Round Thirty-Two #2
Because Rose deserves to come out here in an hour or two with her morning coffee and a bowl of something sugary and not at all sustaining, and I’d rather she did it without shivering or having to worry about re-lighting the fire.
I crouch by the hearth for a minute, staring into the bright flames as they crackle and grow larger. But time isn’t my friend this morning, and ruminating on that name—Darcy—is enough to send me mad. So I push up straight and head back to the hall, then left, into the kitchen.
“I’m gonna cook your breakfast today.”
“Argh!” I jump and slap my hand to the switch on the wall, flicking the dozen overhead lights on and drenching the room in bright, glaring light, all to reveal Rose standing on the other side of the counter. My side. She’s soft and sleepy-eyed, messy hair draping over the front of my shirt.
My long sleeves, so long that they hang past her hands. And the length of my shirt falling to cover the upper portion of her thighs.
Fuck. Me. “Rose…”
“Sorry, I scared you.” She turns and flicks the button on the coffee pot, then she starts this way, circling the counter with a sexy, seductive sway of her hips and stepping out to reveal fluffy socks stretching halfway up her calves.
Her cheeks burn a rosy red blush, and her eyes look anywhere but at me.
She’s shy.
But fuck, she walks straight through me, draping her arms around my torso and laying her face over my chest. She grunts and groans, squeezing me tight.
And when I don’t return her hug, she snarls.
“I knew you were going to make this weird.” She squeezes again, crushing my ribs to drive her point home.
“You were out of my bed for all of twenty minutes, and you’re already turning this into a whole thing. ”
“Rose—”
“We shouldn’t have done that. I’m vulnerable. Yada yada yada,” she harrumphs. “You’re my doctor, and you’ve crossed a professional line you shouldn’t have. Didn’t we already go over all that?”
“Who is Darcy?”
She startles and freezes, then pulls back and searches my eyes. “What?”
“Darcy.” I cup her face and hold her still. Hold her near. If she runs, can I stop her and ask her to stay? Do I even have that right? No. You fucking don’t, dickhead. “You said Darcy in your sleep. I guess you thought I was Darcy, because I was getting up and I woke you a little.”
Her lips open and close. Her brows furrow. Then she frowns. “Darcy?”
“Do you remember?” I tuck her hair back behind her ears, uncovering her face and the tenderness she carries early in the mornings. The soft innocence. “You didn’t seem to be having a nightmare. You weren’t scared when you said his name.”
“Darcy…” She tries again, rolling his name over her tongue. But then she shakes her head, still frowning. “I don’t remember.”
“Saying his name doesn’t spark anything for you?” I watch the pulse in her throat—not racing—and the flicker of her eyes—calm. “Can you try to remember him?”
“What makes you think Darcy is a he?” Finally, her lips curl into a teasing smirk. “I said someone’s name in my sleep. That’s why you’re being weird.”
“What?”
“You’re jealous.” Grinning, she steps onto the tips of her toes and smacks a noisy, teasing kiss against my lips.
Then, just as quickly as she came to me, she turns again and heads across the kitchen.
“I’ve talked of Liam before, and you were completely fine with it.
” She snags milk from the fridge and oats from the pantry.
Snagging two bowls like she’s lived here her whole damn life, she goes to work making oatmeal and drizzling honey over both.
“But then we sleep together. Literally and figuratively. So you probably think my saying someone’s name has something to do with sex. You’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous!”
You’re such a fuckin’ liar.
“I’m still your doctor, Rose, no matter what happens between us personally. And as your doctor, I witnessed you unlock something new this morning while you were only semi-conscious.”
“Yeah, an orgasm or three will do that to a girl.” Smug, she twirls from the microwave with a piping hot bowl, hissing and setting it on the counter, then she goes back for the second and places it beside the first. “You jump straight to the assumption Darcy is a man, and now you’re sulking because it appears as though I said another man’s name right on the back of the things we did last night. ”
“You sound really fuckin’ pleased about it all, too.”
She comes around and tugs out my stool, patronizingly patting the seat with her palm.
Then she grabs my wrist and forces me down.
“I’m pleased, because I got to come last night.
And this morning.” She drapes herself across my lap and wraps her arms over my shoulders to prop herself up.
Since clearly, I’m a fuckin’ eunuch who doesn’t bother grabbing on to the beautiful woman who wants me.
“I have no clue if I gave you my virginity last night, or if you were the thousandth man I’ve taken to bed. ”
I screw my nose up as jealousy spreads in my veins. “You were a virgin. I’m declaring it so.”
She giggles and nips on my bottom lip. The top. The corner. “Kinda felt that way. Either that, or the men I was with before had tiny—”
“I don’t know how I feel about this version of you,” I grunt. “Crass and arrogant. Sex makes you smug.”
“Sex with you makes me smug. Sex with anyone else is, literally, forgettable. So then I thought I’d get up and make you breakfast, since I’m a good, well-behaved female like that.”
“That’s what I’m getting out of this? A well-behaved woman?” I make a show of looking around my kitchen. “Where?”
She pokes my chest. And still, she drags her tongue along my lips and hums her pleasure. “Admit you were jealous because I said someone else’s name.”
“Fine. I was jealous.” I lay my hand over her thigh and tug her legs up, taking all of her weight on my lap. “But I was also scared, and then ashamed.”
Finally, her wide smile falters. “Why were you scared?”
“Because we’re on borrowed time. Because you had a life somewhere else that doesn’t include me, and someday, eventually, you’re going to remember it all.
Mayyyybe Darcy is the name of your dog. But it would be insane not to consider Darcy might be your man.
And I can’t ignore the fact that when you dream about Liam, you wake up terrified.
When you dream of me, all but one time, you wake up screaming.
But now you dream of Darcy…” Fuck. “And you wake up completely and totally calm. He might be the one you go home to, and I spent ten minutes in the shower playing that outcome over in my head. I watched you walk out the door with him, over and over and over again. In a state of complete fucking despair, I stood there and considered not telling you. I didn’t want to be the reason you remembered him.
Then came the shame,” I groan. “Because not telling you something like this, something that could change your life, is absolutely despicable. It’s selfish and shitty and—”
“A completely normal, natural response to something scary.” She pulls up and nibbles on my lips.
Kissing. Pecking. Tasting. She presses her chest to mine and allows me to feel her beating heart.
“Within a minute of us coming face to face, you chose my well-being over your desires anyway. Having selfish thoughts is not the same as doing selfish things.”
“Rose—”
“And best of all, telling me sparked nothing.” She slides her fingers through my hair, stroking the shell of my ear, while her perfect doe eyes gently scour my face.
“The only Darcy I remember belongs to Elizabeth Bennet. You took what you considered a huge risk and chose truth over omission, and yet, here I am…” She takes my hand with hers and draws it closer, pressing a sweet, heart-swelling kiss to the heel of my palm, then she places my palm over her heart and smiles.
“Still beating for you. Hoping with everything in me you weren’t going to tell me what we did was a giant mistake. ”
“I couldn’t,” I sigh. “Even if I wanted to.”
“I’ve been in Plainview for a month already, and while you’re at work and I have twelve whole hours to fill, sometimes I read books about traumatic brain injuries.
” She smirks. “You have a bunch of textbooks in this house, by the way. Like, way more than any one student should have. Could you not pick a specialty?”
“I knew I was coming back to this dumb town,” I pout, “and that I wouldn’t have the luxury of a specialty. I’d need to know everything and treat everyone. Stop changing the subject.”
“A month,” she quips. “Most patients with similar injuries recovered their memories within a few days. Some, a couple of weeks.”
“You can’t compa—”
“There will be others,” she presses on. “Outliers, who maybe needed a few months. But the textbooks are fairly clear on the matter: those of us still floundering a whole month or two out… we’re likely to fall into the category of people who simply never get their memories back.”
“We still have time—”
She reaches up and covers my mouth with her hand, carefully pinching my lips closed.
“For the first time since I woke in Plainview, I’ve decided I don’t care anymore.
I don’t care who I was before, or where I came from, or who I knew.
I don’t care what job I had or what dreams made me hopeful.
No one has come looking for me.” She stops and swallows, searching my eyes.
“No one. Which means no one from that life deserves to be remembered anyway.” She shifts her hand across and cups my jaw.
“I don’t want to remember anymore. I just want to stay right here, do my time, and reach a point where we can say for sure it’s all gone.
Then I’ll start over again. Get a new ID.
Get a job. Move out of my doctor’s house. ”
My heart aches.