchen with that quiet efficiency she has.
A little more shading under the cheekbone, a suggestion of the light source, and...
“Oh my god. Did you just draw that?”
Her voice pulls me out of it. I blink, look down at the notepad.
Shit. That’s actually good. I can say that with the weird objectivity of a man who has no ego about his past to protect.
“Yeah.” I turn the notepad so she can see it better. “I guess I draw.”
She sets the plates down. Comes around the island, slow, like she’s not sure she wants to see it up close. But she does. She stops next to my stool and looks down at the page and doesn’t say anything for long enough that I start to wonder if I’ve crossed a line.
Her lips part. She picks it up, carefully, fingertips at the edges like it’s something fragile, and I watch her eyes move across the lines.
“It’s me.” Barely above a whisper. “Is that... is that really how you see me?”
The kitchen goes quiet. Just the tick of the cooling burner, the distant crash of surf through the window, the hum of the ancient refrigerator that runs too loud.
I don’t have a good answer for that. Or I have too good an answer and no safe way to deliver it.
“I barely know what I look like.” I turn the pen over in my fingers, not looking at her.
“Half the time I can’t hold a thought for more than ten seconds.
But when I look at you...” I glance up. She’s gone completely still.
“Everything sharpens. I don’t know why. But I think I could draw your face in the dark. ”
She’s near enough that I can smell the coconut of her shampoo. Near enough that the warmth of her body reaches mine.
My fingers itch to touch her. I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear before I can talk myself out of it. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t lean in. Just goes very still, and her breath catches.
“I think you knocked your head pretty good.” She tries to smile, but it comes out wobbly. “There’s no way I actually look like that.”
She means it. Something behind my ribs folds in half.
I hook a finger under her chin, tipping her face back up. “Of course you do.”
Color floods her cheeks. A deep, fierce red that spreads from her neck to her ears, and it’s so real, so beautiful, that I want to make her do that again every day for the rest of my life, which is a crazy thought to have about a woman whose last name I don’t know.
“You can’t just say stuff like that.” But she sways toward me as she says it. Catches herself. Sways again, like her body keeps vetoing her mouth.
I might have someone waiting for me somewhere. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what these hands did before they picked up a pen and drew her face. Every good reason in the world to stop, and I don’t give a damn about a single one of them right now.
My other hand comes up. I’m cupping her face, both palms against her cheeks. She’s looking up at me with those eyes, and from this close I can see the grey flecks in all that blue and the way her lashes are darker at the roots and the tiny scar on her eyebrow I haven’t asked about yet.
“Tell me to stop.” I bring her closer. My mouth is an inch from hers. “And I will.”
“I... I...”
I wait. I mean it. One word, and I’m across the room.
Her fingers curl into the front of my shirt. I feel the pull before I register what it means, and then her mouth is on mine.
Warm. A little desperate. She tastes like coffee, and her lips are softer than I let myself imagine, and she makes this small sound against my mouth that goes straight through me.
My hand slides from her jaw into her hair. She presses closer and I can feel her heartbeat, fast and hard, matching mine.
Her grip tightens like she’s afraid I’ll be the one to pull away. I answer by pulling her between my knees, fitting her against me, and she melts into it. Into me. Her fingers drag up the back of my neck, and every place she touches rewires something in my brain.
I don’t know my name. I don’t know where I come from or what I’ve done or who’s looking for me. But I know this. The taste of her. The way she fits against me. The sound she just made. I know this like I’ve never known anything.
And for one second, everything in my broken head goes quiet.
And there’s just her.