The pain of her suppositions grew unbearable. And she just had to know. “Wh-who are you?”
The hand beneath hers went still. All of him seemed to become rock, as if her question had a Medusa effect.
When he finally spoke, his voice had dipped an octave lower, a bass, slowed-down rasp, “You don’t know me?”
“Sh-should I?” She squeezed her eyes shut as soon as the words were out. She’d just kissed him. And she was telling him that she had no idea who he was. “I know I should…b-but I can’t r-remember.”
Another protracted moment. Then he muttered, “You’ve forgotten me?”
She gaped up at him, shook her head, as if the movement would slot some comprehension into her mind. “Uh…I may have forgotten…how to speak, too. I had this…distinct belief language skills…are the last to go…e-even in total…memory loss. I thought…saying I can’t remember you…was the same as saying…I forgot who y-you are.”
His gaze lengthened until she thought he wouldn’t speak again. Ever. Then he let out a lung-deflating exhalation, raked his fingers through his gleaming wealth of hair. “I’m the one who’s finding it hard to articulate. Your language skills are in perfect condition. In fact, I’ve never heard you speak that much in one breath.”
“M-many fractured…breaths…you mean.”
He nodded, noting her difficulty, then shook his head, in wonder it seemed. “One word to one short sentence at a time was your norm.”
“So you…do know me. E-extensively, it seems.”
The wings of his thick eyebrows drew closer together. “I wouldn’t label my knowledge of you extensive.”
“I’d label it…en-encyclopedic.”
Another interminable silence. Then another darkest-bass murmur poured from him, thrumming every neuron in her hypersensitive nervous system. “It seems your memory deficit is the only thing that’s extensive here, Cybele.”
She knew she should be alarmed at this verdict. She wasn’t.
She sighed. “I love…the way…you say…my name.”
And if she’d thought he’d frozen before, it was nothing compared to the stillness that snared him now. It was as if time and space had hit a pause button and caught him in their stasis field.
Then, in such a controlled move, as if he were afraid she was made of soap bubbles and she’d burst if he as much as rattled the air around her, he sat down beside her on her pristine white bed.
His weight dipped the mattress, rolling her slightly toward him. The side of her thigh touched his through the thickness of his denim pants, through her own layers of covering. Something slid through the mass of aches that constituted her body, originating from somewhere deep within her, uncoiling through her gut to pool into her loins.
She was barely functioning, and he could wrench that kind of response from her every depleted cell? What would he do to her if she were in top condition? What had he done? Because she was certain this response to him wasn’t new.
“You really don’t remember who I am at all.”
“You really…are finding it hard…to get my words, aren’t you?” Her lips tugged. She was sure there was no humor in this situation, that when it all sank in she’d be horrified about her memory loss and what it might signify of neurological damage.
But for now, she just found it so endearing that this man, who she didn’t need memory to know was a powerhouse, was so shaken by the realization.
It also said he cared what happened to her, right? She could enjoy that belief now, even if it proved to be a delusion later.
She sighed again. “I thought it was clear…what I meant. At least it sounded…clear to me. But what would I know? When I called your…knowledge of me…encyclopedic, I should have added…compared to mine. I haven’t only…forgotten who you are, I have no idea…who I am.”
Two
Rodrigo adjusted the drip, looking anywhere but at Cybele.
Cybele. His forbidden fruit. His ultimate temptation.
The woman whose very existence had been like corrosive acid coursing through his arteries. The woman the memory of whom he would have given anything to wake up free of one day.
And it was she who’d woken up free of the memory of him.
It had been two days since she’d dropped this bomb on him.
He was still reverberating with the shock.
She’d told him she didn’t remember the existence that was the bane of his. She’d forgotten the very identity that had been behind the destruction of one life. And the poisoning of his own.
And he shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t have cared. Not beyond the care he offered his other patients. By all testimonies, he went above and beyond the demands of duty and the dictates of compassion for each one. He shouldn’t have neglected everyone and everything to remain by her side, to do everything for her when he could have delegated her care to the highly qualified professionals he’d painstakingly picked and trained, those he paid far more than money to keep doing the stellar job they did.
He hadn’t. During the three interminable days after her surgery until she woke up, whenever he’d told himself to tend to his other duties, he couldn’t. She’d been in danger, and it had been beyond him to leave her.
Her inert form, her closed eyes, had been what had ruled him. The drive to get her to move, to open her eyes and look at him with those endless inky skies that had been as inescapable as a black hole since they’d first had him in their focus, had been what motivated him.
Periodically she had opened them, but there had been no sight or comprehension in them, no trace of the woman who’d invaded and occupied his thoughts ever since he’d laid eyes on her.
Yet he’d prayed that, if she never came back, her body would keep on functioning, that she’d keep opening her eyes, even if it was just a mechanical movement with no sentience behind it.
Two days ago, she’d opened those eyes and the blankness had been replaced by the fog of confusion. His heart had nearly torn a hole in his ribs when coherence had dawned in her gaze. Then she’d looked at him and there had been more.
He should have known then that she was suffering from something he hadn’t factored in. Finding her distance and disdain replaced by warmth that had escalated to heat should have given him his first clue. Having her nuzzle him like a feline delighted at finding her owner, then that kiss that had rocked him to his foundations, should have clenched the diagnosis.