Chapter 12 Gabriel
Gabriel
Sydney sleeps hard for the next several hours. When dinnertime arrives, I face a quandary. She needs rest, but does her body need food more?
I sit on the edge of the bed and play the If Only game.
If only I’d sent someone else to handle the business trip to Tokyo in my place. I knew she hated it when I traveled, even if she’d cut her own arm off before she’d ask me to stay.
If only she hadn’t decided she’d be fine for a couple of days without a bodyguard on duty. If only, when the clasp broke on her necklace, she’d put it in a pocket, instead of a drawer. If only we’d kept a closer eye on Nikolai Markov over the years.
If only I’d found her before—
The If Only game sucks ass.
“Sydney,” I say quietly, hoping not to frighten her.
Her eyelashes don’t flutter. Her slow breaths don’t change.
I speak a little louder. “Sunshine, can you wake up?”
Nothing.
She told me not to touch her earlier, but sudden irrational terror overrides that order. Two days shouldn’t be enough to cause refeeding syndrome. The nurse would have told me if we’d reentered the danger zone, not encouraged her to eat.
But she was already weak. Is this a coma? I cup her shoulders and give a small shake. “Sydney, wake up.”
Her eyes fly open, and she hisses at me like an angry cat.
I take my hands away and straighten. Try to calm my racing heart. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Dinner is ready. Would you like to eat in here or the kitchen?”
She pushes herself to sit, too much white still showing in her widened eyes, the wild mass of her hair a knotted cloud around her head.
I want my wife back.
But this feral creature in our bed is my wife. It’s not fair to grieve her when she’s sitting right in front of me.
“Do you want me to bring dinner in here or eat in the kitchen?” I repeat.
“Kitchen.” Her voice is different than it used to be, the tone lower and hoarser, her words stilted.
I back away and wait for her to clamber unassisted from the bed.
She heads for the bathroom, then returns a few minutes later, her hair still unbrushed, though her haircare products sit in the same place on the counter where I put them for her to use more than a week ago.
I open the bedroom door and usher her into the hallway, then walk beside her to the kitchen.
“The dietician said pizza isn’t a great idea yet.
But we’ll have it as soon as we get the green light.
She chewed me out for the sandwiches and cake.
Do you feel sick? Light-headed? Nauseous? Headache?”
She narrows her eyes. “No. And she can pry the choc . . . chocolate from my cold, dead hands.”
A surprised bark of laughter erupts from my chest, the humor out of proportion to her comment. But hearing a hint of the old Sydney pumps metaphorical helium through my veins. “I’ll let you tell her that.”
When we reach the kitchen, I pull out a chair for her at the same table where we ate lunch. She frowns at the place setting with the oversized bowl of soup. “That’s a lot of f-food.”
I nod, and, after seeing her settled in her chair, sit down directly beside her, rather than across from her.
“Since you want me to eat first, I thought we could share dishes this time. You’re still a little shaky to handle soup on your own, but it should be easier on your system. Is that okay with you?”
Her gaze flies from the bowl to my eyes, her expression pleased. “I like this.”
Thank God.
“Why do you make that face?” she asks.
I wasn’t aware my face had shown my feelings. I shake my head slightly. “We used to share food a lot. When we first got to know each other, I thought I was flirting when I stole a bite off your plate.”
Humor laces my tone. “The first time I did it, you responded by moving half of the contents of my plate onto yours. Then you looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘How do you like that, dickhead?’”
She watches me, listening intently.
I shrug. “It turned into a thing we did. I’d steal some small thing from you, then you’d take back the same amount plus interest. It drove my siblings insane the way we ate from each other’s plates constantly. It deeply offended Henry’s sense of fairness.”
She frowns. “We fought a lot?”
I swallow, unwilling to go down a road that has no simple answer. “That’s not what I meant. I’d never leave you with less food. Sometimes, you didn’t wait for me to steal something. You stuck a french fry on my plate once and took half my chicken wings in exchange.”
“Rude. Your brother was right.”
I shake my head. “I loved it, and you knew it. I always ordered extra, so I could fill your plate.”
She tilts her head slightly to the side. “You’re a strange person.”
“Well, now that’s just mean,” I drawl.
“You know, then. About food. And me,” she says.
My smile falters. When she doesn’t say more, I lean closer. “Can you tell me what you mean by that?”
“There was never enough when I was a kid.” She shows me the old white scar on her left thumb.
“Dad went on a bender when I was four. Gone almost a week. Had to use a knife to o-open a can of peaches. I hate peaches.” She shudders.
“I smell them and . . . think of blood. I almost d-died eating spoiled food when I was s-six because there was n-nothing else.”
I straighten, my brows coming together, then I blow out a small breath.
How could I not have known? But even as a rhetorical question, it’s a stupid one.
She never spoke to me about anything related to her father, unless it was to accuse me of being like him.
“I’m sorry I teased you with food. It wasn’t funny. ”
“But I got even,” she says.
“You always do.” I scoop a spoonful of chicken noodle soup into my mouth, then offer her a bite. She accepts easily, and we work our way through the meal.
When she’s had enough, she lifts a hand. “Full.”
I nod, then finish the remainder myself, feeling her intent gaze on my face the entire time.
If I were a self-conscious person, her unwavering attention on me while I eat would be unnerving.
But I’m not. And if she wants to watch me like I’m on an episode from something on Animal Planet, I see no problem with it.
Maybe she’s trying to remember. Maybe she’s trying to get comfortable with me.
“I stole your bed,” she says abruptly.
I shake my head. “You can’t steal something that belongs to you.”
“Where will you sleep?”
I freeze with the spoon halfway to my mouth, then force myself to finish, chew, swallow, then speak. “I planned to sleep next to you.”
“Oh.”
I set down my spoon and sip from the glass of ice water. Then I force myself to offer, “I can move to the guest room across the hall if you prefer.”
She chews on the dry skin of her bottom lip, her gaze darting to the doorway, then back to my face. “Your bed is big.”
I nod.
“A whole person could f-fit between us.”
“Yes,” I agree.
“I’m used to s-sleeping in the same room with you,” she says.
“True.”
She scowls. “You stay. If you make me have sex, I’ll stab you when you sleep.”
Breathe. Fucking breathe, dickhead. “I would never hurt you like that. And if anyone else tried, I’d sharpen the knife and hold him for you.”
She eyes the gold band on my left hand. “I don’t have a ring.”
I can’t tell if that’s an accusation in her voice or merely curiosity.
“You lost them while you were gone. I’ll get you another set. I can have them here in an hour.” I’d have given her new rings weeks ago if I hadn’t worried it would upset her.
She shakes her head. “Don’t.”
I swallow my disappointment.
Her gaze drifts to the window, and she stares, unfocused and unmoving for long moments before she turns back to face me. “Where are the c-clothes I was wearing when you found me?”
“They’re bagged as evidence. My brother has them.”
“Why are they with him, not the cops?”
“The NYPD was on your case to start but lost jurisdiction when we realized you’d been kidnapped across state lines.
The FBI came in at the last moment, after we’d already found you.
You appeared to be attached to the dress.
I asked Henry to take it and called it ‘lost.’” What the hell difference did it make?
Once they found Markov’s home, and we had Sydney back, there was no need to use it as evidence of a crime.
Her DNA was all over that New Jersey basement.
“I want my r-red dress. That was it, right? Red.”
“Yes.” I stand, pull the phone from my pocket and call my brother. After a brief exchange, I hit End Call and put the phone away. “We’ll have it here tomorrow.”
I freeze when she reaches out with a single finger and traces the path of one of the black line-art tattoos on my forearm. The touch is so familiar, so craved, that an inadvertent shudder rolls through me.
She snatches her hand away.
“I don’t mind. These are your tattoos,” I say.
She frowns in confusion. “They’re your tattoos.”
I shake my head slightly. “Wait right there.”
I clear the dishes from the table, then move to a drawer in the kitchen island.
I find the opaque plastic box of “skin-safe” water-based markers right where I expect them to be.
The box is dinged up at the corners, and a few of the colors inside, an orangey-yellow and a violet, have been used enough that the logo is nearly rubbed off in places.
I click open the latch, place the markers on the table in front of Sydney, then sit across from her, stretching out both arms in offering. “Draw me like one of your French girls.”
Her gaze skims over my forearms, then, without a moment’s hesitation, she snatches up a purple marker, the orangey-yellow one, and the violet.
She pops off the cap on the violet marker and goes straight to work, unerringly finding the inked outline of a primrose just beneath the inner bend of my right elbow.
From the moment I brought her home, I’ve been here. Holding her. Bathing her. Dressing her. And yet, for all that I’ve touched her, she hasn’t touched me. Not while she was conscious and thinking clearly, at any rate. Until today.
This isn’t even skin on skin. It’s the stroke of the brush tip of her violet marker gliding against me like a kiss.
At one point in our past, this was a fun little game. She got a kick out of changing the colors to coordinate with her outfit. And I wore her mark like the badge of honor it was.
Today, it’s a ritual of intimacy. She’s claiming her territory in a way the ring on my finger doesn’t. Because the woman who put that piece of gold on me isn’t here.
“The color will wash away, but that makes it b-better. It means I can do it a-again tomorrow.”
I take a shuddering breath. Planning tomorrow with me is even bigger than remembering yesterday. “You can color them every day if you like.”
Her hand shakes, and her primrose doesn’t stay completely in the lines, but it looks good, blending from orangey-yellow to violet to purple so deep and velvety, it’s nearly black. Only then does she select a green marker and move on to fill in a vine.
It’s the wrong shade, one she’d jokingly named “Baby-Poop Green” in the past, and more than once claimed she was going to throw away as a favor to humanity.
She doesn’t falter or choose a different shade.
Maybe she never hated it at all and found it funny to banter with me.
Or maybe she’s changed so much that even the colors she likes are different.
My brows pull together, grief written on my heart as clearly as the ink on my arms.
Partway through, she glances up at my face, then goes still, the brush tip pressed to my skin, but no longer moving. Her eyes grow wide. “I’m hurting you.”
I shake my head in mute denial.
She tightens her fingers on the marker, then dips her chin toward my arms. “Those . . . are my tattoos.”