Chapter Eleven
She hadn’t really known what to do. He’d left the kitchen, gone to his room. He’d left the door open, so she could have followed him in, demanded…something.
But she was left in anger and confusion.
If he was lying—why? If he wasn’t lying, why did she remember the fight so clearly in her head if it didn’t exist?
She supposed this muddled, impotent, awfulness was why Dr. Leigh had cautioned Ellis not to discuss their past.
Or Dr. Leigh is the reason you received that threatening letter.
The idea of that just made her sick to her stomach. She’d been weak and helpless. She’d been like an infant, and she’d trusted Dr. Leigh wholly and fully, never once considering there might be something menacing behind the woman.
So if there was?
She shook her head. She couldn’t undo the past—not the one she didn’t remember or the one she did. She had to move forward with whatever knowledge and memories she could scrabble together and work from there.
Luckily, she’d been working on that for the past two years.
And maybe everything would be ten times easier if she could remember everything, but there was nothing to do about it right now.
No magic way to remember things—except make Ellis talk to her about things.
She did remember when he started supplying her with background information.
And she remembered that damn fight.
Since I’m not the one with a traumatic brain injury, I think I’ll take my own word for it.
She supposed he had a point there, but then why did she remember it so clearly? Maybe not him, but the words she’d said. The knowledge she was right. He wasn’t running toward glory. He was running away from a family. From being a father. Because he was scared.
She supposed it hardly mattered. There was a threat against her, and maybe him too. She didn’t really remember enough to think they’d go back to being married and having that family they’d planned on.
And none of this matters more than the fact someone threatened your life.
Right. So maybe she should just…go try to get some sleep. Start fresh in the morning. Hopefully Zach got everything he needed to move forward in faking a therapy session with Dr. Leigh.
And if he didn’t, well, maybe she would just take things into her own hands. It’s not like Ellis had eyes on her 24–7. She could have her own session with Dr. Leigh. Do her own…investigating. She could—
It was almost as if having these somewhat rebellious thoughts were broadcast on some kind of radio he was listening to, because all of a sudden he stalked out of his room.
He looked angry. She stepped back, but not out of fear.
No, she couldn’t describe the things that swept through her as fear.
It was something more elemental. More in her body than her brain.
“Normally, I wouldn’t say this. I’d keep it in.
I’d keep it to myself. But I told myself if you were okay, I’d be different, I’d be better.
Maybe you don’t remember, but you are okay, so I’m going to be straight with you.
I have done everything I thought was best,” he said.
His tone was quiet, but the kind of quiet that kept anyone else from daring to speak.
“I have listened to experts. I have tried to keep you safe. Maybe I was wrong. I’m sure I failed you in a million ways.
But I was not lying to you to cause you any harm.
Everything I have done the past two years was to protect you from the harm…
that was my fault. So you have every right to hate me—as Jessica, as Kirsten—and I know I should just accept that, but I can’t.
” His eyes were direct, furious. His mouth a firm, grim line.
And something in her heart just fluttered.
A feeling she didn’t fully understand inside herself, but one she thought she understood coming from him.
“Because you love me,” she said softly. She could feel it waving off of him, and it curled inside her warm and beautiful and sharp and painful all at once.
He was quiet for a long moment, clearly wrestling with a million similar feelings inside himself, but his gaze didn’t leave hers. “Yes.”
She stepped forward, drawn by something—it had to be memory. It had to be right there, on the fringes, and if she just reached it, she could remember. “I feel something—”
“Please, don’t,” his voice was harsh and decisive, even with the please.
“Dr. Leigh made it very clear I shouldn’t discuss love, because you might feel some kind of…
pressure to reciprocate. And maybe she’s behind this, but she isn’t wrong that everything about this is delicate. I’m trying to be honest with you, but—”
“No, listen to me, Ellis,” she said, feeling not desperate…
something more sure than desperate, but still with a need she couldn’t quite articulate to herself.
“I feel something for you. At the edges. I’m not saying this person without memories loves you.
I’m just saying, I know there’s something there under all the things I don’t remember.
So whatever ways you think you hurt me, it didn’t erase that.
Even if I don’t understand it, it’s still there. ”
“I couldn’t begin to tell you if that’s better or worse.”
“Maybe nothing is better or worse. It just is.” For better or worse.
In sickness and in health. She could feel herself saying those words to him.
She could feel, even if it didn’t all make sense.
Even if it wasn’t all on the surface. “Being around you, talking about this, it helps me remember, Ellis. I can feel it. I don’t care if it hurts. ”
“You’ve had enough hurt. And I caused plenty of it. I promised myself, I promised you, I wouldn’t cause any more, Kirsten.”
Kirsten, Kirsten, Kirsten. She swore if he kept calling her that, the pieces that felt just out of reach would arrange themselves into things remembered.
Hurt? Sure, but everything hurt. Not knowing hurt.
“If I remember, I don’t care. Hurting is part of healing—you should know that.
” She gestured at his arm. “I might not remember everything, but I remember my recovery. There was pain. You must have dealt with your fair share too.”
“It had nothing on the past two years.”
She swallowed at how much she could feel that anguish. Not because she remembered it, she didn’t think, but because it echoed off him and into her. Like she absorbed everything he felt.
“I know you want to remember. I want you to. But there’s a higher purpose here, and we can’t let that get lost in the past. Because we don’t know where this threat is coming from, any safety here is short-lived until we do know.
So, let’s get some sleep. In the morning, we’ll talk to Zach and go from there.
See if we can’t figure out Dr. Leigh’s connection. ”
She inhaled. He was right. She knew he was right, and still she didn’t want to go to bed. She wanted to…move to him. It was a yearning inside her, like she could almost see herself crossing the space, putting her palm to his cheek.
Her mouth to his.
She remembered things when he talked about their past.
Would she remember things if they did things from their past? Like, say, share a kiss?
The idea sent two opposite feelings off inside of her. One a little too eager to jump at that possibility, and one rooted in fear.
She listened to the fear. “All right. Good night.”
ELLIS DIDN’T SLEEP WELL. Not a shock. As much as he’d known being in close quarters with Kirsten would be difficult, especially when she knew bits and pieces of things, he hadn’t counted on…all the different ways.
He hadn’t counted on her wanting to dredge up the past. On her misremembering pieces of it. On her giving him some damn hope that the feelings she had on the edges, as she said, might mean something for them.
He didn’t need hope. He needed to keep her safe.
But he hadn’t been able to focus on work with her accusation of lying sitting there. In the past, he would have shoved it down. Gone to work. Forgotten about it. Moved on.
But he just couldn’t access that old version of himself. Something about the past two years of building a million walls to keep him safe, to keep her safe, made it all so much harder to go back and be the man he’d been.
He hadn’t kept her safe then. So what was the harm now?
Which meant telling her the truth far too often in less than twenty-four hours. Maybe he should have let someone else handle it. Someone stronger. Better.
Maybe he still could.
Instead, he’d snatched maybe a few interrupted hours of sleep, before he gave up and got to work.
Once it was a decent hour, he spent an hour on the phone with Zach, working with the laptop he’d borrowed and the subpar internet access to enable a recording Dr. Leigh couldn’t trace and Zach would have access to.
He’d also emailed Dr. Leigh himself, asking to find a time to meet with her sometime today via video chat.
“Let me know when she gets back to you,” Zach told him.
“I want to be available while you’re having your session.
I’m going to put a private investigator on tailing Dr. Leigh ASAP.
We’ve also got eyes on the only access road up to the cabin.
We’ll keep them there at least twenty-four hours after this. ”
“What does the PI know?”
“Just that I have suspicions the doctor is colluding with some people I don’t trust. They don’t know anything about you or Jessica. Their job is just to collect information about where Dr. Leigh is going and who she’s speaking to.”
“And if Dr. Leigh speaks about us?”
“I’m not hiring random people, Ellis. And I can’t be five places at once. Either we trust a few people to help us, or this threat just hangs there, and we never know where it came from.”
Ellis couldn’t help but wonder if he should have just done this all along. Isolated her in the middle of nowhere after she’d been released from the hospital and called it a day. No threats. No outside world. No life.
It wouldn’t have been fair, but it would have been easier.