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And his opinion of me will lower,again.
Maybe this guy knows where I was sitting, and he’ll spare me the embarrassment.
“Here.” He opens a door to a stairwell.
We go down a flight, and my apprehension rises. We come out on the bottom level, now even with the rink. I’m imagining—because I can’t see it from here. We’re surrounded by concrete walls and equipment.
I follow him until we get to another door, and he pulls out his phone. Shoots off a text, then steps away.
“What’s your name?” I pick at my nails. I insisted on painting them, but it was a mistake. I keep running my other nail under the chipped edges, flaking off more and more.
“Miles Whiteshaw.”
I nod. “Nice to meet you.”
He tilts his head.
“Or, uh, nice to see you again,” I cover. I shove my glasses up my nose.
A door behind me bangs open. I spin around just in time to see a hulking hockey player—the glaring one from earlier—storming into my space. His helmet is gone, although he’s still in his outfit. The jersey and pads that make him seem bigger, his skates that add inches to his height. No gloves, though. Tattoos peek out from the edges of his long sleeves at his wrists.
I backpedal, not that it matters much. He keeps coming until I’m up against the wall.
“I knew it was you,” he breathes. Dark hair that’s long on top and cut short on the sides, peculiar blue eyes. There’s gold in the center of his irises, although it’s practically eradicated as his pupils dilate. Full lips. Square jaw. Cheekbones that could cut glass.
He’s handsome. Startlingly so.
I expected hockey players, from what I had read, to have missing teeth and crooked noses. While his nose is straight, I can’t see his teeth. So maybe he has lost some along the way, and I’ll only find out when he opens his mouth again.
“D-do I know you?” It comes out soft and low, and totally unlike whatever version of me I thought I’d been building.
He laughs in my face.
“No, really.” I put my hand on his chest.
Mistake. My heart skips a beat, then keeps up that furious pounding. It might break my ribs again trying to flee my chest. I wanted to create some distance between us, but I’m not making any headway.
His strange eyes flick down to my hand, then back up to my face.
“Who are you?” I repeat. “Your friend didn’t say how he knew me either.”
“Jacob—” That friend steps forward. “Something’s not right.”
No, it’s not. It hasn’t been right for a while.
“Who am I, Melody?” He leans in, until we’re nose to nose. “Who am I?”
I shake my head. He seems desperate with the need for me to answer, but I don’t have one to give him. I was nothing. And then I wasJane Doeuntil someone gave me my name back. And I still feel like that shell of a person with a generic, dead woman’s name, because—
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
I’ve never seen someone be so fucking devastated by three little words. Besides my cousin, there was no one else to break the news to about my amnesia. No one showed up at the hospital for me for the first three weeks.
It was a miracle they managed to track down Thomas.
I had no identification. No name for the first week of this new life.
Imagine that? Imagine being nameless? Until they got a hit on my prints from a background check. Then, I had a name and a face and an old, out-of-date address in Brooklyn. That apartment was long-since rented out, as Thomas and I found out this weekend.
