Page 18 of The Same Backward as Forward

“You wouldn’t be safe at a hospital.” I parted with a truth and threw the wall back up in my mind, forcing myself to think of him asHarryagain.

“You can’t just say something like that and leave me hanging, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.”

Watch me, I thought, fixing gauze into place. “Done.”

“Until the next time.” His tone was darker now. He smiled, a switchblade smile, the kind I knew better than to trust. “It sure would be a shame if I hurt myself trying to get out of this bed and undid all that work of yours.”

I folded my arms. “You’d pass out from the pain before you got very far.”

“I’m feeling the need,” Harry said, the barest hint of mockery in his tone as he tried another tactic, “for a bedpan.”

“Jackson will be back soon.”

“Maybe I wantyourassistance.”

“Maybe,” I told him, “you’re bluffing.”

“Bluffing,” Harry repeated, savoring the taste of the word. “Poker, then? One round.”

Something told me that if I turned him down, he’d make me pay for it—or he’d make himself pay for it. “One round,” I agreed, clipping the words.

“Five-Card Draw?” There was the barest hint of a Texas drawl in his voice.

“Fine.” I retrieved the deck and dealt the cards. Beating him was going to be therapeutic. After eyeing my hand, I placed two cards face down on the edge of the mattress. “I’ll take two.”

His eyes were only partially open as I drew two additional cards from the deck, but I knew in my gut that he saweverything. Each and every little tell.

“I’ll hold,” he murmured.

You’re bluffing.I went to lay down my final hand.

He stopped me. “Nuh-uh-uh, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward. What would you like to wager?”

“With you?” I said. “Nothing.”

“How about this? If I win, you give me a sheet of paper.” That proposal took me by surprise. Harry was many things, but restrained and prone to modest requests were not among them.

“What do I get if I win?” I countered.

“Silence.” He had an answer for everything. “Mine, for one full day.”

One day without him saying a word to me sounded pretty damn nice. “Two days,” I countered.

Harry accepted my terms with the slightest incline of his head. “I call.”

I laid down my cards “Two pair. Kings.” I named the higher of my pairs.

“Two pair,” he echoed, laying his own cards beside mine on the mattress. “Jacks.” He smiled a crooked little smile. “Looks like you won.”

That felt a lot more ominous than it should have.

Chapter 15

I had long shifts at the hospital the next two days, which didn’t leave me that much time to collect on my winnings, but true to his word, Harry didn’t part with a single mocking statement as I took his vitals and checked his wounds the next night or the night after that.

Instead, hewatchedme, his eyes on mine, his focus palpable and every bit as liquid and silken as the voice he’d agreed to silence. The more deliberate he became about touching me with his gaze, the more I tried to concentrate on my work and only my work.

The head wound had closed. The hair around it was beginning to regrow. The color looked darker to me, like maybe the mahogany-red hue in the rest of his locks was courtesy of the sun. The new hair was coarse. It shouldn’t have felt soft under my touch.