“No, of course not. But people don’t just forget what I’ve forgotten.”
“They do if it never happened and they have nothing to remember.” I grab on to both of her hands, hold them tightly in my own. “Look, Veronica, I’ve spent my entire adult life studying diseased minds. I’ve been in the heads of schizophrenics and people with bi-polar disease or multiple personality disorder or suicide-inducing depressions. I’ve studied narcissists and sociopaths and I’ve seen what all of them can do, when pushed. That’s not you.”
“But you don’t know—”
“I do know! You’re an amazing actress, but no one’s that good.”
She smiles for the first time in too long. “It’s funny. I had that same thought about you just a few minutes ago.”
“That I’m an amazing actress?” I repeat, largely to make her laugh. I grin when it works.
“That no one is this good.”
“Right? And even if someone else is, I’m not, so…” I take her hands, bring first one to my lips and then the other, reveling in the feel of her soft skin under the roughness of my thumbs. “We’re going to figure this out, sweetheart, I promise you. And when we do, you’ll know once and for all that this isn’t on you. You’re not going crazy.”
“Then what is going on? Because this stuff is happening and if I’m not doing it…”
“Sometimes the simplest answer is also the best. If you’re not doing it, then somebody else is.”
“You say that so matter-of-factly.”
“Do I? Believe me, I don’t feel matter-of-fact about it.” In fact, I’m fucking furious. Enraged. I want to find whoever is fucking with her and make them suffer the way she’d been suffering for days. “I’m going to take care of this for you.”
“How?”
By hunting down whoever felt like they had a right to do this and making them regret it. “By analyzing the data. It’s what I’m good at, after all.” I might not be a behavioral analyst anymore, but my FBI training is not something I’m ever going to forget.
She studies my face for long seconds, like she’s looking for something there. Maybe truth. Maybe competence. Maybe an assurance I’m only too willing to give her. I can’t tell, and right now I don’t particularly care. Not when she drains her brandy and curls into my arms like she really does trust me. Like all her words to the contrary are just that. Words. For a man with my past, it means more than I can ever explain to her.
Long minutes pass as I hold her tight to my chest, rocking her back and forth in as soothing a manner as I can muster. Outside the huge picture windows that make up three of the family room walls, the sun is slowly coming to life over the Pacific. Huge and orange and dazzling, it looks like it’s setting fire to the very water it’s rising over and I have the nonsensical urge to reach through the glass and touch it. To try to hold a little bit of that brilliance in my hands.
I know it won’t work, but the urge is there all the same. Much as it is with Veronica, who is another brilliant, brightly burning flame. And like the sun, I can already feel her slipping through my fingers.
I tighten my arms around her at the thought, hold on to her with everything I have inside of me. Long minutes pass as she stays curled against me, her head on my chest. Her arms wrapped around my shoulders.
It’s quiet and sweet and exactly what the two of us need right now.
After a while, I’m half-convinced she’s asleep and I shift a little, trying to make her more comfortable. But she grabs on to me like a limpet, refuses to move so much as an inch. And I let her because I’m in no hurry to let go of her, either. Not after going the whole day without feeling her against me like this.
“Ian?” A few more minutes have passed and I’m floating now in that nebulous state halfway between waking and sleep. But something about the way she says my name has me coming to attention.
“Yes, sweetheart?” I ask, even though my built-in radar is going off and I’ve already figured out what she’s going to say.
“You promised that if I talked to you, you’d share something with me, too.”
I stiffen despite knowing it was coming; the warning I give myself to stay cool and calm getting buried under the natural tension that comes with having to talk about my own past. “That’s not exactly what I said. But, yeah, we can talk if you’re not too tired. Or we can go to bed and talk about this when we both wake up.”
I know which avenue I’m rooting for, but Veronica didn’t get where she is today by not being persistent. So even as I present the options, I’m struggling to wake up faster, to sit taller and think quicker. Telling this story takes more than I’ve got inside me on a regular day, let alone after a night like the one we’ve just had.