Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Juliet pov

I stared at him, and the word fiancé did nothing inside me, no warmth, no fear, only an empty place where a feeling should have been.

“I do not remember you,” I said, and my voice came out thin and cracked.

“I know,” he said. He still did not sit.

“My name is Jaxon De Luca,” he said flatly, with no hope that it would mean anything to me, and it did not.

Jaxon De Luca.

I repeated it silently, and waited for something to answer, and nothing did.

“Listen carefully, because I will say this once,” he continued, in the voice of a man reading a report aloud.

“Five days ago you called my daughter’s nanny and asked to take Nina for a walk near the old quarter.

She wandered away from you, she ran into the road, and you pushed her out of the way.

My car hit you instead, and my daughter is unhurt.”

He said it without once looking away from my face, and without one word in it that asked how I felt, and I felt my fingers tighten on the sheet.

He is the one whose car hit me, I thought, and he has not even said he is sorry.

“Nina has asked for you every day since,” he went on, “and so has Daniel.”

“Who is Daniel?” I asked.

“My son as well,” he said

So I had two children waiting for me, and I did not know either of their faces.

I waited for him to say thank you.

He did not, and the silence went on so long that I understood it was never going to come.

“We have been engaged for five years,” he said, “and the wedding is in five days.

The date was set long before the accident, and it will not move.”

“Five days?” I said, and I tried to sit up too fast, and the room tilted and my head pounded.

Five days, and I could not even remember my own name.

“I cannot marry a man I do not remember,” I said, and my voice shook with anger now, and I hated that it shook.

“You agreed to it long before the accident,” he said, and his tone did not rise or soften at all.

“It is not a matter for debate.” Not a matter for debate?

I felt the heat climb into my face, because he spoke only of dates and agreements, and not once of the person lying in a hospital bed with a bandage around her head.

Then I asked the question I knew was foolish even as it left my mouth.

“Do I love you?” His eyes held mine for a moment.

“No,” he said.

It landed in my chest harder than it should have, considering that I did not know him, and I swallowed and made myself ask the rest.

“Do you love me?”

“No,” he said again, and he said it plainly and without cruelty, as a fact and nothing more.

Why does that hurt when I do not even know him? I thought, pressing my lips together so that he would not see them tremble.

“Then why are we marrying?” I asked.

“My father has a deadline, and the marriage is convenient for both of us,” he said.

“You knew that.”

I knew that.

I had known it, the woman I used to be, and she had agreed to it anyway.

What kind of life had she lived, that this was something she accepted?

“Rest,” he said, and turned, and walked to the door.

He did not look back, and the door closed behind him with a quiet click, and I let out a breath I had not known I was holding.

Two nurses came in almost at once and began checking the tube in my hand and the numbers on the machine, and neither of them looked at me directly.

“Could I have a mirror, please?” I asked.

One of them hesitated, then took a small mirror from her pocket and held it in front of me.

I looked. The woman looking back was beautiful, and she was a complete stranger.

Her face was pale and tired under the bandage, her eyes were wide and frightened, and long curly hair fell around her shoulders.

I lifted my hand, and she lifted hers, and I touched my cheek, and she touched hers.

That is me, I told myself. That is Alice George.

I said the name softly, and it sounded strange in my own mouth, and I could not make it fit.

That was when I saw the bracelet.

It lay on the table beside my bed, a thin silver band, and I picked it up with a hand that was not entirely steady.

There was a small crescent moon engraved on the inside, and nothing else, no name, no date.

“Where did this come from?” I asked the nurse.

“It was on your wrist when you were brought in from the accident,” she said. “We took it off for the scans.”

She said it kindly enough, but she was already turning away, and I held the bracelet in my fist and thought, this is the only thing I have that was with me before I woke.

I slid it onto my wrist, and it felt right there, and I could not have said why.

The nurses left, and I was not alone for long.

The door opened again, only a little, and Violet stood in the gap with her hands clasped in front of her.

She looked at me for a long moment, and her face was careful, and she glanced once over her shoulder into the corridor before she spoke.

“Welcome back, sister,I’ll see you later” she said quietly.

Then she stepped out and shut the door before I could say a word.

Sister? The words were warm, but her eyes had not been, and I could not tell whether it had been a greeting or a warning.

Why did she say it so gladly, and then look so afraid?

In the evening Doctor Costa came to check my eyes and my pulse, and she sat down on the chair beside my bed, which no one else had done.

“Your scans show swelling, but no lasting damage that we can find,” she said in her slow, calm voice.

“Your memory may come back in a few days, in a few months, or in pieces, or it may not come back at all.

I cannot promise you anything, and I will not lie to you about it.”

My throat closed, because I had hoped, without admitting it, for one clear answer.

“What should I do?” I asked.

“Rest, and be patient, and above all do not force it,” she said, and her eyes were steady on mine.

“If you push too hard against it, you may only cause yourself pain, and delay your recovery.”

“Do not force it,” I repeated, and she nodded, and I understood that this was the one piece of advice anyone had given me that was meant for my own sake.

She left, and the lights in the corridor went down, and the hospital grew quiet.

I lay there in the dark with the machine beeping beside me, and I turned my head toward the wall.

“Alice George,” I whispered.

“Alice George.

Alice George.” I said it again and again, until the sound stopped being a word, until it almost sounded true.

It did not feel true, but I was twenty eight years old, I was engaged to a man who did not love me, and I had no one else to be.

I do not know when I fell asleep. I only know that something warm and very small closed around my finger.

It was a baby’s hand, with tiny fingers that held on with surprising strength, and I could feel the warmth of it against my skin, and a soft breath against my wrist.

What baby? Had I nursed Jaxon’s children too?

I woke with my heart racing and my own finger curled tight in the darkness.

There was no baby, there was nothing in the room at all, and still my face was wet. I touched my face and felt tears streaming down my cheeks.

“Huh? Why am I crying?” I asked nobody in particular.