“I don’t know how I got them.”
She tentatively reached up to touch the scar that ran in a line between her breasts. There were others too. Along her ribs. Down her back, skirting along the edge of her bra. She probably hadn’t seen that one, but he could. He wanted to reach out and trace it, smooth it away with his fingers, but he was too afraid to move—to speak. You shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker, they always said, but no one ever talks about what to do when you catch someone having a nightmare while wide awake.
“I don’t remember. Doesn’t this seem like the kind of thing . . . I don’t remember!” she screamed, but she wasn’t scared—she was furious. At her body and her mind. “I—”
“Stop!” he blurted when she started to move, and she froze, embarrassed. It was like she suddenly realized that she was seventy-six percent naked in front of a man who was more or less a stranger.
“I—”
“Don’t move,” he said, softer now, as he grabbed a robe and threw it over her shoulders. Then he scooped her up into his arms. They were eye to eye in the steamy room and her body was like a coil that was wound way too tight. He was afraid she was going to snap. “Broken bottle. Bare feet.”
So she didn’t fight him as he carried her into the bedroom and sat her gently on the bed. She looked a little nervous, though, as if suddenly worried that being carried in a bridal suite might make them married in truth.
“Can’t have you injuring yourself again.” It was meant to be a joke. It was meant to make her smile. And she did, but the light didn’t reach her eyes.
“I’d only slow you down.”
“That’d be a shame.” Then he went to clean up the glass because he’d rather throw his favorite gun overboard than call housekeeping, but when he was finished, he couldn’t decide if he was supposed to sit beside her or kneel in front of her or just get the hell out and let her be alone.
“I . . . I don’t remember.” She was still staring into those blasted mirrors like maybe the story was written on her skin and if she just looked hard enough, she might figure out how to read it. “I keep thinking I’m going to see something or hear something and it’s all going to come back, but . . . They scared me. I turned around and saw something, and . . . My own skin scared me.” She looked up at him. Her voice cracked. “And nothing came back.”
“Hey. It will.” He’d spent a lot of time learning how to kill, but right then he needed to know how to soothe and so he just sat there, afraid to touch her. He didn’t want to be the thing that made her shatter.
She looked down and suddenly realized that the robe was gaping, scars peeking through.
“Oh.” She jumped to her feet and tried to pull the robe closed.
“No. Don’t.” He didn’t mean to stand—to reach out—but he was already grabbing the edges of that robe and holding them tight, wrapping her up in a cocoon of soft cotton and not letting her move an inch until he’d told her, “Something tried like hell to kill you, lady. And you survived it.” He turned her to face the largest mirror—her back to his front—as he looked over her shoulder and into her eyes. “You won. And nothing on this earth is sexier than a woman who told death to fuck off.”
She closed her eyes, like she didn’t just need to hear the words—she needed to absorb them through her skin and into her bloodstream, like that was the fastest way for them to reach her heart.
But when she finally opened her eyes, her gaze met his in the mirror. “Does my sister . . . Does Alex have . . .”
He shook his head and didn’t make her finish. “Alex has the kind of scars you can’t see.”
Chapter Twenty
Her
Mrs. Michaelson had taste. Mrs. Michaelson had money. Mrs. Michaelson had . . .
Teeny. Tiny. Boobs.
Seriously. Zoe had never—in all eighteen hours of her memory—considered herself especially voluptuous, but as she stood in the bathroom, looking at the mirror, she couldn’t help but wish she could take three inches off the hem of this little black dress and add them to the chest. Luckily, the dress was A-lined, so it fit pretty much everywhere else. Unluckily, it didn’t have pockets, which was a pity. Always.
Maybe I’m a hotshot political operative running on the platform of Pockets for All, she speculated absentmindedly. She would win reelection in a landslide every time. It was something to consider as soon as her life went back to normal. Whatever normal looked like.