Page 60 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8
My adrenaline spurs me, and I’m not thinking about anything but the fact that there’s an injured man who needs help.
I move the chair, and open the door. And my whole world falls apart.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dragos
IKNOW HER FACE.
It’s theonlything I know.
There are great black holes in my mind, spaces where I’m sure knowledge once was. Or maybe not. It’s blank. I have nothing but instinct, driving and intense. There’s danger; I’m certain of that. I’m injured and it was no accident. I’m certain of that too.
And her.
I’m certain of her.
In the tangle of gut response and blind, feral emotion, there is one image. One memory.
I remember the first time I ever saw her.
She is dressed in yellow, and she’s laughing. She’s like the sun.
Something in me changed that day that I saw her. I know that. The before and the after, though it is an impression inside me and not a series of images. I remember her, but I don’t remember my name.
I remember her, but I remember nothing else.
Her name is a vapor, escaping me, eluding me, just like my own.
My head is pounding. I feel blood dripping down my face.
I do know that this is not the first time I’ve been injured this gravely. I can’t recall how. Only that I’m sure I have been before. Guns and violence and near-death experiences fit me like the clothes I’m wearing.
“Dragos.”
She says that word. I don’t understand it. Her eyes are wide, and she’s fluttering around frantically. She’s not helping me, but she seems to know me.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
The room tilts, and I do my best not to tilt with it. One thing I know I’m not used to is struggling. I am used to a fight, but I am used to winning that fight with ease.
“I need to sit down,” I say.
She gestures to a chair that’s in an odd spot in the room.
“That is a strange place for a chair,” I say.
I know this, even though I don’t know how I know it. There are truths that exist inside of me, even if I’m not certain where I come by them.
“I’m sorry you don’t approve,” she says. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t… You don’t know?”
“I don’t know. I woke up bleeding. I… I felt like I needed to go upstairs.”
