Brynn

 

I don’t know why-y-y nobody told you . . .

Pretty.

So pretty.

I try to open my eyes, but they are heavy and sluggish so I stop trying, concentrating on the soft music that is coming from somewhere nearby. A clear male voice sings the old Beatles ballad. The gentle strains of a guitar are so ethereal, I don’t know if I am awake or dreaming.

Dreaming, I decide, drifting back into a deep sleep.

I’m only dreaming.

***

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I need to put a little more ointment on here, okay, Brynn?”

Okay, I think, whimpering when I feel the pressure of a finger tracing a painful line on my hip. There is a moment of relief, and then the pressure resumes in another spot. Groaning in pain, I force my eyes open. They don’t want to focus, but it appears that I am lying down, staring up at a ceiling made of wooden beams. I clench my eyes shut as the pressure returns, but hot tears escape, slipping from the wells of my eyes, scorching a trail down my cheeks.

“I know it hurts,” he says, his deep voice thick with regret. “I promise I wouldn’t do it if I had another choice.”

I close my eyes, sinking into his voice and anchoring myself to it at the same time. Though the voice is intimately familiar to me, I can find no face in my mind with which to identify it. Had it not been for a sixth sense telling me that I am in a safe place, I might become panicked . . . because how can his voice be familiar when I have no idea what he looks like?

“You’re okay now,” he whispers close to my ear, the warmth in his voice like a lullaby. “Sleep, Brynn. Heal. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Who? I want to ask. Who will be here when I wake up? Who are you?

But sleep is already pulling me under.

And I don’t fight it.

***

My eyes open to a dimly lit room, my ears aware of someone singing softly to a guitar. I know this song. I’ve heard it before. Closing my eyes again, I listen for a moment, licking my lips and finding them dry and painful.

“Water?” I manage to croak.

The guitar stops instantly.

My eyes flutter open to find someone walking toward me, his form tall but hazy as he comes closer, finally standing over my bed.

Do I know you? How do I know you?

“Brynn? Did you say something?”

His voice is familiar—deeply familiar—though it is not my father, and it is not Jem.

“Did you say ‘water’?”

“Please,” I murmur, my throat so dry and scratchy, the single word hurts.

The mattress beneath my body depresses a little as he sits next to me. Placing his hand behind my skull, he lifts it, and I find cool glass pressed against my lower lip. I drink greedily as he tips the glass. Some of the water dribbles down my chin in my haste to hydrate.

Where am I? And . . . .who . . . ?

The glass is removed, and a moment later, a washcloth wipes the drizzle from my chin and neck.

“Who are you?” I ask, my voice soft and raspy. “Where am I?”

“I’m Cassidy,” he says, shifting his body from the bed to kneel beside it. His eyes are now level with mine.

I don’t know him.

If I had ever met him before, I wouldn’t have forgotten him. Why? Because his eyes are unforgettable, otherworldly. Surrounded by long, thick lashes that curl up at the ends, his left eye is green and his right eye is blue.

“Your eyes . . .,” I murmur.

“It’s heterochromia,” he says, blinking self-consciously. His lips flinch slightly, like he wants to smile but doesn’t. “Weird, but not contagious.”

I let my eyes skim over the rest of his face.

His skin is clear, though deeply tanned, and he has three moles—beauty marks—on his left cheek: a tiny one under his eye, a larger one in the middle of his cheek, and the largest of the three a bit lower, covered by the dirty-blond scruff of his beard.

His hair is unkempt, as though it hasn’t been cut professionally in a while, standing up at odd angles, a combination of bed head and owner apathy. It is a dark blond with copper highlights, the ends almost flaxen, and curled at his neck. Like his eyelashes, it gives him a youthful, disarming look.

“How do I know you?” I ask.

“You don’t, really.”

I stare into his eyes, the different colors slightly jarring. “Where am I?”

“My home.”

“Umm . . .” My heart starts beating faster because I know I am forgetting something—something very important that would explain why I am here. “Why . . . What . . . what happened to me?”

“Breathe in,” says Cassidy, his voice firm but gentle.

I take a breath.

“Deeper.”

I inhale enough breath to fill my lungs but cry out in agony as they expand. Sharp, shooting pains from my hip and side force me to exhale slowly. Blinking at Cassidy, I see him wince in sympathy before nodding.

“Do you remember?”

“I hurt,” I moan, my eyes shuttering closed from the pain.

“Brynn,” he says, his voice farther away now, like he is calling my name down a well. “Brynn, stay with me . . .”

“I hurt,” I whisper again, surrendering to darkness.

***

The next time I wake up, I remember things right away:

I am in Cassidy’s house.

Cassidy’s eyes are different colors.

I don’t know how I know Cassidy.

Cassidy doesn’t want to hurt me.

My body hurts.

Don’t breathe too deep.

I am lying on my back but turn my head to the side, finding a man—the same Cassidy that my brain remembers—asleep in a rocking chair beside my bed.

I recognize his face from before (minutes ago? hours ago? yesterday? last week?), but I still study it for a few minutes.

His lips are parted and slack, full and pink, and I have a sudden image of kissing them, which shocks the hell out of me since I haven’t had a hot thought about a man since losing Jem. Tugging my bottom lip between my teeth, I find it tender to the touch. Reaching up to finger it, I find a scab on the upper right lip and another on the lower, as though both were split. Touching the rest of my face gingerly, I find a Band-Aid on my forehead and wince when I press down on it. Another anonymous wound.

I remember Cassidy telling me to breathe deeply the last time I woke up, and I slowly move my fingers down my body, grateful to discover I am clothed, wearing a T-shirt and underwear. As my fingers near my waist, I feel the pain of my touch. And when I try to move, to test the soundness of the area by shifting my body, I feel it even more sharply.

Sucking in a breath, I cease my crude examination, removing my fingers and flattening them on the sheets by my hips as tears fill my eyes.

I am hurt on my face and my body. Someone has hurt me.

You’re just tourists in my dreams.

I look over at Cassidy, who snores lightly in his sleep, but instinctively I know it wasn’t him. I don’t know how I know this so certainly, but I do. I know that I am safe with him.

“Cassidy?” I whisper.

I have so many questions, and I am too awake to go back to sleep.

His eyes flinch, and he changes his body position just slightly, but otherwise he remains asleep.

“Cassidy?” I say a little louder.

“Mama?” He grunts softly, his eyes blinking open.

“Brynn,” I say, watching him reach up and rub his eyes.

“Hey.” He leans forward. “You’re awake.”

“How long have I been here?” I ask, trying to sit up, but the pain in my side reminds me that I need to move slowly.

A crease appears in his forehead. “Three days, I guess.”

“I’ve been asleep for three days?”

“You’ve been in and out,” he says, resting his elbows on his knees as he looks back at me with one green eye and one blue.

“My face . . . my hip . . .”

He nods but otherwise remains still. “Do you remember anything?”

“Not much.” I take as deep a breath as I dare. “I only know it wasn’t you.”

I have never thought of relief as a palpable, visible, living emotion before now. Joy is exuberant. Grief is oppressive. Fear is constricting. But I see relief transform Cassidy’s face, delivering it from doubt and shedding layers of worry with its arrival. It tugs at my heartstrings just as surely as it makes me wonder.

“Did you . . . save me?” I ask.

He grimaces, his jaw tightening. “Wasn’t there in time to save you.”

Thay-uh.

The way he says “there” pinches at something inside me because it sounds so much like Jem. A Mainer accent. How I’ve missed it.

“I’m sure sorry for that, Brynn,” he says.

“But I’m alive,” I point out, maneuvering ungracefully into a semi-sitting position and reaching for the glass of water on the table beside me.

“If I was even a few seconds later . . .,” he mutters, a note of disgust in his tone.

I sip the water, grateful for the coolness sluicing down my dry throat, trying to recall what happened. And suddenly—a flash—metal over my head. Another flash—the squishing sound of something hard sinking into something soft.

The glass starts slipping from my hand, but Cassidy reaches forward lightning fast and grabs it, pulling it from my limp fingers.

“You’re remembering,” he says, nodding at me with wide eyes.

“I was stabbed,” I murmur in a rush. “Someone was . . . s-stabbing me.”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” says Cassidy. “Didn’t wait around to find out his name.”

“But you called the police? The . . . the rangers? Did they arrest him? Do I need to . . . I mean, should I make a statement about the attack or . . . or . . .”

“Police’ll take your statement when you’re better. Don’t worry about it for now.”

He’s been holding my eyes steadily, but now he looks away, placing the glass back on the end table and standing up.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, rubbing his stubbly chin between his thumb and forefinger.

Am I hungry? I blink up at him. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll heat up some soup, okay?”

Before I can ask another question, he’s turned and slipped out of the small bedroom, pulling a curtain shut behind him.