“Can you remember anything about your time with us, Noah?” he quizzed, and I noted then that he spoke with an accent. “Anything at all.”
“A tiny bit,” I answered. “I woke up once before now, but I must have fallen back asleep. I opened my eyes and I was here, but I don’t know how I got here. The nurse says I was in an accident but I can’t remember any accident.”
He nodded and made a note of some sort on the chart in his hand. We went through a series of questions about my well-being, about my pain level from one to ten, and a bunch of other things I didn’t really care about. When the examination was over and the doctor had finished making notes on what I now knew was my personal patient chart, he looked up at me and smiled once more.
“I know this is tiresome, but I could go back to jail if I don’t follow protocol.”
I blinked. “You’ve been to jail?”
“Once,” he answered with a nod. “In Monopoly. It wasn’t fun, I’ll tell you that much.”
I stared at him in silence, then he laughed and looked at the nurse and said, “Tough crowd.”
I humoured him when his gaze returned to mine. “Ha ha.”
“Sorry.” He grinned. “No more bad jokes.”
“You can tell me a million of them after you answer my questions,” I bargained. “How does that sound?”
“Like a deal.” The doctor winked. “Fire away.”
I had so many questions that I needed the answers to, but I didn’t know where to begin. At random, I picked a few and said, “What happened to me? Why don’t I remember anything? Why is talking hard?”
The nurse reached over and patted my hand when my voice cracked. I was scared, really scared. Having no memory of how I came to be in the hospital was worse than anything I had ever experienced before. I felt very vulnerable.
“What I’m about to say will sound very scary,” Doctor Abara said, “but trust me when I say that, right now, you’re okay and you’re in the best place receiving the best care.”
That doesn’t sound very good.
I swallowed. “Okay.”
“You were in an accident where you hit your head very hard, so to protect itself your body has been in a coma for fifteen days.”
“What?” I exclaimed in shocked disbelief. “A coma? Fifteen days?”
The machine next to me started beeping rapidly, but one screen-tap from the nurse silenced it.
“I know it must be startling to hear, but you’re okay,” he stressed gently. “What you need to do right now is take a few calming breaths. Noah, look at me. Noah!”
I lifted my hands to my head and whimpered. The throbbing pain had drastically worsened; it was so bad that I could barely hear anything the doctor was saying. I felt my eyes roll back and my vision started to fade to nothingness, when suddenly my head dropped back against my pillow. I fell into darkness, feeling scared and very much alone.
CHAPTER TWO
NOAH
Eighteen years old . . .
“Noah?” His voice drifted towards me like a song on the wind. “If you’re playin’ hide and seek, ye picked a rubbish spot to hide, green eyes. I’m already in your house, you can’t exactly get away from me.”
I opened my mouth, not knowing what I was going to say in response, but I didn’t have to worry about it when hands clamped down on my waist, making me screech in surprise. Warm, strong arms slid around me to keep me from darting away, and low laughter filled the room.
“Gotcha.”
I shivered as his hot breath fanned my ear and neck.
“I wasn’t hiding,” I said, lifting my chin. “I was just . . . I was just—”
“Ye were just what? Lookin’ behind the bathroom door for someone else?”
I blew out a big puff of air as frustration gripped me.
“Fine,” I grunted. “You caught me; I was hiding.”
My body turned to face his, and when he nudged under my chin with his finger, encouraging me to look up at him, my stomach burst into a mess of butterflies. I was a tall girl, taller than every girl I went to school with. I stood five foot ten inches, but Elliot’s massive six foot five inches dwarfed me and made me feel tiny, feminine.
I loved that feeling.
Elliot McKenna, I thought to myself. Where do I begin with him?
Elliot had moved to my home town just over seven months ago, in the middle of the school year. His father had opened a new Irish pub in town called McKenna’s. Moving to a different country would be daunting, hectic and maybe even a little scary to most people, but not Elliot. He was two months shy of eighteen when I met him, and once he became close friends with a classmate of mine, AJ, we became close too, but in an entirely different way.
Elliot was the first boy that I had ever taken an instant fancy too. The moment I saw him, I felt an attraction . . . and so did every other senior girl in school. He was gloriously tall, had a mop of thick, dark hair, eyes the colour of the ocean, and a dimple in his right cheek when he smiled. He was gorgeous, and to top it off, he had an accent. An Irish one to be exact. He was a Dubliner. I didn’t believe he even thought I was a member of the female gender until he kissed me on the night of his eighteenth birthday when we celebrated with him.
That kiss brought us closer; it brought us to now.
“Why were ye hidin’ from me, green eyes?”
I swallowed as my palms became slick with sweat. “’Cause I’m nervous.”
“About what?”
He was speaking to me, but his ocean blues were on my mouth and so was his thumb, brushing over my lower lip. It was terribly distracting and for a moment or two all I could think about was encircling his neck with my arms, reaching up and crushing my mouth against his. I resisted that urge because it went against what I’d planned to say to Elliot McKenna.
I was breaking up with him . . . and I couldn’t kiss him and do that at the same time, or at least I was fairly sure I couldn’t. I wasn’t entirely certain about the rules when it came to breaking up with a boy who technically was never your boyfriend to begin with. It was new ground that I was covering, so everything was unknown.
It was a complicated mess on a good day but I was certain of one thing: in the span of the few short months that we had been casually dating, I had fallen in love with Elliot, and I didn’t want to be strung along and hurt beyond repair, so I had to cut him loose even though I didn’t want to. I had to, in order to protect myself.
I had always known that I was soft-hearted and more emotional than most people. I took things personally whether I wanted to or not. I grew attached to those I cared about very easily, and that was why Elliot, as a person, terrified me so much. I loved him. I loved him so completely that it scared me. He was someone who could break me without even trying.
We were both young and maybe it was foolish, but I could see a future with Elliot. One where I was in a stable relationship that would give me the security I needed in order to relax and enjoy my life. I desperately wanted that. I didn’t want to mess around and spend my early years jumping from guy to guy and have the future be unknown to me. I knew what I wanted and what I wanted was to be Elliot’s one and only, the woman he gave his last name to.