Chapter Twenty-Six Reed
Chapter Twenty-Six
Reed
The quiet had been my idea, but after two hours of Hollis being alone in the bedroom and no updates from the team, the silence was officially deafening.
I poured two fingers of Buffalo Trace. It’d be enough to take the edge off, not enough to dull my guard. The bite scorched my throat, but it didn’t touch the storm in my head.
Footsteps padded across the hardwood, and I didn’t look up until Hollis was in front of me, plucking the glass from my hand. “The three-foot rule is on hold again.”
Here we go.
Ranger came in behind her and curled up in his doggy bed in the living room as Hollis raised the glass to her lips.
Her eyes held mine the whole time as she drank. When she lowered the bourbon, her voice was steady despite the slight tremble in her hand. “We have to talk to my family, don’t we? Tomorrow?”
She indulged in one more sip, and I tipped my head yes for an answer. I took the glass from her and finished it off, and turned around to add more.
Her short nails skimmed over my shirt and up my spine, and I slowly set down the glass and bottle. “Why are you touching me?” I squeezed my eyes shut, hating how a single scratch could light me up.
“I feel bad about earlier. I pushed you. It’s just . . .”
That didn’t explain why she was still touching me, causing my entire body to break out in chills. If all our arguments ended in back scratches, then I might have to . . . Nope, don’t go there.
“You’re probably right.” Those words would’ve had to be pried from her mouth in the past. “I’m focusing on us because that dream is all I have. Well, aside from movie trivia, I suppose. But I don’t have my memories, so I’m clinging to the one thing I do have.”
I kept still, not ready to move with her lightly scratching my back. Plus, if I turned around, she’d undoubtedly notice the bulge quickly forming in my jeans. Damn body, betraying me at every turn.
“I’m useless in helping you and your team, and it’s making me a little crazy that my own brain is the key to unlocking what the heck happened to me, and yet anytime I try to remember, I wind up .
. . well, going back to that dream,” she explained, her voice far more level than it’d been in her bedroom.
As for me, I was about to be no better than Ranger and let my tongue hang out, if she kept up with the back scratches.
“So I guess I keep focusing on that dream since that’s all that actually occupies my mind. If only I could remember even one other thing, we’d get closer to the answers.”
This was what I’d been trying to tell her two hours ago. Now there she was, admitting it, and I was standing here one back scratch away from telling her, Screw what I said, I was wrong. I don’t know jack shit.
“I, uh, can’t imagine how you feel,” I settled on instead, drawing my hands to the bar cart. “It has to be frustrating to not remember anything but me and those children that don’t exist.”
In another life, in another world, maybe they could.
All three of them. And I’d learn from the mistakes of my parents and do the opposite.
I’d help them with their homework. Teach them values.
Raise them to respect their mom and others.
Maybe teach them to shoot a firearm (or soccer, there was that, too).
“I’m sorry.” Two words I’d never heard my parents say to each other after a fight poured from my lips faster than I anticipated. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you earlier.”
I supposed I could be a better man in this reality, too. I opened my eyes, checked my crotch to ensure my erection had taken a chill pill, then pushed away from the bar cart to man up and face her.
“Not your fault. I broke your rules.”
“I broke them first by getting in bed with you,” I said roughly, keying in on her jawline and the throat I’d held the other day. What had I been thinking? “This whole situation is—”
“Confusing?”
I went stiff, doing my best to recalibrate, especially with her up in my personal space, smelling like my body wash.
“How can I help you get through this?” That was what I should have asked her in the bedroom. That should have been plan A.
“Distract me?” She angled her head toward the TV, fidgeting with the chain around her neck. “More Mad Men, or . . . well, do you have any other ideas for stress relief?”
Yeah, my body had other ideas, all right. I needed my head out of the gutter before my hard-on made a comeback.
I did my best to fake a tight-lipped smile, worried I was giving her American Psycho vibes with how off I was right now. Pulled in a hundred different directions with her at the center, tugging my strings. “I think it’d be best if Audrey distracted you, since I’m the one you need distracting from.”
She stayed quiet, and so did I, frozen in place. No vortex dragging me into the darkness this time. Just me, rooted in front of her, and my heart had the audacity to question my head, to wonder whether my path to redemption could ever include her.
She released her chain and wrapped her fingers around as much of my wrist as she could grab.
I should have walked backward. To hell with the bar cart there.
Let the bottles crash. That three-foot rule was needed because she was dragging me tighter into her orbit where there was no her or me, just us.
“Can I ask you something that hopefully won’t push your buttons?” Her words cracked through the unbearable tension.
“Is it personal?” I dropped my eyes to where her fingers pressed against my skin, the contact humming through me.
“Breaks your second rule, but I figured since we were breaking your first . . .”
I couldn’t believe it, but instead of getting upset, a legitimate smile stole over my lips. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” She really did have no control over her tongue, and it was taking all my restraint not to offer her some assistance and take control of it with my own.
“As established.” The side of her mouth lifted as she smoothed her thumb along my heated skin where she held me, piercing me with her intense stare. Seeing through my walls and to my soul. To the soul I’d worked so hard to get back after bartering it to the devil a decade ago.
Her dark lashes fell like a curtain, but I wasn’t ready for that to be the closing act. No, I needed an encore. For her to never stop looking at me like I was someone special to her.
“Go ahead, ask away,” I relented, my muscles tightening as I waited for the impact of her question.
She slowly opened her eyes. “I apparently chose to become this person, this warrior.” Her chin wobbled as she held back her emotions, as stubborn as me. “So I’m curious: Why’d you choose to be one? What led you down the road to wearing the uniform, serving others?”
“No choice.” I didn’t want her putting me up on some hero pedestal. “It was the only way.” I eased my wrist free of her grasp and sidestepped her, unable to look at her while I got through this. “I didn’t join for any righteous reason, I did it to escape.”
I rested my hands on my hips and hung my head, surprised I was about to tell her the truth, but there was no more dancing around the fact that at this point, I’d pretty much do anything for her.
I didn’t even recognize that until this very moment.
Those rules were made to be broken when it came to her.
She began touching my back again. Walking her fingers up and down my spine in a rhythmic way that I didn’t deserve. I needed to comfort her, not the other way around. And yet she kept pivoting back to my life, and I supposed it made sense seeing as though we couldn’t talk about hers.
“I dropped out of high school as soon as I was eighteen and joined the army. I couldn’t wait another semester.”
I was done with my mother’s meth addiction.
Done with my father beating the shit out of me.
I knew if I stayed, one day I’d hit him back.
At least he’d never set a hand on my mother. He’d be dead. I’d be in prison.
I kept that shit to myself. I didn’t need her feeling even worse for me.
“Got my GED in the military. I thought if I ran far enough, I could actually get away,” I finally finished.
“And did it work?”
“Yes and no.” I lifted my head, tipping my chin up, eyes shooting to the ceiling. “But at some point, I discovered all I was doing was running in place. Other side of the world, same demons chasing me. I stupidly thought I could outrun them, wound up only running headfirst into new problems.”
Instead of offering an apology or pity like I’d have hated, she hit me with something as unexpected as that pillow earlier. “You think we’re different? I actually think we’re alike.”
“Oh yeah? How so?”
She let her hand fall from my back, and the absence burned a hole in my heart.
“Sounds weird coming from someone who can’t remember her favorite color, but based on what I’ve learned about myself .
. . well, it seems to me I spent the last eight years trying to run away from who I was.
I couldn’t even tell Audrey the truth. I wanted to play pretend.
Escape. Maybe my mother was right about me. ”
Her words had me about-facing, unsure what to make of them or how to respond. A tear slid down her cheek, and I caught it with the pad of my thumb, exhaling a shaky breath in the process.
I need to end this conversation while I still can. “Audrey should come talk to you. It can’t be me.” For reasons we’d already discussed, and I had no plans to go back over them again.
“Any other ideas for a distraction, aside from Audrey?” she asked as Ranger ran over, offering an idea of his own—to pet him. She took a knee, rubbing his back.
Lucky dog. I looked around the room, not able to come up with anything that didn’t involve getting myself into trouble and crossing lines.
“Maybe the whole ‘remembering stuff organically’ isn’t what I need.” She tossed out partial air quotes with one hand. “Any chance you have some reading material for me? You know, so I can get better acquainted with myself.”
“What do you—”
“Texts.” She stood, and Ranger whimpered at the loss of her touch.
I looked at Ranger, fighting a smile. Yeah, I get that feeling. Trust me. I blinked, pulling my focus back to the woman we both wanted attention from. Only one of us should be getting it, though.
“Did we ever exchange any messages that I could read?”
A chill rolled down my spine, and I roped a hand around the base of my neck and squeezed as the tension ticked up. “Yes, and you’ll discover the truth.” Then maybe she’d finally stay three feet away from me and stop asking personal questions since I couldn’t stop violating my own rules.
“Which is?”
“That we don’t work.” The truth burned as I said it.
“We’re oil and vinegar.” I went into the kitchen, where I’d left my personal and work phones, deciding this was for the best. Maybe I should have thought of this before.
I had clear evidence I could provide her, proving her dream was pure fiction.
When I came back to her with both phones, she was already waiting for me with her hand open. I rattled off the six-digit code for both phones as I gave them to her.
“Eleven, twenty-five, twenty-one,” she repeated. “Trusting me with your password, are you?” She attempted to lighten the heavy load I’d literally dropped into her hands with a small smile.
“I have nothing to hide.” Not on the phones, at least. “I’ll be in the gym, finishing cleaning my weapons.” Unable to bear standing before her any longer, I started to leave, but of course she had to ask one more question, stopping me.
“Do those numbers have any significance? Sounds like a date.”
It was a date. November 25, 2021. But why’d she have to ask me about it?
I wasn’t a liar, but I also couldn’t give her the whole truth. The best I could manage was somewhere in between. I kept my back to her as I rasped, “Yeah, the date marks my reset point.”