Page 28 of Hunted in Hope Town

Sitting in a room with blue walls and soft, pastel paintings of forests hanging up. Sitting on the end of an unmade bed. Feeling twisted and torn up about…about… Her family. The family she couldn’t trust.

“We were supposed to be starting a family, and I didn’t want them hurting a child like they’d hurt me. So I finally cut them off.”

He looked up. She saw the intensity in his eyes but also noted that he was holding himself carefully. Again, trying to detach from…whatever was happening.

“You remember that?” he asked carefully.

“I think so? It’s…strange. I can picture certain things, feel certain things, but the bigger picture is missing. I can’t picture what they look like, I don’t know their names, but I can…put myself back into that moment of realizing if I wanted kids of my own, I would have to keep my life separate from theirs.”

She couldn’t read his expression or his thoughts—another familiar feeling, but she could read the strange…guilt in his eyes.

“Ellis, regardless of whether Dr. Leigh is some kind of leak, whether she is working against me or not, she was wrong. Having the framework of my family situation allowed me to remember that moment, remember something. Which means you should share it all. And you shouldn’t worry about it. I know you don’t want to hurt me, and I’m sorry if it does, but I need to know.”

ELLIS WANTED TO believe her. Hell, he wanted to tell her every moment of their lives if it got her to a place where she remembered everything, but…it felt wrong. It felt like a dangerous tightrope. Maybe this story had unearthed a memory, but what if he took a wrong turn? Pushed too hard?

Maybe Dr. Leigh was a liar, working against them, but… He couldn’t get over his fear of hurting her more than she’d already been hurt.

“I think we need to be careful about doing too much,” he said carefully. “You remembered a piece of something today. That’s a positive. Maybe tomorrow—”

“Being a father terrified you,” she said, with a strange triumphant note to her voice. “I remember that too. The fight we had before your last job.”

He had no words for that, because…he didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. “What?”

“I remember… I remember arguing with you. You wanted to take that last job because…because I was ready to have a baby, and it scared you.”

Ellis was struggling to work through any of this. But this was the first memory she was claiming to have that was flat-out wrong. There’d been no fight, and he sure as hell hadn’t been scared.

“No, I wasn’t scared. I just…needed the accolades. I needed some intangible thing. It wasn’t fear. It was about my work, my self-worth. Taking the job wasn’t about having kids. We’d always planned to have kids.”

“It was,” she replied stubbornly. Then she tapped her temple. “Don’t lie to me. I remember it.”

“Kirsten, I’m sorry, but that’s not right.”

“It is,” she insisted, while his heart beat in wild, painful rhythm against his chest. He convinced himself it was because…she was wrong, and he didn’t want to hurt her or her progress, but he couldn’t let this idea he’d been afraid stand.

Fear had nothing to do with it.

“I remember the fight,” she said stubbornly. “You said you were taking this last job, and I was furious, because…because you were scared and just kept talking about how important the job was. I told you that you were scared of being a dad, because…because you’d lost yours, and then your stepdad… You didn’t like him?”

“I liked him fine,” Ellis replied gruffly. “You’re misremembering things.” If she was remembering at all. Because that had not been a fight they’d had.

“You didn’t want to be like him, and you were afraid that was all you had in you.”

He wanted to argue with her words, but… Well, they hit a little too close to a soft, bruised place he didn’t like to visit. And whether she was right or wrong, there was one simple fact. “This was not an argument we had.”

“I remember it!”

He worked to keep his voice calm, even, no matter how agitated she got. “I don’t know what to tell you. I certainly don’t remember anything of the sort, and since I’m not the one with a traumatic brain injury, I think I’ll take my own word for it.” It was too harsh, but she’d never accused him of being afraid. She’d never accused him of anything.

They hadn’t even really argued about the mission. She’d said she didn’t think he should go. She didn’t think they were in a good place for him to go.

She’d said he was breaking his promise.

But they hadn’t fought. They never really fought. Someone expressed an opinion. The other one didn’t agree. They both did what they thought was right and…that was it.

He’d told her he had to go. Had to.

She’d said goodbye with tears in her eyes, and he’d thought…maybe that was the end. Not just goodbye for now.