Page 22 of Hunted in Hope Town

She’d grown up around explosive adults and had always told him she wouldn’t let herself be like that. She wanted to be fair. She wanted to be kind. And more often than not, she had been.

Often to her own detriment.

“There is a threat to me, and your expectation is that I should just hide away and…let the men handle it?”

“This isn’t about men or women. It’s about—”

“Knowing and not knowing? Remembering and not remembering?”

“Well, yes.” Which was somehow the wrong answer if her fisting her hands on her hips was anything to go by.

“I can’t help it that I don’t remember.”

“I didn’t say you could help it. It’s just… I’m trained to handle this. This is…because of me. Zach and I are going to handle it because that’s our job.”

“And my job is to sit and twiddle my thumbs?”

He sighed, a headache beginning to drum at his temples. He hoped there was some ibuprofen somewhere in this place. “You don’t have a job in this case. Except to stay safe.”

The jut of her chin was stubborn. But she didn’t argue with him. She took a swipe, instead. Oh, it probably wasn’t a swipe to her, but it felt like one to him.

“Tell me something that only we know,” she demanded.

Every time he thought he’d ushered her away from the topic of them, she circled back around. Demanding. Like she deserved answers.

He figured she did but couldn’t be sure if that was an honest feeling or just his desperation for her to be Kirsten again. If everything were up to him, he’d tell her everything. Every second he remembered from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, until that moment she’d woken up in the hospital after too many days in a coma, not remembering.

But it wasn’t up to him. Because he wasn’t a doctor or a psychiatrist or anything but the reason she was in this mess. Maybe if it was guilt stabbing at him, he’d feel less disgusted with himself for giving in.

But it wasn’t guilt. It was want. He wanted her memory back. For her. For him. She’d probably remember and hate him. Push him away. And he’d deserve it.

It would be a damn sight better, living with what he deserved, than rehashing everything he’d done wrong with her when she didn’t remember.

But there was also some glimmer of hope, some piece of the old Ellis not completely dead yet, that thought…if she remembered, if she hated him, at least that was grounds for a second chance.

But she had to remember, and he wouldn’t put her through pain to remember. He couldn’t. So he did what he’d become an expert at for two years. He hedged.

“What would you want to know?”

She gave him that look he knew she’d once given her students when they tried to lie to her about the state of their homework. “If I knew what, I wouldn’t need you to tell me, Ellis.”

“I just don’t know what I could possibly say that would make you remember, and Dr. Leigh—”

“I swear to God I don’t want to hear another damn word about Dr. Leigh.” She threw her arms up in the air, paced away from him, then back. She drilled a finger into his chest. “I want to hear about us. Our life. It’s like memory is this…tangible thing, just out of reach.” She gestured with the hand not currently poking him. “I know it’s there. I know it, but I need help to get there.” She pulled back, poked again. Hard. “You are supposed to be helping me.”

Sure. And maybe after he could stab himself through the heart a few times. He placed his hand over the one currently jabbing into him.

Which was a mistake. Hell, being in the same room with her was a mistake, but touching her—no matter how platonically—and her subsequent catch of breath was a special kind of torture.

Which, in fairness, he probably deserved.

Still, he gently removed her finger from his chest, stepped away from her. “I need to call Zach and get an update. Give me a little while to wade through some of this, and we can circle back to this later.”

He made a move for the door, for safety. He got about three steps into the living room before she followed, clearly not giving him any time.

“This isn’t new to this moment, is it?” she said. “You used to use work as an excuse before too. If you didn’t want to face something head-on. Because you knew what to do with work. But you didn’t know what to do with love that felt complicated.”

He turned and stared at her for probably a full minute. There were just no…words. It was definitely not the first time she’d accused him of that. She sounded like Kirsten, like a woman who remembered.