Chapter 2

In the end I took him home.

Not because I went soft. Because I was curious.

My nemesis of twenty-eight years had managed to lose his memory with technique. I wanted to see what he was selling.

The day he was discharged, he stood at my door with a suitcase and an innocent face. "The doctor said someone in my condition can't be left alone yet. Of the people I know... you're the only one left."

I leaned on the frame, arms crossed. "What about your parents?"

"I don't remember them." He dropped his eyes. A homeless little thing, with nowhere to go.

The voice in my head kicked the legs out from under that at once.

My mom called three times. I hung up on every one. She said if she finds out I'm running a pity act, she'll come back and break my legs!

Lena, let me in! There are mosquitoes in the hall! This body was wounded in the line of love. It cannot be fed to mosquitoes!

I stepped aside. "You sleep in the guest room. Five hundred a day. Billed at the end of the month."

"...That much?"

"Stay or don't."

He shoved the suitcase in. His mouth was unwilling. "Fine. My bad luck."

In his head, fireworks.

She said yes! The playbook did not lie to me! Step one, move in. Done!

That night I cooked tomato braised beef.

Not because I was being sweet. It was what was left in the fridge.

Callum was a famously picky eater. This one dish was the exception. He had mooched a bowl of it at my place in middle school, and after that he held a grudge... no. After that he never let it go.

He sat at the table, picked up his chopsticks like a man with standards, and tried a bite.

Then one brow went up. "It's all right. Edible, if you push it."

He said it staring straight at me. He didn't blink for a full second.

I looked down to ladle the soup and pressed my mouth flat.

He had a tell. When he lied, he liked to stare, steady in a way that was wrong. When he actually looked down on me, he didn't bother to lift his eyes.

Twenty-eight years of fighting him. I knew his habits cold.

And right then his head was scrolling, out of control.

Bowl three. I'm on bowl three.

The best tomato braised beef in the world. Lena could make it at fifteen.

I've wanted it... for thirteen years.

My hand stopped on the ladle.

The year I was fifteen, the night before his ninth-grade interview, I brought him food at midnight.

I made it sound like nothing. "Eat more. People with no memory should feed the brain."

He huffed. "Are you mocking me?"

"Stating a fact."

He choked on that, and bent over his rice.

Under it, a mutter.

She's actually kind of pretty when she's mean.

...She can never know I thought that.

I went still.

This man had fought me out loud for twenty-eight years. I had no idea how much he had been keeping where I couldn't see it.

There was an old pendant on my neck. Plain. A closed eye carved into it.

Mom said it had been prayed for when I was little, for protection. I was used to it. I didn't even take it off to shower.

That night I lay in bed and turned it over for half the night.

A second voice in your head would rattle anyone.

My first thought was too many night shifts. I was hearing things.

But no. Hearing things was not this real.

The voice kept me up all night. I couldn't sleep at all...