"Twenty-six," she told him. Then immediately wondered if it was twenty-seven. "But I wouldn't know about the skittish part."
He nodded slowly. "It's not that you're afraid to stand up to her," he said. "In fact, today you seemed to be forcibly restraining yourself from it."
Kira tipped her head to one side. "You're pretty insightful."
He shrugged. “Have to be, in my job.”
“Yeah, I imagine so.” She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The sun beamed down, the breeze blew, the traffic moved below, and she became acutely aware that she had utterly nothing to do, nowhere to be, no one to answer to for the next hour. For the first time in what felt like days, she breathed deeply, fully, slowly. "This feels really good," she admitted.
"Enjoy it, then."
He didn't make a sound to intrude on her. Just let her sit there as the sun's heat and a foreign sense of peace seemed to make her muscles unclench, one by one, Her body softened, her mind eased. At some point, she heard footsteps and the crinkle of paper and something being set on the table. She smelled fresh bread and pickles.
When she got around to it, she opened her eyes to find Marshall leaning back in his chair across from her, his gaze fixed on her face. She wondered if he'd been looking at her like that the entire time, and got the feeling he had.
"Food's here," he said. But he didn't look away.
She did, focusing instead on the two white paper-wrapped meals that sat in front of them. She unwrapped a paper plate that held a giant sandwich beside a spear-shaped pickle. There were also two miniature bags of potato chips and two bottles of Coke. Her stomach growled again.
"You eat up here every day?" she asked, not a bit embarrassed by the noisy belly.
"Every day I’ve been here, unless it's raining," he said. "And sometimes even then."
"I don't blame you. It's nice."
He nodded, still watching her. When she looked back at him, he finally broke the intense gaze and unwrapped his sandwich.
They ate for a while, neither one speaking. Then finally, when he’d finished, he said, "So why don't you tell me when you decided to let your mother run your life?"
She smiled and popped the last bit of her pickle into her mouth, then licked her fingers. "Right after I screwed it up so bad I almost lost it," she said. Then she shrugged. "I was hurt in a…an accident. It took time to recover. I needed her. And hell, she's doing a much better job than I must’ve been doing. At least, I assume she is."
He frowned. "Details?"
She wiped her mouth with her napkin, shrugged her shoulders. "Sure. Why not?" Then she leaned forward, reached out to clasp his hand in hers, and hesitated for a moment at the warm static that shot up her arm at the contact. But she quickly shook it off and drew his hand to the back of her head, pressed his palm there. "Feel that?"
"I sure do."
Something in his voice made her lift her eyes, and she realized they were leaning close, face-to-face over the table, in a posture that suggested they might be about to kiss. Her eyes locked with his very briefly, but she quickly closed them and drew away a little. "I meant the bumpy little ridge in my head."
"I know. Sorry, I was being a smartass. Yeah, I feel it." His fingers moved in her hair, either tracing the outline left by the surgery, or gently massaging her scalp. She wasn't sure which.
"There's a steel plate in there. Seems to be the result of me running my life my way. It's been a long, slow recovery. Mom kind of took over. So far, I don't know, I'm just not compelled to take the responsibility back, you know?"
"You're scared."
She nodded. "Maybe I am."
He was still running his fingers over her head, and it was a little more than an exploration. The injury didn't even hurt much anymore. Hadn't, since the explosion that had nearly killed her. At least, not since she'd regained consciousness. Most people acted slightly repulsed if they happened to touch the place where her fractured skull had been patched back together. She'd stopped feeling hurt or angry over that a long time ago. It didn't do any good to get your skirt in a twist over what was basically a knee-jerk reaction.
He didn't act repulsed though. Instead, he slid his fingers along the side of her head, then lower, until his palm rested on the curve of her neck. He stopped there, his fingers caressing, a very brief stroke against her skin that left her shivering, then took his hand away.
"You want me to feel anything else?" He sent her a playful wink that almost seemed familiar.
For a moment, she chased that feeling around her mind like a dog chasing a butterfly, but she couldn’t catch hold of it. "The um…the rest of me is still pretty much intact," she said.
He shrugged. "So?"
Her lips pulled into a smile. "You're kinda cute, Marshall."
"Hell, it's about time you noticed. So, are you gonna tell me how that happened?"
"Nope." She picked up her soft drink and started for the stair door. "Maybe another time, though."
"I'll hold you to it."
"You do that." She had reached the door and she looked back over her shoulder, expecting him to argue about driving her home.
It surprised her that he didn’t. "Thanks for this, Marshall. I needed a break more than I knew."
"Any time, Kira. Any time at all."
Chapter 3
Kira walked through her mother’s home like a tourist walking through a museum. Her mother was out—tending to yet another last-minute preparation for her impending wedding. She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the fact that it was actually going to happen tomorrow. She’d been waiting, expecting to rediscover her feelings for her husband-to-be, but she felt nothing.
Nothing.
Like she’d been hollowed out. Emptied.
Except that day with Marshall, on the rooftop garden eating deli sandwiches. That day she’d felt… good. Alive.
And ever since that day, she’d been searching for something that would make her feel that way again. And yet…nothing. And now it was almost too late.
So she walked, and she looked. She looked at photos of a past she didn’t remember, and a father she’d never grieved. Everyone said they’d been close. That losing him must’ve been devastating to her. But it wasn’t, because she didn’t remember.
She hated not remembering, and stopped to stare at her reflection in an ornate mirror. She had mink brown hair, long and smooth and pulled back into a twist. Her face looked natural, her makeup subtle, barely noticeable.
And then in a flash there was a different face staring back from that mirror. Short, darker hair with crimson streaks and spikey bangs and thick black eyeliner.
Kira backed up a step, and her reflection leaned right out of the glass. “Remember, damn you!”
She jumped and gasped so hard it hurt.
“Kira? You okay?”
It was Anita, the housekeeper, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the mirror for a second. Her ordinary reflection stared back. Nothing unusual at all.
But it felt so real.
Anita’s hand fell onto her shoulder. “Kira?”
Blinking, she nodded, turning away from the mirror. “Anita, where did I live?”
“Live?”
“Yeah. Before. When I first came here from the hospital, I remember Mother saying she’d had someone pack up my things and bring them here.”
“Yes. I oversaw that for her. Everything is in the attic.”
“Right, I know.” And she still hadn’t found the courage to go through it. “But I never asked where they were bringing them from. Where did I live?”
Anita studied her as if she was looking for something. “Have you started having memories?”
Her mirror image flashed in her mind again. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, you had an apartment. A nice one. I can jot down the address for you if you want. Though…I’m not sure going there would be a great idea. The doctors think you should let the memories come when your mind is ready for them. They said you sh
ouldn’t try to force it.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know, but it’s been six months, and that approach isn’t working out so well. Unless you count the bad-ass bitch who just barked at me from the mirror.” She cast a wary look at said mirror, gave a shudder, and decided not to look that way anymore. “I’m tired. I think I’ll just go lie down.”
“That seems like a good idea,” Anita said.
She started for the stairs, then paused and turned. “Were you our housekeeper before my… accident?”
Anita shook her head. “No. No, I was hired right after.”
“Oh.” Kira heaved a sigh. She’d thought she might pick Anita’s memory, maybe learn something about herself. “Okay, never mind.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be more help, Kira. I really am.”
She sounded more sorry than was logical, though. “It’s okay. Look, don’t mention this to my mother. Or the mirror thing or…anything. Okay?”
“Of course I won’t.”
Nodding, Kira headed up the stairs to her room.
#
The day became night, but Kira didn't sleep. At 2:35 a.m. she wasn't even feeling a little bit bleary-eyed. Tomorrow she was supposed to marry a stranger. She was expected to marry him. Everyone told her she’d been madly in love with him before a random act of violence had blasted her past from her brain while celebrating their engagement with a trip to Africa.
But she didn’t remember it.
However, she no longer felt hollow or emotionless. Tonight, she was at the edge of panic. Something, something deep inside, was screaming to be heard. And she knew intuitively that the voice trying to get her attention was her own. The Kira of the past, the one she used to be. But that one’s voice was garbled and incomprehensible.
She walked barefoot out of her bedroom and into the hall, down the broad curving staircase and through the house to the very back, then out through the little door that was almost hidden there. She crossed the flagstone patio and stepped onto a matching footpath that wound amid neatly-trimmed rose of Sharon, every shrub higher than her head. It created a tunnel-like walkway that led to the garden. That was where the ceremony was to be held. There, in front of the koi pond, with its fountain providing a spectacular backdrop. The photos, her mother kept saying, would be amazing.
She walked along the path, inhaling the aroma of the blossoms, trying to imagine herself walking this same path tomorrow, dressed in the traditional bridal gown her mother had picked out with its long train and multilayered veil, instead of the one she herself had liked: short, white, with spaghetti straps and crisscrossing ribbon at the bodice that made it look more like an antique undergarment than an actual dress. She'd called it “white goth.” Her mother had called it an eyesore.
Whatever. It didn't matter. She didn't really know which one she would have liked better anyway. She didn't have a preference. She didn't care.
She barely felt anything anymore, aside from the panicky sensation that was all knotted up in her middle. She couldn't remember what it was like to experience real feelings—giddy joy, crushing heartache, bubbling excitement. She saw other people expressing those emotions from time to time and just watched them, rapt and wondering what that must be like, or whether they were just faking it like she had to do.
She wasn't excited about the wedding, but she wasn't nervous about it either. It was what her mother told her she'd been planning. What everyone seemed to expect. And since she had no personal preference anymore about much of anything, the easiest thing to do was comply.
At least, that had seemed like the easiest thing to do.
But for the past few days, it had begun feeling more and more like an impossible thing to do.
Walking slowly through the flowery tunnel, she emerged in the circular garden, with its fountain at the center. The sky above was clear and glittering with stars. No moon tonight. The darkness didn’t frighten her; The person inside her, suddenly clamoring to get out, terrified her. There was a part of her that wondered if it might be better not to remember. To just start from here and move forward, into a new life with an adoring husband who wanted to marry her despite that she had no memory of him or her feelings for him.
Quit being a freaking coward and remember!
She spun, because it had felt for all the world as if that scary face from the mirror was right behind her, shouting into her ear. But there was no one there.
“Leave me alone,” she whispered. “You’re not real.”
A twig snapped behind her.
That was real, the foreign voice said.
Her body pivoted, and one arm rose in a boxer’s defensive stance, while the other fist jabbed and connected with something, someone.
He went down hard onto his back and the next thing she knew, she was straddling his chest, her knees on the ground on either side of him, her hands pinning his wrists to a stepping stone above his head.
He blinked up at her, something strange in his eyes as they held hers in the darkness. "Kira?"
Something took over. Something alien, foreign. As if she was riding along inside her own body, watching the scene play out through her own eyes, but not in control of it. She was leaning lower, pressing her mouth to his. He tugged his hands, as if he wanted her to let them go, but she pressed them soundly onto the cold stone again and kissed him until she felt him start to shake, heard him moan, felt his hips arching into her.
He tasted good. She wanted more.
What the hell was she doing?
She jerked her mouth from his and looked down at him, stunned to her marrow. Beneath her was her wedding planner!
"Marshall? Oh, God. Oh, God." She blinked, unable to hold his gaze as she scrambled off him, and then she just stood, covering her burning face with her hands, shaking all over like someone freezing to death instead of someone whose body was suddenly and completely on fire.
Alive. She felt alive. Every cell was wide awake and yearning. Her heart pounded in her chest and her skin tingled and begged to be touched. "I'm sorry," she muttered.
"I'm not."
He got to his feet, stood close, and closed his hands on her shoulders. She forced herself to look up at him.
He was smiling. "It's really okay."
"It's not! I hit you.” She looked at her fist as if she’d never seen it before. Her knuckles were red and they hurt. “And then I—"
"You didn't hurt me. And uh...the rest was my pleasure."
She lowered her head, but he squeezed her shoulders. "I don’t know what came over me. It felt as if someone else was piloting my body… or something.”
“I said it’s okay.”
“How is it okay? I’m supposed to be getting married tomorrow. Today.” She closed her eyes, hugging herself. “This is just so… unlike me."
"How do you know?"
She looked up sharply. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He didn't avert his eyes; instead, he used them to probe hers in the darkness. "I know you have some... some memory loss."
She sighed. "My mother told you about that?”
He lowered his head a little.
“I'm surprised. She usually doesn't bring it up." She rubbed her arms and realized she was wearing only a thin cotton nightgown, white with pink roses. Her mother had picked it out. "What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?" Anything to change the subject, she thought.
"Just a last-minute check. We want everything to go smoothly tomorrow, right?"
The reminder of her impending wedding day felt like an unwelcome intruder into a private moment. She thought she should have felt guilty. Oddly, she felt more angry. What kind of woman allowed herself be caught up in the current of other people’s will and carried to her destiny by tides over which she had no control? Why hadn’t she stood up for herself? Who the hell could honestly expect her to marry a man she didn’t even remember? Who would try to push her into getting married to anyone when she didn’t even know who she was?
Now we’re getting some
where. About freaking time, too.
She lowered her head, closed her eyes against the voice of the stranger. Only, she was no stranger, was she? "I've gotta go inside."
"Tell me what happened to you, Kira."
She stopped walking, turned slowly to face him. "Not so much to tell. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was an explosion."
He nodded slowly. "Where was the wrong place?"
"A village in Africa. Peter and I were both there, and so was my father. I was working for an aid organization. I'm still not clear why my father was there. Peter… had some kind of business connection. Anyway, we were in a crowded village market when a bomb went off."
"I see."
She shrugged. "I don't. I don't remember anything, except waking up in a hospital a month later." She thinned her lips. "They told me my father was killed in the explosion."
He nodded slowly. "That must have been awful."
She shrugged. "It should have been. I just—I don't remember him. It's horrible of me, isn't it?"
"It's not like you can help it."
"Doesn't make me feel any better about it. At any rate, when I woke from the coma, I was as helpless as a toddler. My mother... she just took over. Brought me home, took care of me."
"It must have felt good, being taken care of like that."
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” She sighed heavily. "I’m better now. But I've kind of kept on letting her."
"Why?"
She shrugged a little. "Because I don't care. I don't care about anything. I mean, I didn’t. For the longest time."
"Maybe you do care. Maybe you just haven't remembered yet what it is you care about."
“Something’s… changing.” She lifted her eyes to his. “Something’s waking up inside me, and I should be jumping for joy that maybe it’s my true self. But instead I’m terrified.”
“Don’t be,” he said.
“But what if I don’t like her? The woman I was. What if I can’t be her anymore?”
“What if you can?” he said slowly. “What if it turns out you love every little thing about her?”
Blinking very slowly as those words penetrated her mind, she wondered if something like that was even possible.
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