Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 63608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Do I know you?
My breath stops. My heart stops. The whole damn world stops.
The nurse is still talking, explaining shit I can’t process—concussion, swelling, head trauma—but all I can hear is the echo of her voice, soft and confused and scared, “I don’t remember.”
My hands curl at my sides, leather creaking under my palms as I fight the instinct to close the distance between us. To touch her. To reassure myself that she’s alive and breathing and here.
But she doesn’t know me. Not anymore. I take a slow step forward, and the nurse immediately lifts a hand like she’s handling a dangerous animal.
“Sir, give us a little space—”
“Her name is Kelly Ringle,” I say, voice low, steady, cracking at the edges despite everything in me trying to hold it together. “She’s—” I stop. The word gets trapped behind my teeth.
Mine.
She’s mine.
But that isn’t true anymore. Maybe it never was.
My throat feels tight enough to choke on. I swallow hard and finish weaker than I started trying to explain, “…she’s under my protection.”
Kelly’s eyes flicker at that. Recognition? Fear? I can’t tell. God, I used to be able to read every tiny shift in her expression. I used to know when she was overwhelmed, or spiraling, or when she was trying to hide that she cared too much.
Now there’s nothing familiar in her face.
Just confusion. Just pain. Just distance.
“Riot,” the nurse says more gently, her voice shifting as she puts together that I’m not just some biker barging in. “She needs calm.”
Calm. Right. I’m the last man who should be in this room. I drag in a breath, chest burning, and force my hands to loosen. My knuckles ache. My jaw aches. Every muscle in my body feels like it’s about to snap.
But I move back half a step.
Just one.
Close enough to protect. Far enough not to scare.
Kelly’s eyes track the movement like she’s watching a wild animal pace a cage.
She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t remember the nights she fell asleep on my chest with her curls falling in my face. She doesn’t remember how she used to get nervous before big orders and I’d stand behind her in the bakery’s kitchen, rubbing slow circles on her back. She doesn’t remember how I pulled her into my lap on her couch and she whispered don’t fall in love with me like it wasn’t already too late.
She doesn’t remember any of it.
The nurse checks her pupils again, humming under her breath. “Memory loss after head trauma is common. It usually comes back with rest and time.”
Time. That’s the one thing I lost when we ended things this morning. My chest tightens.
“Can I talk to her?” I ask quietly.
The nurse hesitates. “If you stay calm.”
I nod once. “I’m calm.”
That’s a lie. My insides feel like frayed electrical wires, sparking at every breath. But I move to the foot of the bed, giving Kelly as much space as I can without leaving her defenseless.
Her gaze finds mine again—wide, uncertain, confused—and it hits me like a sucker punch.
She’s scared of me. She never used to be scared of me.
When she speaks, her voice is barely there. “Were we close?”
I don’t know how to answer that. Yes. No. Not enough. Too much.
The silence stretches and she looks down, twisting her fingers weakly in the blanket. Her nails are chipped. There’s a small cut on her knuckle. Her wrist is bruised. My vision goes red at the edges—pure rage at whoever did this, pure helplessness because I wasn’t there to stop it.
“We knew each other,” I manage, keeping my voice even. “Spent time together.”
Her eyes lift. “Friends?”
God. If there was ever a moment I hated more in my life, I can’t remember it.
I swallow hard. “Yeah,” I say the words as the pure disgust at the label sits heavy on my tongue. “Friends.”
The nurse gives a tiny approving nod. “Good. Familiar connections can help recovery.”
But that’s the thing—I don’t feel like a familiar connection to her. I feel like a stranger standing in the ruins of something I didn’t appreciate until the second it was gone.
Kelly shifts against the pillows, wincing. “Why were you the first person here?”
“Ally called me,” I answer immediately. “She was with Chux. He told me. I came as fast as I could.”
She studies me, trying to make sense of it. There’s a crease between her brows, the same one she gets when she can’t find an ingredient on a high shelf.
Except this time I can’t reach up and hand her what she needs.
“You look…” she searches for the word, “…worried.”
I let out a soft huff. “Yeah, sunshine. I’m worried.”
Her breath catches slightly. She blinks. “Sunshine?”
I freeze.
Damn it.
That nickname slipped out before I could pull it back. I haven’t called her that in weeks—not since the days of our arrangement when she used to roll her eyes and pretend she hated it even though she smiled every time.