Page 2 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

Think.

Where had we gone after the club?

The answer should have been easy.

It wasn’t.

A cold prickle spread across the back of my neck.

Had I gotten so spectacularly drunk that I’d wandered into a stranger’s house?

My heavy, sluggish eyes finally tore themselves away from the soul-crushingly plain ceiling and moved across the room. A white-hot pain seized the muscles along my neck and spread into my shoulders, making me wince. I froze, sucking air through my teeth and waiting for the ache to ease before forcing myself to look farther.

Everything around me seemed blurred at the edges, indistinct shapes swimming through the haze before slowly falling into place.

A soft beep sounded somewhere to my left.

Then another.

The rhythm continued, almost soothing, if I could ignore the fact that I had no idea where it was coming from.

Beep.

I followed the sound toward a cluster of monitors I hadn’t noticed before. Pale light flickered across their screens, numbers shifting beside jagged green lines. A tangle of cables ran from the monitors, disappearing beneath the bed and out of sight.

The fog in my head began to clear.

A hospital room.

I was in a freaking hospital room.

Great. Just great.

My eyes moved again, taking in the generic landscape print hanging crookedly on the wall before settling on a small sofa tucked into the corner. A dark jacket had been tossed over the arm, one sleeve hanging toward the floor.

Then something beside my bed caught my attention.

My brain screeched to a halt.

There was a creature in the room.

A man.

He was folded into a stool pulled right up against my bed, his head resting on the mattress near my hip. Dark hair fell across his forehead, hiding most of his face. One arm lay across the edge of the bed.

The other…

My breath caught.

His hand was wrapped around mine.

For a moment, my mind refused to make sense of it. His fingers rested loosely against mine, his thumb brushing my knuckles. Warmth spread through my skin from where our hands touched, startling against the coolness that had settled over the rest of me.

My fingers twitched.

His grip tightened, his fingers curling around mine in a sleepy, instinctive response.

My hand went rigid beneath his.