Page 32 of Amnesty

Her eyes softened, but her nose wrinkled. “I love that you love me that much. I mean, taking a shower with a rusty sponge… that’s nasty. And oddly sweet.”

“I’m being serious,” I growled. This was a convoluted conversation.

“Your posturing is beside the point,” she announced.

Who the fuck was posturing?

“You can’t protect me, Eddie. Not from my own mind, from the memories that will continue to unlock themselves if I don’t find out what the hell happened to me.”

I felt my brow furrow. Her words were like an arrow right into the depths of my heart. “You think going there will keep the memories at bay?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “It’s worth a try. Every night when I close my eyes, I worry some new horror is waiting to reveal itself to me. That day at the paintball field…” Amnesia swallowed, voice faltering.

“What?” I insisted. Panic rose up inside me.

“When I stumbled, I had a sharp, piercing memory… It was rotten.”

“You didn’t tell me,” I said, curling a hand around her elbow.

“I didn’t want to ruin our fun day.”

A frustrated sound ripped from my throat. “What was the memory, Am?”

She shook her head as if just thinking about it made her queasy.

“Amnesia.”

“When the paintball hit me, it stung… just like you said it would. But apparently, it reminded my body of something else.” She stopped speaking, glancing away. “Of being whipped.”

I groaned. I couldn’t help it. The thought of her being tortured that way made me feel tortured as well. It made my heart ache. Without saying anything, I cupped her shoulders and turned her around so she was facing out the window, her bare back to me.

In the reflection of the window, I saw her eyes squeeze shut. She knew. She knew exactly what I was doing.

I glanced down, gazing over the marks I’d seen a thousand times, but never brought up. “Now I know what these are from,” I whispered, grazing the tips of my fingers over the thin silvery scars that marred her smooth back.

“Now I do, too,” she answered self-consciously.

I knew she worried about them at first, whenever we would undress in front of each other or I would strip her shirt off her body to make love. The scars went unspoken between us. No one ever called attention to them.

A little shiver worked down her back. “I always worried you would think of me as freakish or less beautiful. But time and again, we made love. You washed my back in the shower and rubbed over them at night. But you never brought them up.”

She lifted her head, caught my reflection in the window, and met my stare.

“Until now.”

“I don’t see them when I look at you, Amnesia. Obviously, I know they’re there. My fingers have felt them, and so have my lips. But they aren’t you. I don’t see these scars when you’re naked before me. All I see is the woman I love, and to me, you’re perfect.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Your words are beautiful. It makes me almost sad I told you what the scars are from. I feel like they dirty me.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry.” I traced over one that slashed across her back. “So fucking sorry you had to endure something so vile.”

“I don’t remember, not much. Only that brief moment at the field. It was enough. I want to keep it that way. I don’t want to know, Eddie. It scares me… so much.”

“I know.” I sympathized, folding my arms around her. “It scares me, too, baby.”

“Maybe if I get some answers to my most nagging thoughts, the subconscious way I push my brain to remember will ease off. Maybe I’ll be able to accept not knowing everything if I knowsomething. I feel knowing protects me from feeling. Can you understand that, even a little?”

I didn’t think I’d ever understand the full extent of what it was like to be inside her mind. When I tried to think about it, red tinged my vision, and I seriously understood crime of passion. I had to push past that, though.I had to be stronger than even her greatest demon.My hands slid down over her shoulders, across her waist, and dragged up her back. Without thinking about it, my fingers softly probed the lifted scars there, tracing them as I tried to weigh what I wanted to do against what she needed me to do.

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