3. Nick #2
“I don’t want to hear it because it’s not true.”
“Your name is Laura Knight. Your brother’s name is Liam. You were born in—”
“Stop.” The word comes out sharp enough to cut glass. “Stop saying that. I don’t have a brother. I don’t know anyone named Liam. My name is Ivy, and the people who raised me—”
“Kidnapped you.”
“Saved me.”
“That’s what they told you.” It isn’t easy to keep myself from snapping. “They told you a lot of things, and you had no reason not to believe them. So you did. But I’m telling you, Laura—”
“My name is Ivy.”
“I’m telling you, the story they gave you was a lie.
You weren’t rescued. You were taken from a family who loved you.
You were in an explosion on a boat, and they pulled you out of the water.
Instead of bringing you home, they kept you.
They gave you a new name, and they turned you into something they could use. ”
Her jaw is clenched tight enough that I can see muscles jumping under her skin.
Her free hand grips the sheet, her knuckles white.
She isn’t looking at me anymore. She’s staring at the ceiling, breathing through her nose.
From across the room, I can see the war happening behind her eyes.
The part of her that wants to dismiss everything I’ve said fights with the part of her that can’t, because somewhere deep down inside, she knows something doesn’t add up.
“You’re lying,” she decides. But the conviction isn’t there. Not the way it was two nights ago. Back then, she was sure of herself. Now, she’s holding on to that certainty like it’s a fraying rope.
I could push harder. Lay out every detail I know. Every piece of evidence, every gap in the story they fed her. But I’ve been around enough people who’ve had the rug pulled out from under them to know pushing too hard, too fast, doesn’t break through walls. It only makes them thicker.
So I let it go for now. “Okay,” I murmur.
She blinks, turning her head to look at me. Her eyes are bright with suspicion. “Okay?”
“Okay. You don’t want to hear it, so I’ll stop. For now.” When I stand, the movement pulls at my stitches. I don’t let it show. “You’ve been unconscious for a couple of hours. You need to eat.”
Immediately, as I’m uncovering the plates, the smell of beef and fried potatoes hits the room. She watches me with narrowed eyes. “I’m not eating anything you give me.”
“It’s from room service. I didn’t fuck with it, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I set one of the plates on the bedside table, within reach of her free hand, along with a glass of water. I add the little cup of mayonnaise, pretending it’s an afterthought, before sitting down with my own plate.
At first, she doesn’t touch it, settling for staring at it. “Eat,” I urge.
“You first.”
I look at her. She raises an eyebrow.
Fair enough. If I was in her position, I would do the same thing. That’s why I reach out, grab her burger, and take a bite. I snag one of her fries, too. It’s crisp, salty.
“Good enough?” I don’t wait for an answer, returning to my chair so I can eat my own food.
She still waits at least a solid minute, expecting me to keel over. When I don’t, she picks up the burger and takes a small bite. Then another. Then another, faster now, because her body needs fuel whether or not her pride likes it.
But it’s when she picks up a fry and drags it through the mayonnaise that I see something move across her face. There it is. What I was looking for. Something deep in her brain just fired. A connection she can’t name. Familiarity that doesn’t belong to the life she thinks she’s lived.
“You always loved mayo with your fries,” I tell her.
She freezes, except for her eyes, which snap to mine. For the first time since I met this version of her, I see something that looks like genuine surprise. She didn’t expect that. For me to know something so specific and real.
“Lucky guess.” But her voice is thin.
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself.” I eat one of my own fries, talking as I chew. “I always thought it was disgusting, which used to crack you up.”
She covers her surprise quickly, but she’s not fast enough. I saw it, and she knows I did. “It doesn’t prove anything,” she mutters.
“I know.”
She doesn’t respond, choosing to eat instead. I let the silence between us do the work. Her story is starting to crack. That’s enough.
When the plates are empty, she looks at me with something that’s not quite hostility anymore. Still guarded, still wary, but the sharpness has dulled a little.
Or maybe I’m only imagining it, because that’s what I want to be true.
“I need to use the bathroom,” she announces.
I study her for a second. It’s a calculated risk, and I’m sure we both know it. But I can’t keep her cuffed to the bed indefinitely without letting her use the bathroom. “I’ll uncuff you. The bathroom door stays open.”
“Absolutely not,” she fires back.
“It stays cracked, then.”
Her jaw tightens, but she nods once. I take the key from my pocket and unlock the cuff. There’s a red line where the metal sat against her skin, and she rubs it now. The sight makes my stomach clench.
When she stands, it’s in one fluid motion. No lingering effects from the sedative. It’s not lost on me that she’s already back to full capacity.
She doesn’t look at me on her way to the bathroom. She does, however, leave the door open just enough to technically satisfy our agreement. I hear water running. The toilet flushing. More water.
Then the door swings open all at once, and she comes out fast, her arm extended, her finger jammed on the nozzle of a can of deodorant I left on the bathroom counter.
The spray hits me straight in the eyes.
My eyes slam shut on reflex, but it’s too late. The pain is instant and blinding. Tears stream down my cheeks as I reach for her on pure instinct. Her boot connects with my left thigh—right where the bullet went through, right against the stitches—and the world goes white.
I buckle. My knee hits the floor, and I hear myself make a sound somewhere between a grunt and a roar. She’s already moving, going for the desk, for her weapons. If she reaches them, this is over.
I force my eyes open. Everything is a blurred, watery mess, but I can see enough.
The shape of her lunging for the gun gets me off my good leg so I can hit her at the waist. We go down together, hard, knocking the desk chair sideways when we crash against it.
She fights me like a cornered animal, all elbows and knees, the heel of her palm aimed at my throat.
She’s vicious. She’s efficient. She’s been trained to kill, and she’s trying like hell now.
But I’m bigger, and size matters. In pain or not, blind or not, I’ve been fighting since I could walk, and I outweigh her by eighty pounds.
I pin her wrist to the floor, throw my weight across her hips to stop her legs, and use my forearm across her collarbone to hold her down.
Her teeth are bared as she bucks and twists underneath me.
For a second, I think she’s actually going to bite me.
“Stop,” I urge through gritted teeth. My thigh is on fire, and I can feel wetness soaking through the bandage, meaning she’s popped at least a couple of stitches. “Stop fighting, goddammit.”
“Get off me,” she snarls, bucking her hips.
“Not until you stop.”
She thrashes one more time, hard enough to almost throw me off, then goes still. She isn’t calm—every muscle in her body is coiled and ready to strike the moment I let her up—but she’s still. Waiting like a snake, ready to strike.
“I will let you up,” I agree, “if you stop trying to kill me.”
“No promises.”
In spite of the burning eyes and the bleeding leg, and the fact that I’m pinning down a trained assassin who would very much like to end my life, I almost laugh. The response is so Laura. Defiant to the bone, even when she’s obviously outmatched.
I walk her back to the bed, where the handcuff dangles nearby.
It takes a few seconds of calculation, but I figure it out, letting my weight do the work of pinning her to the floor while I use both hands to cuff her wrist again.
Only then do I let her up. She sits on the bed with her back to the wall, her cuffed wrist resting in her lap, watching me limp to the bathroom to rinse my eyes and check the damage to my leg.
Two of the stitches tore. It’s not ideal, but it’s not a catastrophe either. I clean the wound, retape it, and rinse my eyes roughly a hundred times before they finally feel somewhat normal again. One look in the mirror shows how bloodshot and swollen they are. I’m going to feel that for a while.
When I come back out, she’s where I left her, still watching me. Her expression has changed. There’s less fury to it now, more of something I can’t quite read. Maybe it’s respect. Maybe it’s the grudging acknowledgment that I can take a hit and keep swinging.
“You fight dirty,” I tell her.
“I fight to win.”
“Fair enough.” I bite back a wince as I lower myself into the chair, and I look at her. She looks back. The silence between us is thick and electric. It feels like we’re back in our first encounter, waiting for the other to make a move.
“So,” she finally says. “What now?”
I hold her gaze. My eyes are still burning.
My leg is throbbing. I’m tired as hell, I’m bleeding again, and I’m sitting across from a woman who’s tried to kill me twice in the space of three days.
She’s a woman I’ve loved for almost half my life.
A woman who doesn’t remember what we were to each other.
There’s only one answer to her question.
“I’m taking you home.”