Page 30 of For All My Effort
The words came out without letting me think them over first. “What if you don’t love this version of me? What if I’m not the same Hannah you fell in love with the first time and you can’t love me?”
There was no cure for what happened to my brain, and there was a very real chance that I would never recover those memories. Inside jokes, gifts, bonding moments, all of them gone.
“You’re not getting it.” Han reached out with both his hands, cupping my face and bringing me so close that each of his words had him puffing a little bit of air over my own lips. “You’re not different than you were with those memories, Hannah. The only reason we want you to remember is for your benefit. And a little to assuage our own guilt.”
“What do you mean?”
“We didn’t protect you.” His voice broke over those words, his hands dropping from my face as his head bowed. The guilt and sorrow pouring from him clogging my nose with how strong the scents were. “Of course we want your memories to come back because then it won’t feel like we failed you so badly. Being so far away that you had to run, terrified, from a peace officer, who fucking hurt you. And look how much you’re struggling. Your life is already hard enough with your designation and all these political bullshit laws going into place.”
My heart ached as I reached out to my mate, trying to comfort him. His forehead was on the edge of my little couch, his arms spread like he wanted to reach for me, but wasn’t actually touching me. Warm tears fell down my cheeks as my nose became inexplicably stuffed as it always did when I cried.
I curved my body over him, gently lying on top of him like I could protect him from his own dark thoughts. While his words helped to soothe my own internal aches, it was like he’d ripped off his own emotional scab before it had time to heal, and now it was bleeding inside him.
As best I could, I ran a finger over his hand, pushing out my own calming pheromones to help him. My scent became so strong that I almost lost track of any traces of pumpkin.
“Please forgive me, Hannah,” Han said, his voice still muffled. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
His words were like magic, healing my wound from earlier and making me wonder why I’d even overreacted. I snuggled impossibly closer to my alpha. “I forgive you.”
I felt the muscles in his back lose their tension, and I couldn’t help turning my face to kiss him. If he felt my lips through the fabric of his shirt, he didn’t say anything.
Eventually, Han and I broke apart. He needed to get back to work and I was officially excited to take a look at my classes.
Before he returned to his chair, he leaned close, kissing me gently. Han’s lips were soft, only I didn’t want something tender then. I pressed harder against him, sucking his bottom lip before gently biting it. He groaned, the sound going straight to my insides like he had a direct line to my pleasure center.
“Later, Hannah. I’ll make it up to you.”
“Promise?” I meant it to be a raspy, flirty question. Instead, it sounded almost desperate and worried and slightly breathless.
His gaze met mine as we stared at each other. Han’s eyes were naturally heavy-lidded and thin, making him look like he could model just his eyes. Sure, his jaw line was sharp and good looking, and his cheek bones were prominent without making him appear gaunt, but his eyes were the showstoppers. “Promise.”
He kissed me again, and then we spent the rest of the day in a comfortable silence.
Chapter Nine
A few hours later, my head was throbbing, and not even the icepack Han had gotten for me was really relieving the pain. Still, I wasn’t stopping.
My position on the large chair in Han’s office was incredibly awkward since I needed both hands to type. I was leaning against the couch, using my head’s weight to keep the icepack pinned in place over the stitches.
Han kept looking back over his shoulder, obviously feeling the pain from how hard I was concentrating and the apparent repercussions from that. It was a weird effect of doing school, but one I was intent on ignoring.
The door to the room flew open, just barely managing to miss Han’s computer screen that was nearby. I gasped loudly, my hand slamming over my chest like my heart was actually preparing to leap from my body.
Jackson didn’t hesitate at the door, coming to gather me against him, uncaring that he almost dropped my laptop on the ground. “Time for a break, rebel.”
“I didn’t get anything done. I have assignments past due.”
“Sebastian handled all of that for you.”
Jackson carried me down the hallway toward his office, adjusting me so I wasn’t cradled against his chest but wrapped around him like a frontward backpack. One of his arms went under my butt to help keep me up while the other pressed against my back until I was leaning my head against his shoulder.
“I want to do my classes now,” I said. “I told Han earlier that I wasn’t going to wait for memories to come back that might be lost forever.”
A blast of cool air made me shiver as Jackson carried me into his office, his scent soaked into the room. Unlike Han’s multiple computers, Jackson’s space had one. A silver, three-tiered cabinet was against the back wall along with several cork boards. It took my brain a moment to realize all the boards had roughly the same information, including a list of names, a map of a city, multiple pages of paper tacked together outlining a ‘SOP’, and even a random address on a sticky note in all the top right corners.
“Is that what made you upset earlier?” Jackson asked.
I was too distracted by the room to answer his question properly. “What is all this stuff?”