The music starts to play again, a soft violin that is moody, almost sultry, and I wonder how I know what a violin is when I can’t remember my own name. A roar starts around me and the machine begins some kind of swirling motion. I squeeze my eyes shut. The volume of the music is louder now, the violin playing faster, the notes fierce and defiant, and suddenly I’m running down a cobblestone road, darkness cloaking me, my heart racing, fear in my chest. I have to get away. I have to escape. I look over my shoulder and try desperately to see who’s after me, but there’s only darkness and then a hard thud to my shoulders that makes me gasp, pain splintering upward into my skull.
I sink to my knees and tell myself to get up. Get up! But the pain, oh, the pain is so intense. I feel myself falling, my hands catching the pavement, rocks digging into my palms before my cheek is there too. And then there is blackness. Black, inky nothing. Time ticks and ticks, the pain radiating in my skull, until I’m suddenly on my back and blinking up into pale blue eyes, but I can’t focus. Then everything goes black again.
two
I blink, and once again I’m staring into pale blue eyes. “Kayden?”
His lips curve, and those eyes of his, which have a way of stealing right into the emptiness of my mind, light with satisfaction. “You remember me. Progress. The last two times that you woke up, you didn’t know my name.”
“What last two times?” I try to focus, to remember anything but him. “The MRI machine—”
“You had a panic attack inside it, and they had to sedate you.”
My brow furrows, and I flash back to the violin playing in my ears. “No. I was fine, just cold and sick to my stomach.”
“Until you weren’t fine anymore,” he says, running his hand over the dark shadow on his jaw that I don’t remember being there before. A bad feeling comes over me.
“How much time has passed?”
He glances at his watch again, and I’m relieved to remember it’s a Cartier, relieved by all things familiar. That is until he announces, “Thirty-six hours.”
Losing that much time is like a blow; my throat is suddenly so dry it’s sandpaper. “I need water.”
He stands and finds the pitcher, filling a cup for me. I try to sit, and he quickly abandons his efforts, gently shackling my arm, his touch electric, familiar in a way that no longer surprises me but still confuses me. “Let me lift the bed,” he offers, and I nod, allowing him to help me, the way I have so many times before, it seems, when really it hasn’t been that often at all.
The bed rises, and I settle against it while he reaches for the cup. He offers it to me, and this time when I accept it, and our hands and gazes collide, I don’t look away. I can’t look away. “Déjà vu,” I whisper, feeling the sensation clear to my soul.
“Yes,” he agrees. “Déjà vu.” While I could dismiss it as just that, I have this sense that there’s more to this moment than a simple repeat action.
I down the contents of the cup, drinking quickly before he can stop me, and when I’m done, he takes the cup from me. “More?”
“No, thank you.” I glance down, unnerved to realize my IV is gone. “It’s hard to comprehend that I woke up twice and don’t remember.”
“You not only woke up—the last time you were awake, you ate some soup and had a nurse help you shower.”
“Shower? Okay, I’m even more freaked out now. How can I not remember that? How bad is my head injury?”
“Your tests were all normal aside from the concussion, which is healing. Your back should be healing as well.”
I flex my shoulders and nod. “It feels better, and my head doesn’t hurt the way it did. But I’m not encouraged that I can’t remember the last two times I woke up.”
“It’s the drugs they gave you after you had the panic attack.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the second time you woke up and didn’t remember the first time, I was worried and asked.”
“Could my entire memory loss be the drugs?” I ask, hopefully.
His lips tighten. “No. Sorry. I asked the same as well.”
“Of course it’s not the drugs,” I say grimly. “That would be too easy a solution. At least I showered, I guess.”
“As did I,” he says. “I was afraid they’d kick me out if I didn’t.”
It’s then that I notice he’s now in a light blue T-shirt and faded jeans, which indicates, I assume, that he went home, changed, and made the decision to return here to me. “It’s been thirty-six hours since my test, and at least another eight before that, and you’re still here.”
“Yes. I’m still here.”