I wasn’t sure what was worse—the voice or the warning it gave.
The urge to get up and dust away the sudden icky feeling clinging to my body was strong. After a quick glance at Eddie, I slipped from beneath the covers and padded over to the window.
I was completely naked, but I didn’t bother to cover up. It was just me, and the cool night air was relief against my flushed skin.
The windows were covered with curtains, and even though I was scared to pull back the fabric (even just a little) because of what might be there looking back, I reached for it anyway.
Without realizing, I held my breath and peeled back the curtain at an embarrassingly slow rate. Squeezing one of my eyes closed and looking with the other, I peeked out.
Of course nothing was there, just the yard, the moon, and the lake. Telling myself I was beyond dramatic, I opened both eyes up and pulled the curtain back to stare down to the water.
The waves shimmered beneath the moon, glittering like diamonds.
I let out a cleansing breath, trying to exhale the horrible dream. I was so lost in thought I didn’t hear Eddie behind me until his body heat announced him and his own nakedness pressed against mine.
“What are you doing over here?” he whispered, groggy, into my ear.
Desire stirred in my lower belly. His voice in my ear and the feel of him against me was intoxicating.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I whispered, sliding my hands along his arms and hugging him closer.
His voice was still sleepy when he softly spoke again. “You’re drawn to the water just as I am.”
“It definitely has a pull.” I agreed.
I felt restless, as though something were niggling at the back of my mind, but I didn’t know what. Even though I opened up to Eddie, things still felt unsettled. Maybe they would always feel that way. Until I knew. Where I’d come from, what brought me to the shore of Lake Loch months ago.
Was I Sadie? What was my connection to Widow West.
Leaning my head back against Eddie, I stared out the window, letting the questions consume me.
Way out in the distance, a light caught my eye. So small I probably shouldn’t have noticed it. But I did, and once in my line of sight, it was all I saw.
Gasping, I moved forward, laid my palm flat against the cold glass of the window, and stared out.
“Do you see it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“There’s someone out there,” I murmured, almost an afterthought. Like an idea that didn’t occur to me until it was already out of my mouth. The words didn’t sink in until after I spoke them.
My breath caught, the pads of my fingers pressing harder against the glass. “That’s it,” I told myself.
“What is?” Eddie asked, moving forward to keep us pressed together. His chin settled on my shoulder, the unshaven roughness of his jaw slightly prickly against my skin.
I turned my face just slightly, angling toward him a bit more. My eyes slid back out toward the island, searching for the mellow light captivating me.
“What if Widow West really was taking me back to Rumor Island? What if there really is someone else out there, him?”
The sleepy quality to his voice vanished, and a fine, humming tension coiled beneath his skin. “Him who?”
“The man I keep remembering, but never actually seeing. The one who kidnapped me. The one who wants me back.”
“The police searched that island, Am. So many times.”
“Yeah, nearly twelve years ago. What if he left, went into hiding until the search ended, and I—Sadie—was presumed dead? Have they been there since?”
Eddie fell quiet.
The words tumbled out of me, the tone of my voice hollow, almost haunted. “What if he’s there now? Wandering the island at night, waiting for the widow to come home. Waiting for her to bring me back.”
“There’s no way a man could live out there all this time and no one know.”
“There’s also no way a girl could disappear in the lake and then wash up eleven years later.”
His arms pulled me snug against him. I knew he didn’t like the path my thoughts were taking me, but I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t. I felt this sense of… truth.
“That man out there,” I whispered. “He may know who I am, Eddie.”
“If that man out there knows who you are, I’ll kill him.”
I craned around, my eyes searching his face. The azure of his stare was deadly. It was the same look he’d had at the paintball field when that guy shot me.
“If that light out there is the man who kidnapped you all those years ago… held you captive and abused you, it won’t matter if he knows your name, Am. I’ll kill him, and no one will be able to stop me.”
There was no bravado in his voice. Not even passionate anger. This was a vow. A vow from a calm, collected man. The promise of someone who also had been held captive by questions with no answers, by guilt and by… love.
I laid my hand against his cheek. His eyes lowered to half-mast. “If you kill him, he’ll win. We’ll be separated. Something I honestly don’t think I could bear.”
Deadly calm, almost methodical, he replied, “Not if no one knows.”
“You won’t kill him,” I said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m asking you not to. I need answers, and I can’t get them from a corpse.”
His eyes shut briefly. I felt the rise of his chest with his inhale. Moonlight streamed in the window, hitting the expanse of his torso. I shifted around totally, putting my back to the window to focus fully on him. After smoothing my palms over his chest, I leaned down and kissed him there.
“I’ll never do anything to hurt you, sweetheart.” His hands splayed out over my hips.
I lifted my head, answering definitively, “I know.”
The warmth of his lips brushed my hairline, and I smiled.
“We talk like we know someone is out there. Truth is that light could be anything… or nothing at all.”
“Have you ever seen it out there before?” I asked.
He was silent a while. His body shifted, gathering me close. “No.”
“It’s something,” I whispered. “Someone.”
“We don’t know that, Am.”
“I need to know. I have to find out.”
“What are you saying?” he asked, pulling back to look down.
“I’m saying I want to go out there. I want to go to where the widow was trying to take me that night… I want to go to Rumor Island.”
“No,” I said, final.
She straightened away, pulling out of my hold. Her chin lifted defiantly. “I didn’t ask permission.”
“The last time I went to Rumor Island, someone disappeared and I spent the rest of my life feeling guilty.”
“You don’t have to come.”
I laughed. Then I laughed some more. “You can’t be serious.”
She stared at me with a straight face.
Well, wasn’t she a piece of work?
“Get one thing through that gorgeous head of yours right now,” I intoned, leaning down so we were eye to eye. “Under no circumstance would I ever, ever let the woman I love, the woman who is literally a piece of me, get in a boat and row herself over to an island where she might or might not have been held captive and abused. I would rather eat glass and shower with a rusty metal sponge. I will protect you this time. I will.”
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 know something. 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.
I waited until I truly meant the words, then spoke. “If this is what you need, then it’s what we’ll do.”
I saw hope surge in her eyes, which in turn lifted it out of the heaviest of emotion whirling inside me. “Really?” she asked, slight awe in her voice.
“I won’t ever deny you anything,” I vowed.
“Other than a trip to Rumor island alone.” She teased.
I glared. Now was not the time to jest. I was trying to be strong and romantic and shit. Besides, charm was my thing… not hers.
“Too soon?” she asked, a sparkle in her eyes.
Well, shit. Maybe charm was her thing, too.
I wanted to smile, but then I remembered what we were discussing. “If I’d known that paintball hit made you remember being whipped…” I felt my teeth bare. “That asshole wouldn’t have been able to walk out of there.”
“Another reason I didn’t say anything,” she quipped.
My eyes settled on her face. I needed her to understand. “I’m very serious when it comes to protecting you. Shielding you from any more pain.”
“I noticed.”
“I couldn’t stop what happened all those years ago, and I… I didn’t find you.” I swallowed. Knowing Am might have been so close ripped me apart. I hadn’t done anything. “But I swear to heaven and to hell, if anyone wants to hurt you now, they will go through me.”
“You’re pretty sexy when you’re all growly and intense.” Her arms wound around my torso.
I raised an eyebrow. “Growly?”
“It’s a thing.”
“A thing you just made up,” I deadpanned.
“But I like it. It turns me on.”
Well then. “I’ll allow it.”
“You really never see my scars when you look at me?”
Something inside me softened. “No, baby, I really don’t. And they don’t make you dirty. They make you more beautiful.”
Suddenly, fear crept into her tone. “I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you.”
“Hey,” I purred. “You will never have to find out.”
She launched across the short distance between us, wrapping her body around mine. Want hammered inside me; the skin-on-skin contact we had was making me crave her.
Just as I thought about twirling around and tossing her down on the bed, she glanced up, eyes wide, full of energy. “Let’s go.”
“Go?”
“To Rumor Island.”
“Hell no!” I said, incredulous.
“But you said…”
“I said I understood. I did not agree to taking you across the lake in the middle of the night to an island I am unfamiliar with. Woman, you are out of your ever-loving mind.”
“We can’t call the police. Search parties take too long to organize. They’re loud. They’ll scare him away.”
If he’s even there. This is such a long shot. But even I couldn’t help realizing she had a point. That light was some kind of sign. Of what, I wasn’t sure.
“We’ll go when it’s light out.” I compromised. “At least then we can see what we’re dealing with.”
She thought it over a moment. Briefly, I worried she was going to argue. I didn’t want to quarrel with her. I wanted to bury myself inside her.
“We’ll go tomorrow?” she asked.
“I’ll call Dad and have him handle the store.”
“What will you tell him?” She worried.
The truth. Well, a partial truth. “That I need a day with my girl.”
An invisible weight lifted off her. I felt it leave the room.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely.
“That island may not have the answers you’re looking for.” I felt the need to caution her again.
“It may,” she rebutted.
She was right. The more and more I thought about it, I realized Rumor Island might hold a hell of a lot more than just rumors.
I felt like a wind-up toy that had been wound so tight and was desperately waiting to be set down so I could spin off uncontrollably.
I admit the idea of going to Rumor Island was kind of crazy. Sort of like walking into a room with a bunch of potential hidden traps. Scenarios like that only worked out for people like Indiana Jones (we liked
movies, too) and others who had mad survival skills.
But you know, I think I had some mad skills in that department. The scars on my body said so. The few memories that haunted me proved it.
I even survived myself. As in I tried to commit suicide and lived.
My thoughts, which had started out sort of lighthearted, even excited, turned dark. Reminding me everything I’d been through was nearly depressing, especially the part where I realized I’d be going back to a place that literally made me so miserable I thought death was my only option. Suicide was no joking matter. In fact, it was quite impossible to even wrap my head around.
I was so far from that mental place. I couldn’t even imagine wanting to end it all. I had way too much to live for right now, and I was able to say that with barely any of my memories.
It made me wonder just how drastically changed I was from before. Was I a completely different person, or was it just because wherever I’d been was such a nightmare?
I wasn’t sure.
Did it even matter?
I guess in some ways it did, but in others? Not so much. I loved where I was right now. Who I was. Eddie. I didn’t want to give it up. I loved this little town with its foggy brick street, small mom-and-pop shops, and views of the elusive lake. I even loved the mystery here, and yeah, I caught myself more than once scanning the water for signs of the legendary Loch Ness.
Hey, it could totally be out there.
Still, as I told Eddie just hours before I needed some answers. Was it strange I just wanted to know things without actually remembering them? Did that mean the information I got would be less reliable? Because it was seen and not felt?
Did not remembering something make it any less significant?
I didn’t think it did, but again, I didn’t really know. Maybe I would revisit that question after our trip across the lake.
The second the sun rose over the water, shooting its orangey-sapphire streaks across the horizon, I got out of bed, unable to wait another moment. Eddie was less than thrilled over my excitement. I knew he was worried about this and about me.
I couldn’t contain it, though. I suddenly felt I had some kind of lead. Like there was something out there that would tell me something. I knew going back there was risky, but I had to do it.
Amnesty: Amnesia Duet Book 2 Page 7