Page 171 of Hurt

“Your boyfriend’s an ass,” he complained as he came into the room, hands in his pockets and scuffing his boots along the fancy carpet.

Willow was nestled in the center of a king-sized bed surrounded by a mountain of soft pillows. Watery morning light filtered in through the frost on the massive wall of windows, and a large TV mounted to the opposite wall was playing with the volume down low.

“Pretty sure the feeling is mutual,” Willow said without looking away from the TV.

Kurt grabbed a chair that was resting against the wall and dragged it over toward the bed. Falling into it, he kicked his boots up onto the bed.

“Get your nasty shoes off my bed.” Willow tossed a pillow at Kurt’s head. It bounced off and spiraled to the floor.

Kurt rolled his eyes, but he kicked his boots off and let them fall to the floor. He’d stick his socks in Roland’s pillow later.

Willow was wearing an oversize shirt, and her hair was mussed from sleep. Beyond looking a little pale, she looked fine.

“What are you dying of that I had to rush over?”

“Because your day issofull.”

Kurt flipped her off.

He hated it when Willow was right. His days had been full of nothing. After waking up in the garden house, he found his memories were scattered and his mind hazy. It took another week before he began to feel normal.

Normal being relative.

Kurt had woken up to a world he didn’t recognize. While he remembered most of the events that happened at The Catacombs, they were fragmented and diluted. Pieces of emotions and feelings he couldn’t quite put his finger on. For a while, he had no idea why seeing guitar strings made it hard for him to breathe. And he never did remember how he hurt his knee. Willow had to tell him about the lead pipe. The joint still stuck early in the morning.

Whether his memories came back or not wasn’t really important. He would still be here. The scars on his face wouldn’t fade away. Just like the lines on his back and hundreds of others all over his body. Each one a memory he may or may not remember. But he didn’t need to. The feelings that came with them were vivid enough.

Vivid enough to wake him from a deep sleep, covered in sweat with a cry on his lips. Enough that he still flinched when people stood too close, and his mouth went dry if someone clapped him on the back. The first time a doctor asked him to remove his shirt and laid a hand on his back, he panicked and jumped off the table.

Sometimes, even Willow was too much. She would smell like sweat or something else that shouldn’t matter, but it did. Kurt would feel the stirrings of panic. He would try to hide it behind a gruff exterior, but no one was fooled.

It had been two months since he woke up, and he still felt just as shattered as before.

Grant saw it. How could he not? He had insisted that Kurt take as much time as he needed. Spend his days healing.

He just didn’t know how the fuck he was supposed to do that.

How was he supposed to get ten years of his life back? Figure out who he is under all those scars he can’t get rid of?

Willow didn’t mean anything by her comment. There was nothing malicious in her snark—if anything, Kurt appreciated the normalcy in their conversation. She had some stupid talk show playing on TV and was watching it like it was the most engrossing thing she had ever seen.

Kurt whistled. “So? What? Is it the Bubonic plague, or can I call off the Witch Doctor?”

Willow stuck her tongue out. “As if Roland’s house would have rats.”

“It was the fleas on the rats, dipshit.”

“Whatever,” she said with a wave of his hand.

Kurt waited for her to elaborate, but Willow just turned up the volume on the TV and continued watching. He narrowed his eyes. Willow never missed the opportunity to garner sympathy.

Something suddenly occurred to Kurt. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but now that he realized Willow was acting off, it was impossible to miss. The entire room was decorated in shades of slate gray. Everything from the walls to the nightstands was in a uniform color.

Everything except the sheets.

The comforter Willow had wrapped around her was gray, but underneath was a bright splash of pastel color that didn’t belong. Peachy-colored sheets were peeking out from beneath the thick blanket in a garish display of color that almost blinded him. They looked stiff, too, not the high-quality kind the rest of the fabric was.

They looked like the kind of sheets you kept stuffed in the back of the closet for emergency laundry days.