Walk a Mile

by Sarah Madison

  Nancy, however, was gentle. “Yes and no. The way you two acted together at the museum, hell, you reminded me of an old married couple.” She continued despite John’s snort of protest. “It got me wondering. I started looking back—one does, you know. I remembered you never spoke to Tommy again after Rachel was… well, after Rachel’s death. And I never could figure out what went wrong between us. It dawned on me the other night that maybe it wasn’t my fault after all.”

  “Tommy.” There was such anguish and regret in that one simple word. “I blamed him, you know. For me staying behind, for not walking Rachel home that day. Only I sort of blacked it out, see? I didn’t remember what really happened that day. Not until recently.”

  “You guys weren’t just playing video games, were you? You were fooling around, right?”

  He heard John’s small sigh. “Yeah. Only I didn’t remember it that way. Not until the other day.”

  “Understandable, given what happened to Rachel.” She paused. “So you’re gay?” There was a bit of an edge there this time, the voice of a woman who didn’t like being played for a fool.

  “I don’t know what to call myself. I loved you, Nancy, I did. I still do. But I guess I’ve always preferred guys. I just, I never, I didn’t… fuck.” His last word was a vehement curse. There was a sudden shift in movement before he went on. “What am I going to do if he—”

  “He’s going to make it. You know that. The doctors say he’s got a good chance of recovery from here on out.”

  “But what if he’s not the same? It’s my fault. Christ, this is my fault.” His voice was muffled, as though he’d buried his head in his hands.

  “It’s going to be okay, sweetie.”

  He wanted to reassure John, as well. Hey, buddy, it’s okay. I’m right here. He couldn’t make his mouth say the words.

  “Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, you look like shit.” Amusement hovered in the back of Nancy’s voice like lazy bumblebees droning around a lavender bush on a spring day. “Come with me, I’ll buy you lunch.”

  “I can’t. Thanks, but I have to stay. He’s waking up. I want to be here when he does.”

  “He is?” She sounded doubtful now. “How can you tell?”

  “Believe me.” John’s words somehow carried the implication of an inside joke, only he had the feeling it wasn’t aimed at Nancy. “I can tell.”

  He felt bad about eavesdropping, but hey, no one asked them to have a private conversation in his room, now did they? Though out of politeness, he felt he should tell them he could hear every word. Only when he tried to say something, no one and nothing was there.

  The third time he regained consciousness, he could open his eyes. They felt gummy, however, like they’d been closed for too long, or someone had put ointment in them. Everything was a little blurry, too. He blinked several times rapidly, and his vision improved. Ah, ointment, then.

  He was in a pale green room. The blinds on the window had been levered so the sun didn’t come directly into the room but lay in bands of light and shadow across the foot of his bed. It gave him the odd sensation of being strapped down by them. A television in the upper right corner of the room was muted; the screen showed a woman displaying jewelry for sale as closed-captioned words scrolled past, cajoling him to buy now and save big for the next twenty minutes only.

  To his left, a curtain hung from an overhead trolley. It was pulled back, and the other bed was empty. The door to the hallway was mostly closed.

  To his right, slumped in the chair beside his bed, slept the most beautiful man he’d ever seen. Oh sure, the guy looked a little worse for wear at the moment. He was wearing a badly wrinkled suit, as though he’d slept in it for days. Why was a hot guy in a suit camping out in his hospital room? Was he in police custody or did they want to question him about the attack?

  A raincoat lay folded under the man’s head, and his mouth hung open just a bit. There were slight bags under his eyes, and at least a week’s worth of dark stubble. When he shifted in his sleep, a glint of silver glimmered in his sideburns. His dark hair could only be described as rakish. His eyes were shut. It would be nice to see his eyes. Bet they were hazel. A kind of greenish-gold that changed with the light.

  As though the man could hear his thoughts, his eyes opened. And damn if they weren’t hazel. He smiled at the man, pleased to have been right.

  “Hey.” The beautiful man smiled at him and, as impossible as it seemed, was even sexier.

  “Hey,” he said in return. At least, that’s what he thought he said. The word came out in a croak. His mouth was dry and gritty, as if he’d eaten sand. He licked his lips and tried again.

  Before he could speak, however, the man rose with an easy sort of grace. “Here. Let me.” He took a remote from the side of the bed and the top part of mattress slowly began to elevate. When it reached a forty-five degree angle, the man put down the remote and offered a giant cup with a straw. “They said you could sip some water when you woke up. A sip only, mind you.”

  He obediently put his lips to the straw and sucked. Cold water hit the back of his throat and he choked.

  “Are you okay?” The man put the cup down, leaning over him anxiously.

  He nodded. “Yeah.” The word was still rough around the edges. He cleared his throat and tried again. This time, his voice was stronger. “Yeah. Okay.”

  The beautiful man smiled again, but this time the smile split his face in half. It wasn’t enigmatic or sexy at all. It was the dorkiest smile he’d ever seen, and it made him laugh. Laughing hurt his head, however, and the man stopped smiling and patted him on the shoulder.

  “Easy now. You’ve been in a coma for a couple of days.”

  That much he remembered. Before that? Not so much.

  “Are you John?”

  The man’s face fell. Oh sure, he covered it up quickly, but the look on his face was one of free-falling terror for that instant before he recovered. “Don’t you know who I am?”

  “Don’t feel bad. I’m sure you’re used to being unforgettable wherever you go.” He looked down at his arms and noticed the cast on the left side and the IV drip running into the other. Huh. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t remember who I am either.”

  The impossibly good-looking man sat down suddenly. He looked terribly pale.

  “Are you all right?” He felt bad. He hadn’t meant to upset the guy.

  “You don’t remember? Jerry, you remember everything.”

  Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Between the pounding headache, and the drugs he was probably on, he couldn’t be sure how much of his nausea was emotional or physical. Swallowing bile, he went for nonchalant. “Yeah, well about that. Jerry, I mean. That can’t possibly be my name. What grown man goes by Jerry, for Chrissake? It sounds like the name of a cartoon character.”

  Oddly enough, this statement seemed to have a bracing effect on the man. He narrowed those amazing hazel eyes. It was almost as if John had made a conscious decision to play the game, to pretend nothing was that seriously wrong. “So, would this cartoon character be a mouse or a cat?”

  “What an asinine question.” He thought about it for a second. “A mouse. But a mouse that always gets the better of the cat.”

  He was rewarded with another one of those dorky smiles. He drifted back to sleep thinking about it, even as the man continued talking.

  “I’M SORRY, why exactly are you here?” Opening the door from the bathroom and discovering John hovering on the other side made him testy. He knew he was supposed to press the call button for help when he got out of bed, but damn it, sometimes he just wanted to go take a leak without someone watching him. He waved off the silent offer of assistance and hobbled back to the bed, watching his feet as he moved. The pale green booties with the nonslip surface were functional but ugly. He wanted his clothes back, damn it. “It can’t be for my statement about the events that put me here, because I don’t remember them. Or are you hoping I’ll suddenly remember who my assai
lant is? Am I under witness protection, or something?”

  That pulled John up short. “Why do you think that?”

  He grunted with pain as muscles he hadn’t realized were sore protested when he crawled into bed. John came over automatically and raised the side rail again. He watched the action silently, trying to figure out where this really hot guy fit into the picture. “You have that look about you.”

  “What look?” John raised an eyebrow, twisting his mouth to one side.

  He shrugged slightly, regretting the movement almost as soon as he did. Massaging the muscles in his neck did nothing to relieve the pain. “Nice suit, but not outrageously expensive. You look like you’ve slept in it, so no three-hour lunches or flying first class for you. There’s an underlying toughness to you, too.” Like a tiger trying to pass as a housecat. There was muscle under that suit, and he had the impression it wasn’t solely as a result of working out in a gym “So, I’m guessing government agency of some sort. Probably not local police; the suit’s too nice for that. And since I’m obviously the victim of some sort of attack, here, I’m guessing you’re here to interview me.”

  “Why not protect you?” There was something indefinable in those greenish eyes, a challenge of some sort, only he didn’t understand why that would be the case.

  He made a small negative sound. “Nope. You’re too high up for babysitting duty. If I had to guess, you’re with the FBI. Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t remember anything of the night I was attacked, and very little before that.”

  Which was disappointing to him, too, because in all likelihood, without a good excuse to hang around, Drop Dead Sexy John would take himself off to an active case or something.

  Drop Dead Sexy John gave him a small, one-sided smile. It shouldn’t have pulled at his groin the way it did, but damn, the man was sex personified.

  John reached into an inner pocket in his jacket and pulled out a wallet. Flipping it so it fell open to his ID, he said, “Well, you’re right. I am an FBI agent.” His smile seemed to indicate he found something incredibly funny but he wasn’t planning to share.

  He leaned forward to peer at the ID. Special Agent John Flynn. The name suited the man. Flynn, John Flynn. Why the heck was John rolling his eyes at him? “Wow, for a good-looking guy, you take a really crappy picture.”

  John turned the badge around so he could see it. “Hey, it’s government issue. What do you expect? I have it on good authority the camera loves me.”

  “Only when you don’t see it coming.” He paused, frowning. Why did that feel familiar? Like he’d said it before?

  John was giving him one of those funny looks again. “Well, I’m not here just because you were attacked by a suspect in a case. I’m your partner.”

  “My what?” That took him aback. Because for the briefest of moments he thought John meant partner as in life partner, and of course, he couldn’t possibly have meant that. He was well acquainted with his appearance in the bathroom mirror these days. Though he would admit to a certain amount of boyish good looks, he’d been upset to discover there had been shaving of his hair in places for the various monitors he’d been wearing, and the left side of his face looked like a rotten banana with its fading green and yellow bruises.

  “Your partner. We work together.” John pulled another wallet out of his back pocket and held it out. “I’m hanging on to your personal stuff for now. Don’t want to leave this lying around.”

  He looked at the laminated badge, where the same face he’d seen in the mirror looked back at him, minus the bruises and with better hair. A few less pounds, too, he suspected. “Huh. You’re right. These pictures suck.” He handed the wallet back to John, leaning back and closing his eyes with a sigh.

  “You okay?”

  John actually sounded worried. Which was kind of nice. He opened one eye. “Jerry is a stupid name. And I dunno, when I thought about what kind of work I did, being a special agent never crossed my mind.” He opened the other eye as well, the better to watch John’s reaction.

  John hitched a hip up to sit on the end of the bed, his leg folded in front of him. It felt like a comfortable thing for him to do, something he’d done many times before. “Really. What do you see yourself doing?”

  He almost shrugged, but remembered in time that was a bad idea. “I seem to know a lot about cooking. I thought maybe I was a chef. Or a librarian.”

  John let out a short bark of laughter, which was suddenly, horribly familiar.

  “Oh my God, you laugh like a donkey!”

  “I do not.” John’s frown snapped his brows down.

  “You do, you do! I remember that now.” Or at least, he thought he did. Sometimes he wasn’t sure what he remembered from his past and how much came from his present. Because in an eerie way, he seemed to remember everything that had happened to him from the moment he’d fully regained consciousness and the drugs were out of his system. The look the nurse gave him when he quoted all his vital signs from every time they’d been checked since he’d woken up had been priceless. She’d looked a little like a spooked horse and had run off to find his neurologist.

  “So, what else do you remember about me?” John’s voice dropped into that sexy bedroom register and, like Pavlov’s dog, his cock lifted to attention.

  Oh, that couldn’t be right. Just wishful thinking on his part.

  “Just what you’ve told me, and you have a friend named Nancy who came to check on you while I was still comatose, and that….” He trailed off when he remembered the conversation John and Nancy had been having at the time. “Wait a minute… you’re gay? No, no, bisexual? No, wait, we’re together?” He gaped at John.

  There was an interesting flush across John’s cheekbones, and even the tips of his oddly shaped ears went red. “Yeah.”

  “Get out of town!” He leaned forward to stop John when he would have moved. “No, not literally, you idiot. I mean, no way. You’re my boyfriend?”

  “You don’t have to say it like there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of it being true.” Oddly enough, it was John’s pissyness that made it real for him.

  “I’m just stunned, that’s all.” Have you looked in the mirror lately, bucko? Because hot damn, I’m one lucky bastard.

  John ducked his head and smiled, his shoulders twitching as though Jerry had said something funny.

  “So let me get this straight. We’re FBI agents; we’re partners in the field and at home.” Damn, damn, damn, they’d better let me out of this hospital soon because, God, I want some of that. He almost wanted John to go away so he could touch himself because his cock seemed to remember more than he did at the moment. Think about something else, think about something else. “So, how’d I end up in the hospital with a broken arm and head trauma?”

  “The suspect we were after surprised us with an ambush in the dark. He hit you with a baseball bat before I could stop him.” The look in John’s eyes was both dark and bleak. Jerry felt a shiver of menace pass over him.

  Christ. He was lucky to be alive. “What happened after the guy hit me?” Or for that matter, before he hit me. What he’d lost was starting to register now. This incredible man in front of him, for instance. They were lovers? And he remembered none of it. A shadow of a memory teased the back of his mind, the slide of a hand against the bare skin of his back, but it was gone before he fully grasped it.

  John’s face froze in a mask of cold hatred. “I shot him.”

  He thought about this for a moment, and then said, “So, does that cause more paperwork or less?”

  John’s smile was amazing.

  “WELL, WHAT do you want to be called, then?” John seemed exasperated, but he ignored it.

  He’d just come back from physical therapy, and he was tired. He had a low-grade headache most of the time, and he sincerely hoped it would go away soon. He’d learned his forearm had been fractured, but was healing nicely. That didn’t stop it from itching underneath the cast, however. He’d been tempted to fashion
a scratcher out of a coat hanger, only all the hangers in the hospital were plastic. He became aware that John was waiting for an answer. He sighed. “Do I have a middle name?”

  “Course you do. Lee.”

  He thought about it for a moment. Lee was better than Jerry. “Lee it is, then.”

  John gave him that funny look again, but then John gave him a lot of funny looks. He’d gotten used to it.

  “How did the visit with the neurologist go this morning?” John was leaning against the wall again. Lee swore the man had been filleted in another life, because he seemed to be incapable of standing up straight. Admittedly, he was damn sexy when he did that.

  To his disappointment, John suddenly straightened. Lee sighed, and settled himself back on the bed, waving off John’s assistance to swing his legs up on the mattress. He did allow John to tuck the blanket around him, though. There was something comforting about being tucked in. “Well, I won every game of Hüsker Dü again.”

  “Hoosker what?” John looked at him blankly.

  “Hüsker Dü. It’s a Danish board game where you pick up pieces, look at a picture underneath, and cover it back up again. The idea is you remember where the pictures are and when you uncover two that match, you take the pieces off the board. The person with the most pieces wins.”

  “Okay.” John spoke slowly, as if he was still trying to see the point of this. “I can see where this would be your kind of game. So you win a lot, right?”

  “I win every time. I’ve played with seven different people this week and won six hundred and thirty-seven games. Dr. McKay wants to write a paper on me.” Lee frowned and pursed his lips.

  “What’s wrong?” John asked. He had a look of fond amusement on his face, which Lee found momentarily distracting.

  “What? Oh, it’s just that I can’t shake the feeling his name should be Dr. McCoy.” He frowned. The doctor’s nametag had clearly read “Dr. McKay.”

  A soft snort from John made Lee glance at him, where he was leaning on his hands with his back to the window. The sunlight framed him, bringing out the highlights in his nearly black hair. “Be glad it isn’t Dr. McCoy. He would have said, ‘He’s dead, Jim’ and then where would you be?”