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Guilt pressed so heavily as I whispered, “He’s here because of me. All of this is my fault. I always make the worst choices. I’m so stupid sometimes. If only I listened to him. If only I didn’t distract him. God, I’ll never forgive myself.” Stroking my slightly oozy, freshly inked tattoo, I choked, “If only I’d ignored those racist pricks like Aslan did, then we could be home right now and...” I couldn’t finish. Tears rolled down my cheeks. “This is all my fault.”
Jedda pulled me into an awkward hug with the armrests of the chairs digging into our bellies. “You can’t torture yourself with ‘what ifs’, Neri. And you’re not stupid. You’re young and passionate, and we all fumble sometimes. All you need to focus on is, he’s alive. He’s getting care. You’re alive, and no one knows who he is. He’s just another unfortunate man in the ER. As long as you stay quiet and let me handle this, everything will be okay...you’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
*
Aslan
*
(Heart in Turkish: Kalp)
“ASLAN? ASLAN, YOU NEED TO WAKE UP.”
Something tapped my cheek with annoying repetition.
I floundered on the bottom of my nightmares, swimming in storms, drowning in moonlight. Panic was my only emotion as I searched for everyone I’d lost. My parents, my sister...Neri.
My chest exploded as seawater poured in.
My heart tumbled in on itself.
Fuck.
Neri.
What if I never saw her again?
What if I’d lost her for good and I never got to touch her again, kiss her again, love her—
I couldn’t.
I can’t—
“Aslan. Wake up. We don’t have much time.” The tapping turned to slapping. It offered me an anchor in a drowned world of salt and pain.
I clung to it. I hauled on it.
My eyes ripped open as I coughed and choked, retching up phantom water, crying out as my ribs stabbed and my shoulder pinched and every bone in my body became my enemy.
“That’s it. Easy does it. You’re okay. Just breathe slowly and gently.”
The blinding lights kept my vision stark white as I slowly adjusted back into a body riddled with agony. Fear from my nightmares chased me into reality and I struggled to sit up.
Neri.
I have to find her.
A gentle but firm hand landed on my sternum.
The white spots organised themselves into pictures, and I frowned as a woman leaned over me.
A woman with a kind smile, brown-black hair, and age marking her pretty face. Her fingers stroked my hair, pushing the unruly strands off my forehead as she willed me to become coherent.
The past slammed into me.
Another hospital.
Another night.
“You,” I croaked.
For a moment, I couldn’t understand. I worried my mind had split and regressed to the past, where I was sixteen and freshly orphaned.
But she was older.
She held secrets in her stare and looked at me as if she knew all of mine in return.
Slowly, she removed her hand from my forehead and stood upright. “So you remember me, then? I did wonder if you would. After all, we only spoke for such a short time.”
Wincing, I slowly sat up. My ribs were knives, my lungs their enemy. Memories crowded me. Numbers might arrange themselves in my brain with colours, but so did dates and experiences.
I could recite the time and year of so many events. Every moment I’d spent with Neri. Every stolen touch. Every awful longing. It was all there, filed neatly inside my head. Even with a skull-splitting headache, I managed to tug on one of those recollection strings and pull history to the surface.
Clearing my throat, I threw a glance at the double doors, then back to the nurse. “Of course, I remember you. You know my name. You know Anna Taylor. You were the last to see me in the hospital in Port Douglas.”
Her eyebrows rose along with her lips. “I knew you had an eidetic memory.”
I might not have known that word when I was newly shipwrecked, but now I did. I went to argue with her, but...the description fit, even if it was proven that most adults didn’t have one.
I could vividly recall most things.
I saw in pictures and colours, not words and thoughts.
I was both grateful for the gift and cursed it on a daily basis because it was yet another trait from him.
I gritted my teeth. “A-Are you going to tell them who I am?”
Her shoulders swooped back as if I’d offended her. “Of course not.”
“Why?” Sluggishness flowed in my veins. A sour aftertaste coated my tongue. At least the pain that’d pushed me under was thankfully duller than before. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here now.”
Pressing my hand against my battered ribcage, I looked again at the exit, feeling the unconquerable need to run. “I need to leave.”
“I agree.”
I froze. “Wait. You’re going to help me?”
“Look, we don’t have much time, so I’ll be brief. The driver who hit you? He’s here too. He was treated last night—”
