her for a fraction of a second, maybe less, but it was enough.
The next hit clipped the SUV in just the right way. The wheels slipped against the asphalt, and they skidded across the roadside stretch of dirt, tipping them toward the ditch. Their vehicle bucked, leaned and tilted sideways. Natasha screamed as they went airborne, the remnants of a prayer on her lips as Chris’s strong arms reached out to grab her and pull her toward him, away from the window.
The SUV landed on its side in the ditch, and she and Chris jerked sideways in their restraints. As the airbags exploded, slamming their heads back against the headrests, Natasha tasted blood in her mouth, and her vision was once again nothing but sparks. She tried to speak, but no words came as she struggled for breath. Something hissed, and the creak of metal under tension echoed in her ears before the world grew deathly silent.
She didn’t hear anything. Nothing at all, and that seemed even more frightening than before.
Her blood ran cold as a car door slammed.
* * *
As the world came back into sound and focus, Chris heard the wail of sirens growing rapidly louder. Somewhere nearby, a car door slammed. The crunch of tires against pavement told him that a vehicle had just driven away. He dared to hope that it meant the Range Rover was not only done with them but in the police’s sights.
He flailed his free arm, searching for Natasha, and a momentary surge of panic took hold as he realized that he couldn’t hear her breathing. Then she released a long sigh, and relief flooded through his every pore. She was still alive. But if she did indeed have a concussion, all of those hits would have made it exponentially worse. She needed to get to a hospital without further delay—they’d be able to call the right people to come and take care of her and close off his involvement in her life. If the FBI didn’t ask him to continue the investigation into why she’d disappeared, that was.
He didn’t want to be around when she remembered him. She’d probably be angry enough as soon as she realized that her ex-fiancé had put his arms around her, even to save her life. As soon as Natasha was secure at the hospital and the officer in charge at his FBI branch gave him the go-ahead, he’d be on his way and out of her life again, just like she’d wanted twelve years ago.
Despite having tried so hard to forget, the memory came too easily. He had been eighteen years old; she’d been seventeen. She’d worn a yellow sundress with tiny white flowers, the hem of the dress swishing above her knees, despite the cooler temperatures of late November. Her auburn hair had been knotted above her head in a messy bun, with loose strands falling about her face and framing her sharp features. Around her neck had been a topaz gemstone set among three diamonds, a beautiful piece of jewelry given to her on her sixteenth birthday by her father. It had looked completely out of place on a girl who stood barefoot in the sunshine with a wrist full of plastic bead bracelets. Under those plastic beads, he’d hoped, was the gold name bracelet he’d given her as a promise six months before proposing. But he hadn’t been able to see it, and for some reason that had hurt almost as much as the small diamond ring that her father had yanked out of her hand and practically thrown at him when Chris refused to take it from Natasha’s open palm. Go, the man had said. She’s done with you. Don’t bother our family with your filth again. She’s too good for you, and you know it. Come here again, and I’ll have you arrested.
Chris had looked past the man’s shoulder, his eyes pleading, his heart aching with painful disbelief. Natasha had wrapped her arms around her middle, protective and closed off to him. She’d understood his unspoken question, but had only narrowed her eyes and shaken her head.
That simple gesture had said it all. And when she’d opened her mouth as if to speak to him, to explain, he didn’t want to hear it. He’d turned around and left—the city, the state, the entire South—to try to banish the pain of her rejection. What had ever made him think that someone like Natasha could truly love him? She’d been a rich, spoiled girl with a daddy who handed everything to her on a silver platter—including his prejudiced beliefs. Chris should’ve known that they’d surface in her eventually. He should’ve known she wouldn’t think he was good enough for her. Just because his family lived in low-income housing. Just because they relied on food stamps and welfare. He couldn’t afford to get arrested, for Natasha’s father to follow through on his threat. His family couldn’t afford it; they needed Chris’s meager paycheck to get by. No, he couldn’t buy Natasha pretty things, but even with helping his family out, he’d worked odd jobs and saved for more than a year to buy her a diamond ring, like she deserved.
Sure, they were young, but he’d thought their love was stronger than that.
If she hated him so much, if she’d thought she was so much better than him, why had she even given him the time of day in the first place?
“Sir? Can you hear me?” The authoritative voice of a police officer cut through the painful memories. Chris had worked hard to turn his family’s situation around. They still struggled, but since joining the FBI, he’d been able to move his parents to a decent home that they could finally call their own. He’d bought a used car for his little brother last month, so he could have an easier time making ends meet and staying out of jail. Money and status weren’t what mattered for his family, and they never had been. He couldn’t say the same of the Starks. The arrest of Natasha’s uncle a few months ago—the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon—had made that clearer than ever.
Maybe it was a blessing that Natasha hadn’t recognized him right away.
“There are two of us in the cab,” Chris called back to the officer. “An agent of the FBI and a woman who’s seriously injured and needs immediate medical assistance.”
“Emergency services are on their way,” the officer said. “Hold tight.”
That was exactly what Chris planned to do—despite how much it hurt.
* * *
Natasha balked at the doctor as he delivered the news. Even his cheerful, Christmas-light-patterned bow tie didn’t help ease the shock. Psychogenic and retrograde amnesia, he told her.
Amnesia, really? She felt much better with the pain medication in her system, and the doctors had even confirmed that despite the bumps and cuts on her head, she hadn’t physically sustained anything more than a mild concussion, whiplash and various cuts and bruises. She could hardly take it all in as the doctor suggested that whatever had happened to her before Special Agent Barton found her had been severe and shocking. Her initial head trauma had likely caused the retrograde amnesia, but more disturbing was the suggestion that her autobiographical memory loss had been caused by intense psychological stress.
“We can definitely confirm that you are Natasha Stark,” said the doctor. Dr. Olsen, she read off his name tag. “We’ve printed out this info sheet for you with your name, address and medical history. I recommend you keep this with you on your person for the time being, in case any additional medical issues arise. That said, you’re probably going to want to head over to Titusville as soon as possible so they can have a look at you.”
Natasha blinked at the sheet a nurse handed her. This was her, her identity, all on an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch piece of paper. The name and address evoked a strong feeling of home, but she couldn’t picture it. She closed her eyes, trying to remember. It didn’t work.
“When will I get my memories back?” She attempted to hide the hitch in her voice. “And why would I go to Titusville? I see that I live there, but what do you mean? Who wants to look at me?”
Dr. Olsen looked over his shoulder
