Page 19 of The Promise

“What?” she asked, words shaky.

His silence didn’t help Karine to settle her nerves.

“Why aren’t you talking? Why won’t you tell me what happened—I don’t ... I don’t remember, I’m sorry.”

His cheek worked like he was chewing on his words, and just when she thought he was about to stand and walk away from her, Roman pulled in a deep breath. Then, he said, “You were asleep in the living room by the windows on a chaise. I was in my office, talking to my father. His bull—the bodyguard, Andrey—came in for a drink of water, and when you woke up and saw him, you attacked him with a knife in the kitchen. He dropped the glass of water, and you stepped on the shards.”

His words were accompanied by white noise in the background of her mind—he said things like you attacked and you stepped but she couldn’t find those memories. She almost couldn’t hear him at all.

It only made Karine angry, and that served to turn her irrational. She rocked while she sat on the bed, picking at the tips of her own fingers to keep herself from jumping up off the bed altogether. “N-no, that didn’t happen. You’re wrong,” she argued weakly.

“Karine, that is exactly what happened. I have no reason to make up stories. I’m not lying to you.”

But then her mind flashed with the image of Roman in the kitchen, hands on her arms as he said her name—Karine—before it was black again. She didn’t know. It was like the memory jerked her back and forth, everything going still, and the colors fading to black and white for a split second before she was staring at Roman still holding on to her foot with the most careful hands.

She didn’t know what to believe.

Or why this was happening.

“Don’t you think I would remember something like that?” she snapped.

Roman released her foot, then, letting it hang and not quite reach the floor. The look she saw on his face was one she knew all too well. She’d become well acquainted with it whenever someone had just had enough of her.

Whatever that was supposed to mean—she’d never quite understood it when someone said it.

It was the same look her father gave her—or Dima, even, sometimes Masha, too. Anyone who stumbled upon Karine during a particularly bad spell where she was losing more time than she was keeping, and the blank space in her mind was more of a comfort than reality. A look that said she didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about—and neither did they.

It made her feel crazy.

She hated that look.

Maybe it would’ve been easier to handle coming if she was still taking the pills she’d become best friends with over the years. They had a way of numbing her to other people’s reactions and opinions. It didn’t hurt to know someone else thought she was a little odd or even ... off. They softened the edges of her brain so all that chaotic, erratic energy was contained even if it did leave her feeling like a shell of who she should be.

Without them now, she could feel the force of Roman’s stare like a slap across her face. That oh, Karine he was thinking in his mind.

Poor, pity little Karine ... crazy, crazy, crazy.

She turned her eyes away from him, and saw the flashes of images. Black and white again, snaps of memories like a strobe light inside her brain. A man’s back turned to her, a glass of water at his lips. Then, he was staring over his shoulder at her directly. Surprised, but scared, too. Why would he be afraid of her? He was a hulk of a man—big, and unknown, and there. He shouldn’t have been there. The next blink came with the glint of metal—there was a knife in her hand.

“Are you remembering it?” she heard Roman ask.

All those nerves snapping inside of her finally lifted her off the bed, sending Karine running away from the words she didn’t want to hear Roman say. She paced on the spot, determined to get those memories and what he asked out of her head.

That wasn’t her.

It wasn’t.

Roman didn’t make a move toward her, but he followed the path she paced with his guarded gaze. It was like he knew exactly what she was thinking just by staring at her, and Karine couldn’t quite stand that feeling.

A bug under a microscope.

Even if it was his.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped.

Roman sighed, scrubbing a hand over his unshaven jaw. His shoulders squared a bit, then. “Okay, I’m going to go to my bathroom and find what I can for your feet, all right? Masha is taking too long with the first aid kit.”

He turned to go, and the fear gripped Karine instantly at the idea he was going to leave her alone in the room. Would the voices come back—the darkness? She lunged at him, gripping his elbow tightly, and with a little gasp for air, she breathed, “Please don’t leave me here.”