The Reaper (Eastward Prison)

Chapter 10

CHAPTER

TEN

HANNAH

“I feel like there is something between us, something hot and alive and full of passion and affection, but there is something cold and solid, like concrete, something between us, a wall, you hide behind it sometimes... ” He was sitting up in bed, it was the day after he had fainted, and Hannah was sure he was beginning to remember. Beginning to remember he wasn’t hers after all. It was on the tip of his tongue, the elephant in the room. The ward had felt safe and now it felt too crowded with the web of lies she had spun..

He was right, of course, she was almost glad he felt it, too. Yes, there was a wall of something hard and cold and solid. It was who he was. And yes, there was something she didn’t want to tell him, he was perceptive to feel that cold wall of lies.

“You just had clear boundaries. There are some things you kept to yourself. Which was fine. I never pushed you for anything further.” She knew she sounded distant. She was scrambling to make stuff up now. He knew and it was only a matter of time until the house of cards she had built came tumbling down around her.

“I could change that, though, like you said the other night, I can change, maybe I should start looking forward, instead of trying to unravel the past, this could be a new beginning for us,” he said, tentatively.

She looked right at him. Why had he said that, phrased it exactly like that, ‘new beginning’? That’s what she had called him, when she had found him, when she had claimed him. That caught her out, her face flushed and she stammered, unsure of how to respond.

He pulled her close and kissed her. It was a lovely kiss, a real kiss, there was deep feeling there on his side. It wasn’t the passion filled, rushed, hungry kiss designed to arouse, like previously. The kisses of the other night. It was a real kiss.

He looked at her, really looked, like it was the first time. “You're very beautiful, you know, your eyes, there is so much going on in your eyes…”

She felt uncomfortable at the compliment. He spotted, she must have squirmed. He could read her like a book, he picked up on it at once.

“Did I not tell you that?” he asked.

She took in a shaky breath. He defaulted to thinking about their relationship. He felt something was up and he always wanted to ask, how had they been before. He didn’t yet realise that actually she was such a tiny part of his life. She was a stranger, and he had bigger worries on his plate. She would fade into obscurity once he remembered. Or he’d come for revenge. He’d be angry with her for the lies. And then maybe she’d had the wrath of the Bratva and the Reapers MC coming down on her all at once.

“A new beginning, I’m telling you now, Hannah.”

She smiled but turned away, pretending to straighten out the bed sheets. She didn’t want to ask him outright, ask him what he was remembering. She didn’t want him to have to outright lie, she didn’t want to force him into that corner. She didn’t want it to end.

He took a breath. “Why is there so much you aren’t telling me?” he asked. “I can’t help but feel something doesn’t make sense here.”

Her palms immediately felt clammy, when seconds ago she had felt fine. She tried to maintain her relaxed posture, her smile, but she felt it falter on her lips.

“The doctor said it would be better not to rush it, you should recall things as they come back to you under your own pace-” she stammered, looking down, looking anywhere but right at him.

He sat back then, looking smug, his half smirk curling his lips, but there was coldness. Disappointment. “So there is something.”

She gulped. Looked down at the floor.

“But you could tell me, we could fix it, and help me out here,” he added, quietly, earnestly.

She looked at him, desperate, almost pleading with his deep brown eyes. He was so persistent, so determined to find out who he was. But she was sure once he did that he wouldn't want her, he would be hurt by what she was doing, lying about being his girlfriend. She knew him better now, and he would surely see this as a betrayal. She realised for the first time that this little adventure could only be that, an adventure, she’d set off on a destructive path that could only really end in doom. She had wanted a way out but she had basically trapped herself in.

“I sometimes feel like… maybe I wasn’t always good… to you… like maybe I wasn’t a good person…”

It was true. Maybe he was a bad person. She cleared her throat.

“Yes, remembering who you were will be a great thing,” she said, though her mouth felt like it had ash inside it. Hannah was committed, she had to keep going. She took his hand now. “But also, there is a future ahead of you, ahead of us, that is ours for the taking here… I guess what I’m trying to say is… while the past is important, there is a future, too, and you can be whoever you want to be, for that future.”

He blinked at her, listening, thinking, something in that clever mind of his whirring away.

“I mean, it doesn’t matter what books you liked or where you worked, if that’s not what you like anymore, or not what you want to do going forward. As you said, this could be a new beginning.”

“So you’ve said,” he said flatly. He looked at her and blinked. A flicker of recognition crossed his eyes, like a cloud coming over the sun. She kept her face neutral, but her mind flapped. Hannah knew, with 100% certainty, he was starting to remember. This was the moment this was the point where it began to unravel, she knew it, she was just marking time now.

This was it.

She cleared her throat and stammered. “Are you okay, you look-”

He smiled, the cloud was gone, suddenly, as quickly as it had come. “Yes, it's a good opportunity to start afresh,” he said brightly. Too brightly.

He looked at her then, like he was seeing her for the first time again. His gaze lingered on her face too long, like he was really looking. He gave her a little half-smile, then a wink.

She paused. A wink?

That’s when she realised something else. Not only did he know that she wasn’t telling the truth, but neither was he. He wasn’t telling her the truth. He was lying to her. A wink? He was remembering a lot more than he was letting on and for some reason he was going along with it playfully, almost cheekily. Why was he letting this happen? He had remembered, then was trying to throw her off by smiling and lying back to her. But it was almost as if he had flagged he was lying, almost like he wanted her to know. Like he trusted her, he could tell she wasn’t being truthful with him, but was letting it happen for now. She was going to have to stay on her toes, now she couldn’t trust anything he said, either. It both scared and excited her. She felt the blood beating around her body, adrenaline, probably.

Why was he going along with this? She knew he was beginning to realise this was made up, if he was remembering, as the neurologist said, more recent stuff first, then older things, he was remembering that she hadn’t been in his life prior to that.

She was sure of it, she would have put money on it, and she wasn’t even a betting kind of girl.