Page 18 of Beyond Reason

“It’s all bits and pieces. My life comes in little… shrapnel shards of memory.”

“What about the person you… The person your body was?”

“I don’t remember anything specific. It’s all muscle memory. I know how to work a phone, but I don’t remember him buying it. It’s strange.” It seemed like such a superficial explanation of knowing how to do things, how to move through rooms that I’d never been in, but it was the best I could do. “But that doesn’t matter. It’s not his life I want to remember, it’s mine.” I opened my eyes and glanced at Axel through my lashes. “Ours.”

He tensed, his fingers that had been playing over my marred flesh freezing in place.

“I don’t think—”

“You’re the only one who can help me. You’re…” I paused. I wanted him to want me. I wanted him to keep me here and help me remember who I was, what had happened… but at the same time, did I want to admit aloud how he was the first thing I’d thought of? How his name had been on my lips before I was aware they’d been forming words?

From the way he was looking at me—like he was wondering if it would be a good idea to dump me on the floor and run back to his room—I had a feeling it might make things worse. I pressed my lips together to bite down the words and let my eyes slide away from his. “You’re one of the only people left alive, aren’t you? People like me don’t last for very long unless we’re very careful or very lucky.”

I’d been both for such a long time that I was a strange mixture of curious and afraid to know what had changed.

Axel knew, though.

Axel could tell me.

But it was apparently information I was going to have to coax out of him if I wanted it, because he started to completely pull away from me. My hands flew out without warning, wrapping around his wrist… and I was faced again with how things were different.

If he wanted to, he could break my grip.

If he wanted to, he could have circled my wrists with his hands and stopped me from touching him at all.

So I did the only thing I could do. I turned my eyes back to him and let him see all the strange, new vulnerability that was tearing around in my chest. I wasn’t sure if it was mine because of the situation, or some lingering emotion that Marshall had held before, but it was here now… and if I had to experience it, I was going to use it.

“Please… don’t leave.” When he stayed frozen, I went on. “It was…”

How vulnerable did I actually want to be?

How much did I want him to stay on this couch with me?

When the words kept spilling almost unbidden from my lips, I realized it was a lot more than I wanted to admit.

“Waking up in that hospital with no idea what was going on, with no idea what was wrong with me? It was… hard.” I forced myself to keep looking at him, to watch dawning realization slowly spread across his features. He’d always been so expressive. He’d always felt so much. He was nothing like me, nothing like the world he lived in. Even the lines on his face and the gray in his beard hadn’t stolen away that softness… or maybe it was just for me? “I still feel it when I wake up—this body that isn’t mine, this world that isn’t mine. I…” I squeezed his wrist once. Gently. “I need an anchor.”

If there was a physical moment where a man could melt, where I could see ice turn to water and flow away through desperately grasping fingers, it was this. His eyes softened and his rigid muscles relaxed—unwillingly, painfully, one little moment at a time… but he seemed incapable of resisting.

Had it always been that way?

I think it had. I think this was us. It made my lungs seize up, my heartbeat race.

“Okay,” he said. Soft, unsure, almost reluctantly. “Okay, I’ll stay.”

“Yeah?”

He didn’t pause this time as he nodded. “Yeah.”

Where else would I go? The words echoed in my mind like a distant memory that didn’t hurt, that didn’t send sparks of pain shooting through my head. It was just there, falling into place and gently putting another piece of me back to rights.

And if something in my chest unfurled and settled? If, for the first time since I’d woken up, I felt a sense of peace spill through me as I melted back onto the cushions, and he brought his hand back to gently rest against my neck… I didn’t say it aloud.

Chapter 6

Axel

My kitchen smelled like bacon when I woke up, and my first instinct was to go for a gun and shoot whoever was in my house—probably because the scent brought back memories of all the times I’d woken up like this before.

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