Page 14 of Hunted in Hope Town

“Screw my doctor!” she shouted, flinging her hands up in the air, effectively shutting him up. She met his gaze, tears making her brown eyes look darker. “My name is Kirsten,” she said, one of those tears falling over and tracking down her cheek.

He had to fight to speak against the tightness in his throat. Dr. Leigh had said to let her come to her own conclusions, and this wasn’t memory, but it was her own conclusion. “Yes.”

“What’s my last name?”

He couldn’t tell her. It went against what he’d been told. It went against everything he’d fought to do for the past two years. Keep her safe. Keep her…okay. Keep her at a distance. Even if she didn’t remember, she couldn’t know. It would be…

He didn’t have the words for what it would be. He didn’t know how it would feel. Awful, still awful.

But Kirsten had always been good at puzzles, mysteries, understanding people and the way they might say something that meant something else. She just had a…way about her.

Even without her memory, it was clearly still there.

“I’m not… I’m not Mrs. Sutton.” She slapped at the tears on her cheeks. She straightened her shoulders. “I’m not,” she insisted, like it was a challenge. Like she could make it so.

“Okay,” he agreed, because that was what Dr. Leigh told them to do. If she was upset, go along. They didn’t need to go out of their way not to upset her, but confronting her past should happen with a trained professional.

Not him. Not alone in a cabin after a threat on her life.

But if she was standing in front of him saying she wasn’t Mrs. Sutton, then…well, she was afraid she was.

“I need you to explain this to me. From the beginning. I need to understand what is happening.” She was trying to be brave, but her voice wasn’t strong and another few tears trickled down her cheeks.

“We don’t need to explain,” he said softly. “It’s late. Let’s sleep. Let’s—”

“Tell me. Say it. Now. I don’t care what the doctor said. I don’t care about anything. How can you expect me to stay here, to sleep with all these questions? With all this? Just tell me the damn truth.”

“Jessica.”

“No. Now. You will tell me now or I walk out that door. Who the hell am I?”

He would stop her. He didn’t want to have to, but he would. She wouldn’t walk out that door, no matter what his answer was, but because he couldn’t let her walk, and because he loved her more than anything in this life, he had to tell her the truth.

“Your name is Kirsten Elizabeth Sutton, and you are my wife.”

Chapter Six

My wife.

Jessica turned away from him. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t… It felt like something had pierced her through the chest. A kind of pain that echoed out to the rest of her, especially at her temples. She felt a bit like she was going to throw up.

My wife.

“Jess… Kir… I don’t know what to do here. Dr. Leigh said it was best if you remembered on your own.” He sounded pained. Lost.

But not nearly as pained and lost as she felt. Still, there were things she remembered, apparently. “I remember you being shot.”

“You said it was a dream.”

“It was, but it was real. You’ve been shot exactly there.” And there were other things. Little things. Over the past two years, he’d always felt different than everyone else. Those strange impulses to reach out and touch him. The reticence to be around him and yet it had never been fear. Even in the discomfort, it had been something like…

Knowing there was a secret but not knowing what it was. Not wanting to know.

Now she knew. And still nothing made sense. Ellis wasn’t a stranger, but she could stand here and look at him and remember nothing that came before except a bloody shoulder. And maybe a few other things she’d gotten in the habit of convincing herself were her imagination.

Him smiling in a tuxedo, like at a wedding. Him with a beard, talking to her in low, serious tones while her heart ached. A dichotomy of feelings, leaving too many questions swirling around in her head.

Were we happy? Do you love me? Am I supposed to love you? But that was all… Those were things they could circle back to, and they didn’t have anything to do with the threat.