Page 22 of Benny

Jordan’s heart squeezed.

“Were we still together when I was hit by the car?”

She nodded, her throat closing around the words. “Yeah,” she said.

~

They’d lived together. Even as the thought shocked him, Benny knew it to be true somewhere deep in his core. Knew it from the way he’d depicted her in each sketch, from the absolute vulnerability of her posing, from the look of love in her eyes.

But damn it, he couldn’t remember, and somehow that felt like a wound more egregious than anything his captors had done to him.

No matter what he tried, no matter how hard he strained his brain, the memories wouldn’t come. Not of Jordan and the life they’d shared, albeit a short one, and not of his incarceration.

Everything he felt toward her and the cat was familiar and warm and safe. Now that he knew the truth, those feelings made sense.

He couldn’t remember her beyond therapy though, and that lack, that hole in his memory and his soul, gnawed at him. He knew himself, and he thought he’d had a good read on Jordan in what he was starting to call before in his head. They weren’t the kind of people who moved in together that quickly unless the spark was off the charts. Unless there was a trust that superseded simple good sex.

Shouldn’t he feel that spark toward her now? The fact he didn’t was almost as heartbreaking as not remembering their relationship. He could only hope it would return with his memory.

Regardless of all his personal problems in the here and now, Jordan had been right. Even if Davenport continued his ruse and the people behind this whole fucked-up situation believed that Benny was truly dead, he still had to figure out what he was going to do with his life. He couldn’t go back to the Air Force for obvious reasons, and this second chance felt like a blank slate. A chance to rediscover who he actually was.

But in order to do that, he was positive he needed to know who he’d been.

The man who’d been with Jordan. Who’d been so traumatized that it’d shattered his memory into shiny, bright, sharp shards. And he thought he knew of a way to start.

Jordan had fixed herself a plate while he sat with his thoughts, Spot warming his lap. Now she sat opposite him with a second cup of coffee and pushed his refill, already loaded with cream and sugar, across the table.

“I’ll answer anything you ask truthfully,” she said in that calm, clear way he remembered from before. The familiarity of it warmed him down to his soul. “No more secrets, no matter how much they hurt.”

“Has anyone kept in touch with Dr. Hancock?” he asked. “Do you trust her? Do you think she’s part of this?”

Surprise flashed across her face and he could tell that wasn’t a question she’d anticipated. “Gut reaction? No, I don’t think she’s involved. You remember how cranky she was when we all showed up. She even went so far as to ask if we had any idea why we were seeing her. I think she was there to keep tabs on us through her patient notes, but I don’t think she was part of the larger conspiracy. As for keeping in touch, I’m pretty sure none of us did. There was no reason to once most of us stopped being affiliated with the military.”

She sat back in her chair, considering his question, then nodded slowly. “If there was someone else we had to pull in, she’d be the one. She’d be bound by patient confidentiality, which is outstanding.” Her expression tightened. “But we’d have to bring her all the way in, and that might put her in danger.”

Benny didn’t want that. And before they made a decision that could put someone else at risk, he wanted another opinion. As much as he loved his sister, Beth wasn’t the person to ask about this. His old partner was.

“Let’s see what Cali thinks,” he said. “I need to pick her brain on the medical side of this anyway so I can better understand the nanites and get a clearer picture of exactly what they healed for the others.”

A smile tipped Jordan’s mouth. “It’s good to have you back,” she breathed. “I don’t just mean that as someone I shared a bed with. I missed your big brain, you doofus.”

She pushed away from the table. “Let me grab a burner from the box.”

Benny watched as she walked toward the box of tech, really looked at her.

She was beautiful. He could see that easily enough, and he felt the attraction any healthy man would feel toward a lovely woman.

But that was all. There was no rush of love. No flood of memories. No visceral recognition of the woman he’d apparently spent the last four months of his old life with.

Nothing more than attraction and that strange, inexplicable sense of familiarity.

The grief of that realization crushed him.

~

Cali was available for a quick video chat before she headed into work. When her smiling face filled the screen rather than her usual mask of indifference or an outright scowl, Benny knew she was genuinely glad to see him.

“How’d you sleep, Mallard?” The call sign had been bestowed on him after he’d smacked his head on one of the door jambs in their Pave Hawk on their very first mission. The flight crew had gotten a hell of a laugh out of it. His last name was Drake, and since he’d failed to duck, Mallard had stuck. Since call signs weren’t something flight crews handed out to just anyone, he’d worn his updated nametape with pride, even though he’d had to explain the story whenever they got a newbie.