Page 68 of The Same Backward as Forward

“Go to hell,” Jackson snaps.

Bull’s-eye.“I would,” I tell him, “if I could.”

“Hearts or Spades?” I ask Hannah without ever opening my eyes. The pain is worse tonight—which is really saying something.

“Are you asking my preference?” Hannah retorts.

Every time I manage to make her respond to me is a victory, small and sublime. I relish this one, even though I suspect the only reason she’s replying at all is that she knows just how much pain her ministrations are causing me. Occasionally, her fingers skim unburnt skin on my bare chest. The feel of those moments is almost enough to get me through the worst of it—almost, hence the move I’ve just made.

I need a distraction, and when she went the drugstore, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward bought a deck of cards.

“Spades are more useful,” she comments in that calm, dry, you-are-the-bane-of-my-existence tone of hers.

“For burying the bodies of your enemies?” I quip. The fact that my eyes are threatening to tear up beneath my lids matters far less to me right now than getting her to play.

A game for one just isn’t enough for me. Not tonight.

“Setting aside the questionable uses you have for a literal spade, vicious one, I was asking about the card games.” It will take some doing to get her to agree to play with me, but that’s a large part of the appeal. “You bought a deck. Makes for better castles than sugar, I suppose.”

I am relentless. It is perhaps my most charming trait.

“So, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward…” I linger on the name for a moment, linger on her. “What’s your poison? Hearts or Spades?”

Something shifts in her eyes, not a lightning flash of raw anger this time, not even a lowering of her guard, butsomething. In typical fashion, she recovers quickly, shuttering her eyes. “Neither. I have better things to do than play with you.”

The handy thing about being shot down is that bullets leave holes. Openings. “If you’re so set on not playing games, then why don’t you tell me why I’m still here?” That mystery is not the one I’m set on solving, but some hands are best played slow.

Hannah takes the bait and answers my question: “As punishment for my mortal sins.” So she does have a sense of humor. A dark one.

“Why am I here and not in a hospital, mentirosa?”

“Spanish forliar?” She arches a brow, and what an arch of a brow it is.

“Is it because of me or because of you?”Why heal me instead of letting someone else do the dirty work for you?

“It’s both.”

I open my eyes and let Hannah’s wash away the world. “And that,” I say, “was not a lie.”

I can see her wanting to look away from me, but she doesn’t. Maybe she can’t. “You wouldn’t be safe at a hospital,” she says stiffly.

I refuse to extrapolate what that might mean about me and focus only on what Hannah has just told me about herself.Not just a healer.She’s got a protective streak, too.You grew up protecting someone, didn’t you, H-A-N-N-A-H?

Who—and from what?Possibilities begin to take form in my mind. “You can’t just say something like that and leave me hanging, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.”

Her hands fall to her sides. “Done.”

I feel the absence of her touch all the way to my core. “Untilthe next time,” I say, knowing that I can’t let her leave. “It sure would be a shame,” I add to pull her back, “if I hurt myself trying to get out of this bed and undid all that work of yours.”

“You’d pass out from the pain before you got very far.” She thinks I’m bluffing.

You’d be surprised what I can bear, H-A-N-N-A-H.The letters of her name are like a spell I cast on myself, but it’s not enough. Panic and pain, darkness and despair swirl around me. I need more. I need her to stay.

“I’m feeling the need,” I say mockingly, “for a bedpan.”

Her eyes flash, just like I meant for them to. “Jackson will be back soon.”

“Maybe I wantyourassistance.”