Chapter Thirteen

ADAM looked entirely at a loss.

“I don’t remember how I got here. What I did before that. I don’t even remember my name.” He’d taken the name Jonah because it felt right. He was pretty sure it wasn’t his real name, though.

“I woke up in Punta Cana ten years ago,” Jonah said, doing his best to explain what he knew was preposterous. “Without ID. Without anything but the clothes on my back. Or what was left of them.”

Adam rubbed his mouth and frowned. “Holy fuck. I thought that only happened in movies.”

“You believe me?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Adam countered. “Not that I’ve met anyone with amnesia before.”

“I know it sounds like I’m certifiable.” Maybe he was.

“Is that why you didn’t tell me before?” Adam asked. “You thought I’d think you were off your rocker?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t the entire truth. Ever since he’d woken up on that beach, he felt as though something was chasing him. Something bad. Painful. He knew it didn’t make sense. It was simpler to focus on the easy explanation.

Adam seemed to consider this, but he didn’t press Jonah. “What did the doctors say?”

“I never went to a doctor.” Jonah avoided them at all costs. Lorene told him it was because he didn’t want to remember. She was right.

“Oh.”

“Have you tried to figure out who you are?” Adam asked after a long pause.

Damn good question. Damn difficult question. “I tried.” At first he had. Sort of. He made a few tentative attempts to poke around, but the tension in his gut built with every question he asked. Every time he tried to remember, he ended up with the mother of all headaches or more nightmares. More pain. More fear. More reason to believe he didn’t want to find the truth. More reason to take advantage of his new life and leave the old one where it belonged—in the past. Buried. So in the end, he’d decided to let it go. He told himself that if his past was really important, it would find him. He was happy without it. He stopped wondering and focused on what he did know. And it worked, for the most part.

“No one came looking for you?”

Jonah shook his head. “It’s not like I’ve hidden myself away or anything.”

Lorene had suggested they contact the local paper and ask them to run a story about him. “Maybe someone will see it,” she’d said. But he hadn’t wanted to go looking for trouble. He might have lost his memory, but he still had his common sense.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Adam asked tentatively. “Because we can pretend this conversation never happened.”

“No. It’s okay. Really.” Jonah wanted to talk about it. He’d never felt that way before, but something about the way Adam listened to him without judging put him at ease. “There are days when I get so frustrated with myself, I can’t stand it.”

“I didn’t realize… I really am sorry.”

Jonah took Adam’s hand and squeezed it, then leaned in for a kiss.

“Sit?” Adam suggested.

“Sure.”

Adam led Jonah back to the blanket, and they sat in silence for a few minutes. He moved closer, put his hands on Jonah’s shoulders, and began to massage them. “Better?” he asked.

“Yes. Thanks.” Jonah sighed as Adam continued to work the tension from his shoulders. “God, that feels good.”

“Good.”

“There isn’t much to tell,” Jonah said after another few minutes passed. With each movement of Adam’s hands, he felt a little better and the gnawing sense of dread eased a bit more. “I woke up on a beach about ten years ago. Lorene, a woman in Punta Cana, found me. I stayed with her for a few years.

“At first, I obsessed over the not-remembering thing. I’d sit for hours and try to make myself remember. I’d get headaches that lasted for days. And one day I decided it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. I liked where I was.”

“Maybe you’re someone famous,” Adam joked.

“Yeah, right.”

“You never know.” Adam let go of Jonah’s shoulders and sat at his side again.

“Do I look like someone famous?”

Adam kissed him, then held his gaze. “Maybe a movie star.”

“Right.” But the way Adam looked at him made Jonah feel like something special.

“Hmmm. Let’s see….” Adam flicked a bit of sand from his foot and lay back on the blanket. He grinned, then said, “You’re too old to be Howard Hughes.”

“Or Jimmy Hoffa.” Jonah rolled onto his side and rested his head on Adam’s chest.

Adam chuckled. “Gives new meaning to ‘sleeping with the fishes.’”

“Besides, wouldn’t that make me a hundred years old?”

“Okay, okay.” Adam stroked Jonah’s hair. “How about Jackson Roth? He’d probably be about your age.”

Jonah laughed. “You mean the dark prince of Silicon Valley? The founder of your archnemesis?”

“Entech isn’t my nemesis,” Adam protested. “More like a thorn in my side.”

“Either way, that’d be perfect, wouldn’t it? I wave my magic wand and Entech leaves your family in peace.” If only he could do that. But Adam was talented and focused—he would work things out on his own.

“Poof, you’re a frog.”

Jonah raised his head and lifted his eyebrows in mock admonition. “And you’ve had too much to drink.”

“I drank one beer over an hour ago,” Adam protested. “Besides, in college, three beers was a warm-up.”

“I’m guessing it’s been a few years since then.”

Adam sighed. “I turn thirty in a few months.” He laughed again. “Maybe you lost your memory because you didn’t want to remember how old you are,” he added and pulled Jonah down into a kiss.

“I’m sure I’m ancient,” Jonah said after their lips parted, happy to slip back into their playful banter and away from more serious subjects. “Sixty, maybe seventy?”

“Your hair’s blond, not gray,” Adam pointed out. “Then again….” He traced fingertips over where the beginnings of crow’s feet had begun to form.

Jonah sighed and closed his eyes in response. “Lorene said I looked like a college kid when she found me. I put twenty-four on the working papers a friend of hers helped me get. I guess that means I’m older than you.”

“I like older men.”

Jonah waggled his eyebrows. “You do, do you?” He kissed Adam and worked his way down Adam’s neck with his lips and tongue.

For the first time since he’d met Adam, Jonah felt an impending sense of loss. Tomorrow Adam would be on his way home. And I’ll still be here in paradise.

Somehow his little piece of paradise didn’t seem as appealing as it had before.