“I might be a killer. You sure you want to keep me around?”
“You are not a killer.”
“I know what I remember.”
“Which isn’t killing someone, unless you’ve remembered something you haven’t told me.”
“No. No, I haven’t, but Kayden—”
“You aren’t a killer, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t kill him. Surviving is human nature.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, and an image of me naked and tied to that bed flickers in my mind. “I was trying to survive.”
His finger slides under my chin and I look at him. “Can you talk about it?” he prods softly.
My chest tightens again and I roll to my back, facing the ceiling. “I know I lost my passport and money. I met him and I have no idea where or how. I just remember he let me stay with him. He gave me my own room and I ended up in his.”
“I do not like how familiar that sounds.”
I roll to face him again, curling my fingers at his jaw. “It’s not. I mean, it is, but different. You’re different. What is between us, whatever it is, isn’t like what I had with him. I’m not infatuated with you and you don’t treat me like you’re on a pedestal looking down on me or that I’m your subject who should be so very pleased to have your good graces. You’re real in a way he never was, and I know that I’m real with you in a way I couldn’t be with him. Maybe . . . I’m able to be real because I don’t know what to hide.”
“We all hide from things.”
“Including you?”
“Yes. Including me.” I want him to go on, to explain the torment I sense in him, but he doesn’t. He draws my hand in his and asks, “When I turned your back to me, you had a flashback. What was it?”
I press my hand to my face, the demons of my past clawing at my mind.
“If you don’t want to tell me—”
“I do,” I say, dropping my hand to look at him. “He wins if I hide from this. And he can’t win.” I draw in a breath for courage. “He started out like a Prince Charming, until he wasn’t. You know he offered me a place to stay. I thought it was a fairy tale. But I remember the day it changed. I went out when he told me not to. When he returned home he was displeased. He stripped me naked and tied me to the bed and just left me there for hours. When we were . . . when you turned me around, I remembered another time when he turned me around and tied my hands behind my back.”
He drags me closer, his leg twining with mine. “I’m sorry,” he says, his hand slipping under my hair, at my neck. “I won’t—”
“Don’t say you won’t. Please. He wins again if you treat me like a delicate flower. And you’ll make me feel like I can’t tell you what I remember. You have to be you with me. That’s what I respond to. That’s what feels right. I mean, assuming you want—”
“I do. Very much, Ella. I think you know that, and I won’t coddle you, but you have to promise me you’ll tell me if I hit a trigger.”
“I did tonight. I will. I promise. Kayden, when he tied me up, he said it was punishment for not listening to him, but also said that he is very powerful and that his enemies would kill me because I was his. He sounds like Niccolo, doesn’t he?”
“There are many men who have money and power. Just know this. Whoever he is, he’s not ever going to touch you again. You have my word.”
For just a moment I’m back in that alleyway, and he’s leaning over me, the only good thing in the midst of the pain, with his spicy raw scent and those blue eyes. Don’t leave me, I’d whispered.
“I remember you that night in the alleyway,” I whisper.
“What about that night?”
“I begged you not to leave me. You promised you wouldn’t.”
“Yes. You did, and I did.” He brushes hair from my eyes, the touch tender. “And won’t. We’ll figure this all out together.”
“I may never get to be Ella again.”
“You are Ella.”
“Ella lived in San Francisco, and I fear I will never fully remember her unless I return. But more so, I fear returning and putting others, like my friend Sara, in danger.”