Page 12 of The Same Backward as Forward
The target of my ire almost managed a smirk. “You’re the doctor. You tell me.”
“Nurse.” My correction was automatic.
“Mendax,” he replied. He gave it a moment, and then: “It’s Latin, forliar.” Pain slashed through his features, but he seemed dead set on ignoring it. “I appear to be the kind of person who recognizes lies when I hear them. You aren’t a nurse, not exactly.” He paused, breathing through the pain. “If I had to make an educated guess about the circumstances that brought me here—and it appears I’m the type to do that, too—I would say that I am most likely a horrible,horribleindividual and someone wanted me dead. Am I getting warm, not-nurse Hannah?”
“You don’t remember.” That was Jackson, coming to the same conclusion I had.
“Amnesia.” I said the word out loud and thought about his head wound. I’d been more focused on the burns, but maybe I shouldn’t have been.
“Tell me, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward: Are you the one who bashed my head in?” Toby tried to sit up.
My hands went automatically to his shoulders, skirting the burns. “I’m the one who’s going to,” I told him, “if you don’t lay back.”
He gave in to my command—or to the pain. His eyes went heavy-lidded, and for a moment, I thought he might pass out again, but no such luck.
“I don’t know who you or Too Much Beard over there are,”Toby said. “Hell, I don’t know whoIam. But I have the distinct feeling that I’m the kind of person who could bring your entire world crumbling down… just… like…that.”
He snapped his fingers without raising his hand off the bed.
You already did.I blinked back that thought—and every single memory that wanted to come.Kaylie, at five, sitting on a fence, wearing a bathing suit and a feather boa. At seven, walking on her hands. At seventeen, throwing an arm around my shoulder.
Toby Hawthorne hadalreadystolen the world from me, but that didn’t stop him from continuing. “So now would be a good time,” he said, every inch the billionaire’s son, “for someone to tell me what the hell is going on here.”
In that moment, I came to a decision: I didn’t want to think of him asToby Hawthorneanymore. He could beHarry, for all I cared. He could beno one, as long as I could find a way to look at him without thinking about what I had lost.
“What happened was that an explosion threw you off a cliff into the ocean.” I kept my tone detached. “Too Much Beardover there pulled you out of the water, and right now, the two of us are all you’ve got. So shut the hell up”—I reached for a bottle of pain medication—“and takethese.”
Dark green eyes opened wider once more and locked on the little white pills in my hand.
“Don’t mind if I do.” His lips curved slightly. “I think I might be fond of pills. But these…” He turned his head slowly to look at the bottle. “These, I seem to find disappointing.”
I bet you do.My eyes narrowed to slits as I thought about the kind of drugs this rich boy was probably used to taking.
“Do no harm,” I muttered to myself between clenched teeth. I brought the meds to his mouth. There was something that feltintentional about the way his lips brushed my palm as I fed them to him.
I wasn’t particularly gentle as I poured water down his throat. “Word to the wise, Harry,” I told him, my voice as close to emotionless as I could make it. “You might want to get used to being disappointed.”
Chapter 9
On day four, Jackson brought me coffee. I didn’t ask where he’d gotten it because I deeply suspected the tin of chocolate-brown grounds had been buried somewhere nearby. There were coffee filters in the med kit, which was about par for the course for Jackson’s organization scheme. He produced an ancient coffee pot from somewhere under the sink.
I still had no idea how he’d rigged this place up with running water, let alone electricity, but he had. I didn’t drink coffee, but I made it anyway, and when Jackson tossed a baggie of restaurant sugar packets onto the table, I accepted that offering, too.
Day by day and hour by hour, it was starting to look more likeHarrywould live. His burns were healing slowly, if at all, but there was no sign of infection yet. I was starting to suspect his head injury might have resulted in more than just amnesia, that there might be neurological damage that affected motor abilities in the lower half of his body. But his cognition was intact, and he was conscious at least some of the time. He could swallow and had only tempted my fury by refusing water once. He’d been in and out of lucidness, and the pain seemed to be getting worse, not better, but his vitals were strong.
Hewas.
“We can’t keep him here forever,” I told Jackson, my voice low as I dumped the sugar packets out onto the small table between us. The piece of paper from the pocket of my scrubs had long-since been worn to shreds by my folding. I needed something to occupy my hands.
“Keep him?” Jackson snorted. “Why the hell would we want to do that? Kid’s a real piece of work.”
That was one way of putting it. With or without his memory,Harry, as I continually tried to think of him, seemed to have retained the arrogance of his pedigree, the unspoken but bulletproof certainty that the world would form itself to his liking.
I wasn’t exactly prone to kissing rings.
“One of us is going to have to go into town for more supplies soon.” I kept my voice low, but if the object of my loathing woke up, he’d probably hear me all the same. The bunker was six hundred square feet total, if that.
“And bytown, I assume you mean some place other than Rockaway Watch.” Jackson gave me a look.
