Chapter Two Mercy
Chapter Two
Mercy
Everything was dark.
Black and thick and endless. No stars. No sun. No moon. Was it nighttime?
Night was never like this. I didn’t like the dark. Why hadn’t I left a light on?
Couldn’t open my mouth to breathe. Couldn’t open my eyes.
I was pressed down. Trapped. Everything in my body was locked tight. I needed . . . I needed to be let out.
Let me out, I wanted to scream. Couldn’t anyone hear me?
There was beeping. Sharp and loud, and it hurt my ears.
The sudden urge to shove an axe through whatever was making that fucking noise made my brain tired.
“Open your eyes, darling. Please.”
I’m trying. Open them for me.
Couldn’t open my mouth either. Why couldn’t I open my mouth? There was something in my throat. It hurt.
The voice was still there. I liked that voice.
But sleep. I liked sleep more.
The dark was nice. I’d stay there.
Just a little bit longer.
When I was younger—middle school, maybe—I had the same dream over and over.
I was running, or trying to. Occasionally, someone was chasing me.
Sometimes I was lost and trying to find my way home, or to some unfamiliar place that was warm and welcoming and like no home I recognized.
But no matter what was behind me or in front of me, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my legs to work.
Lungs screaming, heart pumping, I’d move sluggish and slow, unable to get my legs to do what I wanted. It was like they were stuck in mud. Or something worse: freshly poured concrete up to my knees, not fully hardened, still allowing movement as I pushed and pushed and pushed.
Every time I had that dream, I must have made noise. Some frustrated sound that I couldn’t control, because Connor thought it was best to wake me up with jarring, loud noises.
I missed him.
I never thought I’d miss him when he pulled shit like that. Where’d he go, again?
When I was stuck in those nightmares, pulled out by the loud yell or the door he’d slam shut or the clap of his hands, I’d bolt upright. Gasping. Air locking in my throat before I sucked in a deep breath and let my senses come back to the present.
A dream. Not real. Also not really a dream.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
I wanted to move. Get up. Make my legs fly.
Beep.
Beep.
“Shut up,” I moaned.
Beep.
Beep.
“Turn it off. Please.”
My voice was quiet and muffled, thick cotton knotted around my vocal cords. The pain in my throat was sharp, an abrasive ache that didn’t go away when I forced a swallow.
There was a shuffling sound. A hand on mine as a woman spoke in a soft, unfamiliar voice. “Mercy, you’re in the hospital. Can you open your eyes for me, honey?”
Could I?
I tried. Tried again. The grayish, flickering light warmed, then brightened when I cracked them open. Too bright. I pinched them shut again. “Water,” I croaked.
A straw touched my lips. “Small sips, sweetheart.”
It was so cool, so perfect, I moaned when I swallowed once, and then twice. My throat was ravaged.
Another female voice came from farther away. “Is she awake?”
“Yeah, just. Can you go find him?”
“Of course.”
The straw moved away from my mouth. “What happened?”
“You were in a car accident. You’ve been here for about a week, so we’re very happy to see you awake.”
The monitors in the room beeped again, and I tried opening my eyes. The room was nondescript, bland artwork on the walls with swirls of neutral color that didn’t make much sense. Everything was tan and white and brown and boring.
Or maybe my brain was pea soup, because I had to blink a few times for the nurse’s face to come into view. God, had they packed sand behind my eyelids while I was out?
She was older than me, with deep tan skin and gray streaks in her black hair, which was braided off her face. “We’re going to get your husband. We forced him to take a break and get some food.”
My brow furrowed, no pain accompanying the pinched movement.
“I don’t . . . I don’t have a husband.” The beeping increased in speed, and the nurse turned toward the sound, watching the monitors with a neutral expression on her face. I spoke more forcefully. “I’m not married.”
She pressed a button, and the incessant dinging stopped. Thank God.
“You bumped your head pretty hard in your accident, so I’m going to ask you a few questions, okay, Mercy?”
I nodded and, for the first time, registered a dull ache at the base of my head. She watched the numbers on the monitor again, then switched her gaze back to my face.
“What’s your last name?”
“Kincaid.”
She watched my pupils, gesturing for me to watch the movement of her finger. “And do you remember what year it is?”
I licked my dry lips. “Um, 20—” I stopped to clear my throat. “2024.”
She made a small humming noise. “Do you recall the month?”
“N-no.”
Why couldn’t I remember the month? Everything was out of reach. I couldn’t swipe at a single solid memory, panic building to an icy peak in my chest.
I could remember the thin walls of my bedroom growing up. The stickers I put on my bed. I thought I’d get in trouble for it, but no one even noticed.
My brother bringing me ice cream when I was sick.
Mom yelling, telling me to get the fuck out of the house if I thought I was so much better than everyone.
High school graduation, when my brother broke every single rule and rang a fucking cowbell when they gave me my diploma. My college apartment. Sunday dinners with Connor.
Connor.
The ache in my head intensified, and I pinched my eyes shut. I remembered this.
Green grass. Hard stone. Bright-red flowers . . . I wondered who had left them there.
“May,” I whispered. “It’s May.”
That was the last thing I remembered. Sitting in the car and trying to bring myself to go closer to that ugly stone with the ugly words. But my legs . . . they were trapped then too.
She didn’t answer right away, and the pain at the back of my head intensified.
My eyes met hers. “Is that right?”
Her smile was gentle. “Let’s wait until the doctor comes in to examine you, all right?”
My thoughts were muddy. Nonsensical. No doubt my blood pressure was through the fucking roof.
She had my name right, but I wasn’t married.
I’d fucking remember getting married. My thumb brushed along the underside of the fourth finger on my left hand.
No ring. But then it froze. There was a divot in the skin that hadn’t been there before.
I lifted my hand, fingers visibly shaking as they came into view.
“There’s a tan line on my hand,” I said. My voice was shaking too. The nurse looked concerned, but the kind of concern that she was trying to hide. “It . . . it is 2024, right?”
She pulled in a slow breath through her nose, eyes gentling as she exhaled. Before a single word came out of her mouth, a knot wrenched tight in my stomach. “It’s April 2025, honey.”
“What?”
The horrified whisper didn’t even sound like it belonged to me. Like someone had ripped out my vocal cords and used them for dramatic effect. A sudden image of Ursula cackling as she absorbed a little ball of light that belonged to someone else flashed through my brain.
Couldn’t remember the last year of my life, but the trauma of The Little Mermaid was burned into my subconscious.
The nurse opened her mouth to say something, but the sound of heavy footsteps pounding down the hallway made her pause. She flew to the doorway, a blur of dark hair and pink scrubs and only the slightest pinch in her brow.
Whoever ran down the hallway stopped outside my room.
My thumb worried the edge of the divot in my skin. The one I didn’t remember.
Not the ring that might have made it.
Not who gave it to me.
Not anything.
“Oh God,” I groaned.
Then I heard his voice. “I beg your pardon, I’m going to see my wife.” A pause, just as my stomach damn near lurched through my throat. No. No, this was . . . this was not happening. The quiet murmuring of the nurse’s voice. A sharp inhale. “She what?”
My hands started tingling first. Breath coming in choppy, harsh pants. And the galloping rhythm of my heart was going to break that fucking machine.
Someone should call a code. You know, the really important kind that brought the entire emergency medical staff running to my side. Code Red or Code Blue or whatever code meant I was about to pass the fuck out.
I knew that voice.
I’d heard it for years.
But never like this. Never loud or frustrated. Always cultured and refined and so damn snooty I’d dreamed of slapping the shit out of him with alarming frequency.
My fingers were shaking again, and I stared down at my hand, fighting a terrified scream that I barely kept trapped in my throat.
What was I missing on that hand?
Was it big? It probably was. Big and expensive.
The nurse came into the room first, her eyes gentle and her face smooth. God, she was good. There was no sign of worry or concern, and her demeanor eased the pinch of panic around my ribs.
Only for a moment, though.
Because he walked in next.
The last time I saw Grant Hastings—at my brother’s funeral last year—I told him to get the fuck out of my face before I broke his perfect British-rich-boy nose. As a general rule, I didn’t walk around threatening people, but something about Grant was just so very punchable.
Grief and I did not get along. I much preferred to shove those feelings away if I could help it. But it didn’t make me violent.
In the moment, he did as I’d asked. Without a word. Without argument. And not a single ounce of judgment.
He’d stayed stone faced, even though he’d probably been struggling just as much as I was. It was his best friend being buried that day. Then again, he was always stone faced. I once told Connor that if Grant tried to smile or laugh or, God forbid, have fun, he’d burst into flames.
You don’t know him, he’d said.
Oh, I knew him. Even though . . . even though now, he wasn’t stone faced.
He was dressed perfectly enough—clothes tailored specifically for his tall, broad frame.
His dark hair was combed back from his aristocratic face.
Even with the harsh lighting in the hospital room, the angles of his jaw and cheeks and nose were sharp and defined and painfully handsome.
Only the purple smudges under his eyes gave him away.
Those eyes—icy gray, sharp, and cold. I’d never been able to read a thing in his eyes. Today, though, they held a manic edge, something he couldn’t mask immediately. He’d never looked at me like that.
I sucked in a sharp breath, pressing back in my hospital bed. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The nurse spoke up, but she kept her sharp gaze on the man standing just inside the doorway, the one staring at me like I might up and disappear. “Let’s all take a moment, shall we? She just woke up and she’s a little disoriented, which is completely understandable.”
“No,” I said. “No, I want to know why he’s here. He’s not my emergency contact. He doesn’t even like me.” My voice cracked on the last word, which seriously undermined my righteous indignation.
Grant clenched his jaw, the muscle feathering as his eyes shuttered in a blank expression.
There. There was the man I was used to.
Closed off. Cold.
“Where else would I be?” The deep tone of his voice, the way he curled his accent around the words, lifted the hair on my arms. Then my brother’s best friend, the arrogant asshole who got under my skin like no one I’d ever met, opened his mouth and spoke again. “You are my wife.”