Page 17 of The Same Backward as Forward
The villain of my life’s story was more than writhing now. He was going to hurt himself.
I caught his head between my hands, my thumbs braced against his jawbone on either side. “Not on my watch, you asshole.”
It took every ounce of strength I had to keep his head still, but after a moment or two, his body stopped moving, too.
“The tree is poison.” His eyelids flew open, and just like that, we were looking directly at each other. I’d dropped the flashlight on the mattress. Its beam did little to disturb the darkness, but somehow, I could see—or imagine—every single line and curve of Toby Hawthorne’s face.Granite jaw. Slashing cheekbones. Deep-set eyes.
I didn’t seepainthere. I sawfuryanddevastationand more. For a single moment in time, it was like looking in a mirror.
And then he came fully awake. The expression on his face changed, like the surface of a lake touched by wind, and his lips moved again. “Deified,” he whispered.
I thought at first that I’d imagined him saying that word, but then I heard his voice again through the darkness, through what little light came of the flashlight’s beam.
“Civic. Madam. Race car.” His eyes, the color of a forest at night, never left mine. “Rotator. Deed.”
He was recitingpalindromes, the smug bastard, and I was going to kill him.
Chapter 14
Soon enough, I was allowed back at the hospital. I went. I worked. I slept, occasionally.
And I kept going back to Jackson’s.
I’d decided not to even try making contact with Tobias Hawthorne’sfixers. If word got out that the Hawthorne heir was alive, the first question that everyone, including my mother, would ask washow. I didn’t trust the billionaire’s people not to land a helicopter right there on the rocks. I wasn’t putting a target on Jackson’s back, so that left the alternative of getting my patient to the point where he could be moved.
Nine times out of ten, I succeeded at thinking of him asHarry. He seemed to take special pleasure in being able to push me to the last tenth. I would have sworn the bane of my existence knew every single time his real name crossed my mind, even though he gave no sign of remembering it himself.
“Hearts or Spades?” Harry didn’t even bother opening his eyes as he issued that question. His voice had fully recovered from the fire and whatever smoke he’d inhaled, and there was something liquid about the way he strung together the words, a silken but somehow pointed laziness that made him irritatingly impossible to ignore.
“Are you asking my preference?” I spread cream across his angry, red bicep. The second-degree burns were looking better. The ones on his chest, in contrast, hadn’t improved. I focused on the work—not onhimand certainly not on the feel of muscles beneath my steady, gentle hands. “Spades are more useful.”
“For burying the bodies of your enemies?”
The treatmenthadto hurt, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell that from the twist of Harry’s lips.You wouldn’t be making jokes like that if you knew who I was and what you took from me, I thought.
Harry had a habit of replying to my silences like theyweren’tsilences. “Setting aside the questionable uses you have for a literal spade, vicious one, I was asking about the card games. You bought a deck. Makes for better castles than sugar, I suppose.”
He seemed to take a very distinct pleasure in issuing reminders that, when it came to me, he saw everything, noticed everything.
“So, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward…” Harry’s voice was silken despite its rasp. “What’s your poison? Hearts or Spades?”
Poison.That word made me think of the phrase he’d muttered in his sleep.The tree is poison…
“Neither.” I squashed the memory like a bug. “I have better things to do than play with you.” I moved from his bicep to his collarbone—that much closer to his chest.
Harry sucked in a breath around his teeth, but the pain didn’t silence him for long. “If you’re so set on not playing games,” he said, “then why don’t you tell me why I’m still here?”
Here, as in alive? Or here meaning in this shack?I didn’t ask for the clarification. “As punishment for my mortal sins,” I deadpanned.
That surprised a wheeze out of him, almost a laugh. “Why am I here and not in a hospital, mentirosa?”
I recognized the game he was playing. “Spanish forliar?” I guessed.
He neither confirmed nor denied that. “Is it because of me or because of you?” he pressed.
“It’s both,” I said.
“And that”—his eyes finally opened—“was not a lie.” There was power in Toby Hawthorne’s gaze, always.
