Page 31

Sam’s head ached fiercely as he opened his eyes. Voices hummed around him, and bright lights hung above, glaring and intrusive. White walls surrounded him, a TV mounted on one side, a window dominating another. Empty single beds with trays of stainless steel filled the floor space. He was lying in a bed and crowded by several faces, only one of which he recognised.

“Connor?” Sam said, his voice heavy.

“Hey.” Connor sat sideways on the bed. “Good to see you waking up.”

A blond teenager hung off Connor’s arm, peering at Sam. When their eyes met, the teenager offered a small smile. “Morning, Sam,” the teenager whispered.

Sam studied the rest of the faces. A young man with red hair and green eyes with arms covered in tattoos sat on a chair next to Sam’s bed, and sitting by Sam’s feet was the most gorgeous man Sam had ever laid eyes on in his life – and that included any model or actor he’d ever seen on TV. Golden curls, full lips with a perfect cupid’s bow, even his irises were this shining gold, a perfect Roman nose, a lovely shaped throat – all of him was just wow.

With difficulty, Sam dragged his gaze back to Connor. “What’s going on?”

“We were hoping you would be able to tell us,” Connor said.

All Sam could tell anyone was that he was lying in a hospital bed with no idea of how he got there.

At Sam’s silence, Connor nodded to the man sitting by the bedside. “Eric found you knocked out cold in the garden.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said.

The man, Eric, stood. “I’ll get the nurse.”

Sam watched him approach the door but found his gaze returning to Connor, the only familiar one. But even with Connor, he didn’t know why he was here. They broke up, didn’t they? Sam’s head ached trying to remember their last interaction. “You brought your friends to visit me?” he asked, trying to prompt an introduction of some sort.

Eric slowed to a stop before he reached the door. He frowned in Sam’s direction.

Connor looked puzzled. “My friends?”

Sam flicked his gaze to the teenager leaning against him, then to the guy sitting at Sam’s feet.

“I think you hit your head pretty damn hard,” Connor said with a sigh. “You don’t recognise them? This is Laurence, my brother. And that’s Goldilocks, your boyfriend.”

Right. Yeah. Sam at least remembered that Connor had no siblings. “You’re an only child.”

“His mom married my dad,” the teenager, Laurence, told Sam. “Although they’re divorced now. But we kept Connor.”

Sam’s head hurt a lot. “Right. Okay.” His gaze travelled to the guy there was no way he was dating, and those golden eyes stared steadily back at Sam. “And you’re my boyfriend?” he asked, voice full of doubt.

“Yes,” the guy answered.

Sam stared, gaze travelling down the guy’s body. He saw something that made him turn back to Connor. “So why is my boyfriend wearing your clothes?”

“Mine didn’t fit him,” Laurence offered. “And Dad’s were too big. And Nick wouldn’t share even though I told him to, which just left Connor.”

“Is he your brother too?” Sam asked.

“No,” Connor said.

Sam’s head was really hurting. Enough that his eyes burned, but there was no way he’d let himself cry in front of strangers. He swallowed thickly. “Are you screwing with me? Because if so, there’s a time and place, and this isn’t it.”

“Okay. Enough.” Eric stepped back to the bed. “I think you guys should leave and not keep confusing him.”

“And who is it you’re supposed to be?” Sam asked.

Connor and Laurence drew up in surprise, their expressions genuine enough that Sam caught on that he should know the answer to that one.

“Eric. Your older brother,” Eric told Sam in an oddly blank voice.

Sam stared at him in silence. His older brother? Thoughts moving like thick molasses, his mind finally agreed that such a person used to exist. “Oh.”

Eric nodded to Connor and Laurence. “Can you two get the doctor?”

Connor stood up. “You good with that, Sam, or do you want me to stay?”

“It’s fine,” Sam said. His throat was raw and hurting, and the longer he was awake, the more he wished he wasn’t.

Eric sat in the spot Connor had vacated. “It’s okay. Don’t think too hard about it. We’ll figure it out.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

Eric’s gaze travelled to Goldilocks, Sam’s supposed boyfriend. “How long have you two been dating?”

“Six months,” Goldilocks answered.

“And that’s your name? Goldilocks?” Eric asked, a sardonic note in his voice.

“You may only call me Goldilocks,” he said to Eric. “And you may call me Roan,” he said to Sam.

Roan’s hand, Sam now realised, was resting quietly on his ankle. Soft and unobtrusive, simply there. And Sam looked at Roan again, something niggling at his head. Familiarity, for one. Fondness. Though perhaps the fondness came from that pretty face. Mary always told Sam that he had shallow tendencies when it came to liking people. So long as they were pretty, personality be damned, Sam would find himself drawn in.

“There was an intruder at the house yesterday,” Eric said. “Did that person come back? The guards said it looked like you tripped and hit your head, but you said…” Eric’s face tensed. “You were on the phone to me. You said something about a monster.”

Sam fingered his temple where the uncomfortable edge of a sticky bandage clung to his skin. “Was this before or after I hit my head?”

“Before. I…Actually, you know what? I don’t know.”

Sam dropped his hand, taking stock of himself. He felt as though he’d spent hours on the boat in pelting rain and stormy seas, and his body was spent, exhausted, and in desperate need of a long rest. “I don’t know,” Sam said. He looked between Eric and Roan, each as unlikely a figure as the other. A brother. A boyfriend. But the longer he looked at Eric, the more he niggled at Sam’s head too. Be it because the resemblance to himself was obvious, with the red hair and green eyes, or perhaps because he looked like the photos in the house of his dad when he was young—

“Where’s Dad?” Sam asked, sudden worry bolting through him. If he was in hospital, then would anyone remember to stop by and bring his dad food? To cook for him and make sure that he was okay?

“He’s staying with Mary,” Eric answered. “At Aunt Mal’s house. He’s going to stay there for a while. I took out a longer rental on the flat from before, so you can stay with me in town while we figure out what to do with the house.”

“The house?”

“It’s not fit for living in, Sam.” Eric tensed, as if Sam was about to yell at him. Was this an argument they’d had before, and Sam couldn’t recall it?

“Okay,” Sam said.

Disbelief flashed in Eric’s eyes.

Roan squeezed gently, drawing Sam’s attention to him. “You may also stay with me,” he said. “I gather that you find your sibling’s company disagreeable.”

Eric shot Roan a dirty look. “Thanks for that.”

The door opened with a quick swing, and in rushed Mary. Real relief filled Sam, even when her green eyes landed on him as if she were about to grapple him to the ground and lay into him. “I’m getting you a collar” – Mary stomped to his side – “with a GPS, and you are going to wear it, always. Why were you back at that house alone? You told me it was giving you the creeps, and you didn’t want your dad anywhere near it, and what? After the break-in, you decided to go off there alone ?”

Sam blinked, taking a moment to understand the gush of words pouring from Mary’s mouth. “There was a break-in?”

“I just told you – never mind. His memory’s not great right now,” Eric explained.

“For Christ’s sake.” Mary rubbed her forehead, stress evident in every tense muscle from her cheek to her neck to her wrist to a finger tugging roughly on an errant curl. Sam reached out, catching that hand in his own before she pulled the hair out.

“Was anything stolen?”

Mary sat on the edge of his bed with a deflating sigh. She lowered her hand, leaving it in his, and then covered his hand with hers in turn, squeezing his fingers hard enough to hurt. “Let’s talk about that later. What did the doctors say? Concussion?”

“Must be if his memory’s affected,” Eric said.

Roan’s hand pressed tighter on Sam’s ankle, and Sam glanced to see his troubled expression. Sam dragged his gaze to meet Mary’s eyes.

“Apparently I have a boyfriend?” Sam prompted her.

Mary’s expression became as troubled as Roan’s, but whatever worry she was about to voice, she caught. “Yeah. True to form, you picked the best-looking guy in Ireland to ask out. I only met Goldilocks for the first time the other night, but you two seemed tight. You’re always sneaking off on the boat together, getting up to God knows what.”

Mary wouldn’t lie, so it must be true that Sam was dating Roan.

“Oh.” Sam looked once more at Roan. “Cool. Sorry, I can’t really remember…”

Roan inclined his head. “There is no need to apologise. If your memories do not return, we will begin again from the start.”

Sam opened his mouth, and a small, tired laugh escaped. So he had a gorgeous, assertive boyfriend. “Alright then.” He grinned. “I look forward to it.”

Even Mary gave Roan what could only be described as an approving look, and Mary didn’t hand those out easily. The door opened and, along with Connor and Laurence, a doctor strolled in. They asked for the room and went through a series of tests, at the end of which they concluded he was concussed and needed to stay for observation. They asked him about partially healed cuts on his left hand, too old to be from the fall, but Sam had no answer for the doctor.

Laurence, Connor’s stepbrother from the family that had ‘kept him,’ was the first inside after the doctor left, followed closely by Connor, and through the open door, Sam saw Roan, Eric and Mary crowding the doctor quizzing the man.

“Hey.” Laurence sat on the bedside next to Sam. “I know your memory is fuzzy,” he whispered. “But I wanted to let you know that I’m taking care of Jasper at my house.”

“Jasper. Right.”

“So you don’t have to worry about him.”

Confused, Sam just nodded.

Laurence glanced at Connor, clearly waiting for some sort of cue from him.

“Dad’s out front,” Connor said. “Can you go get Adonis and show him the way here?”

Laurence left, pulling the door shut behind him.

“In case you don’t remember, we’re good friends again,” Connor told him. “We hang out pretty often on the water.”

The last time Sam had been on the water with Connor, he’d been on the yacht of a guy who’d laughed in Sam’s face at his abandonment. And they were friends now? How had that happened? And Sam remembered swearing off ever dating anyone again, but apparently, he’d found someone even better looking than Connor and jumped right back into a relationship?

“Are you all messing with me?” Sam asked, but he didn’t even believe that for a second. Mary wouldn’t join in with something like that. It was too mean-spirited for Connor, though Mary would probably argue he was capable of it. Then there was Eric, Sam’s brother.

“We’re not messing with you,” Connor said. There was concern in his eyes. “I’m here. Even if you don’t remember it, we’re friends. Anything you need, I’ll give.”

Sam frowned. “Why don’t I remember Eric?”

The door opened as he asked, and Eric heard the question. He frowned at Sam and entered the room. His hands jittered at his sides as he walked to the end of the bed, and his mouth was a flattened line until he opened it to speak. “That’s not a new thing. I came back for the first time in years last week, and you couldn’t remember me. Anything at all. Maybe we can have the doctor give your head a proper scan while we’re here.” His voice turned gruff, a scowl twisting his features the longer he spoke. “You were ten. I have tons of memories of being ten.”

“You were giving him a hard time?” Connor cast Sam a sideways grin. “Glad you’ve learned to be mean.”

“I don’t…” Sam looked between the two of them, his confusion growing.

“It’s alright,” Connor said, his tone relaxed and soothing. “Don’t stress out. It’ll come back to you.” He fixed Eric with a pointed look.

Eric cleared his throat. “Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t mean to put any pressure on you. I mean, you did just start to remember me. We were talking on the phone and…guess that’s gone again.” His voice was all disappointment.

Laurence re-entered the room. A tall man with white-blond hair followed behind him, wearing another of Connor’s hoodies, and after a disinterested glance at Eric and Sam, his gaze fixed on Connor, and his expression brightened. He strode across the room and wrapped his arms around Connor from behind, digging his cheek against Connor’s. “Trevor,” he huffed.

“I know, I know,” Connor murmured back.

The stranger looked at Sam, and Sam couldn’t help but stare at his peculiar pointed ears.

“Eric,” Laurence said. “The doctor is waiting to talk to you.”

Eric, in the middle of frowning at the newcomer, looked over. “He is?”

Laurence nodded.

“Sam, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Eric hesitated in the doorway, casting a look over his shoulder at Laurence who was standing in the middle of the room with his hands clasped behind his back, Connor who sat relaxed in the bedside chair and the newcomer who had stopped rubbing his cheek to his and was instead looking over Sam again. Eric’s expression was one of suspicion.

“Why are you all giving me the feeling you’re about to do something?”

“Something like what?” Laurence asked with a perfectly innocent smile.

And at that smile, Sam was suddenly feeling the same suspicion as Eric.

Eric frowned at Laurence, hesitating again. “Come with me,” Eric said.

“Okay,” Laurence agreed.

“Wait.” Eric’s gaze flashed to Connor and the stranger. Laurence slid his arm through Eric’s and pulled him out of the room, kicking it closed behind them.

“The doctor is this way,” Laurence’s voice drifted in from a distance.

Sam looked at Connor, who was murmuring to the stranger. “…leave the bruises on his head but heal the inside. Can you do that? I bet you can. You’re so incredibly talented.”

The stranger puffed out his chest as he straightened. Haughty pride transformed his face.

“Connor,” Sam said warily. “What’s going on?”

The door opened and shut; Roan slipped inside. He cast a look of total disgust at the back of the stranger’s head, which flattened into a blank expression when Connor twisted toward him. “We have little time,” Roan said.

“Take in some deep breaths, Sam. And trust me. You’ll feel much better soon.”

Before Sam could object, the stranger was in his space, cupping the base of his skull where the worst of his headache resided. Warmth bloomed in his head, and Sam’s entire body became weighted. From his fingertips to his eyelids, he sank down into a wall of blossoming warmth and heat, every bit of pain eaten up in seconds.