Indigo Moon (6 page)

“They’re
one
of your best features. You have many, many more.” Ren reached over and casually adjusted the neck of Isabelle’s robe where it gaped open a little. “I take it your memory’s still a little vague? It will come back soon. I promise it will.”

Her innocent gesture scraped the cotton across Isabelle’s nipple. It hardened against the friction. Isabelle flinched, but Ren seemed unaware of her reaction. Ren held a sexual charisma that confused her. She was hypersensitized to her simplest words and gestures. Yet Ren seemed curiously casual, even relaxed around Isabelle’s tense, scrawny body with its multitude of inhibitions and screaming defense mechanisms. Isabelle pulled away and curled up at her end of the couch tighter than a pink prawn.

“What happened to me?” She cleared her throat, clinging to her empty mug. It gave her something to do with her hands and placed a small physical barrier between them. Ren’s nearness swamped her. A spicy heat rolled off her body, and Isabelle’s senses sucked it all up greedily until her head swam. “I remember a car crash. Did I hit a deer? I remember a deer with an injured leg.”

“Your car went into a ditch. You didn’t hit a deer, but you may have swerved to avoid one.”

“Where am I? How did I get here?”

“You’re near the Bella Coola valley. I live in the Coast Mountains, and I found you on a branch road off Highway 20. I checked you over, and apart from your shoulder and this temporary memory loss thing, you seem fine. When the snow thaws I’ll get you to a hospital for a proper checkup.”

The names were familiar. She’d heard of Bella Coola and the Pacific Coast Mountains. Was she local to the area?

“So you’re a medical person? A doctor or a nurse?” Her wound had been treated professionally.

“A veterinarian. But wounds are wounds, and stitches are stitches. I was more concerned with the bang you took to the head, but you seem to be mending well.”

“It’s only temporary. I’m already beginning to recall some things, as if my memory is on a sort of trickle drip. Things like my eye color, and toasted cheese sandwiches. And Bella Coola sounds very familiar…” She trailed off. There was such a long way to go in reclaiming her identity. She touched the small scar at the corner of her mouth. Not every memory would be a welcome one, but she would deal with that when it happened.

“You know my name.” She looked up. “You called me Isabelle. But Isabelle who? Do we know each other?”

Ren nodded. “I know you, Isabelle Monk. I know you very well.”

“Monk?” Her surname was Monk. Isabelle frowned. It didn’t sound right; it didn’t fit. “So we’re friends?” she asked, then blushed, recalling she’d asked this before when they were curled up in bed together.

“Yes. I think of you as a friend.”

“How do we know each other?” It bothered her that she had to drag these answers out of Ren. A real friend would tell her all she needed to know; instead, Ren was holding back. Isabelle’s anxiety levels began to rise.

“Do I live near here? Near you?” She pushed on. “Are we neighbors?”

Ren shifted slightly at this last question. It was the first sign of discomfort Isabelle had seen in her. She waited for an answer, watching every flicker on Ren’s closed face.

“No.” The answer was snapped. “You live somewhere else.” This was added almost grudgingly. Isabelle frowned at this sudden mood swing. She realized that up until now this had been some sort of game to Ren. Now she was truculent when the questions weren’t so easily answered, or rather, answered to her liking.

“Well, where then?” Isabelle pressed, aware of the change in atmosphere, as if the temperature had dropped imperceptibly by degrees as her panic rose. “Where do I live?” Ren had to tell her. Then the thunderous thought struck—what if Ren was not a friend after all?

There was a moment of silence as Ren contemplated her answer.

“I don’t want to tell you,” she finally said.

“What? Why?” Isabelle was shocked.

“Because I don’t want you to go back there.”

“What?” Isabelle turned to fully face Ren. She was confused and angry at this response. This was no time for games. She needed to know these things. Ren reached out and held her chin in a firm grip.

“I don’t want you to go home,” Ren repeated slowly. “You’re not safe there. You’re safe here, with me. You have to stay with me.” She leaned in and her mouth covered Isabelle’s in a hard kiss. Isabelle jerked as a tingling rush thrummed across her lips. Her heart hammered. Scalding heat rolled through her veins. Ren kissed her thoroughly and with lazy authority until Isabelle’s entire being lurched, fluttered, and disintegrated like a cherry blossom. She was captured inside this sweet, blossom-scented, and dangerous kiss. Warnings howled inside her head. She’d heard these cries before—She twisted away, breaking the kiss, and pulled her face free. She had to save herself. Isabelle didn’t need anymore fog-fueled moments. She was fractured enough.

“Don’t,” she gasped in dismay. She did
not
kiss women. This she knew for certain. And not like that! “You can’t kiss me like that.”

Ren leaned back. The muscles of her face were hard as flint, her eyes drilled into Isabelle’s until she shrank back against the couch. She felt woozy and hot and glanced at her empty cup with suspicion. Ren reached toward her and she flinched, but Ren merely tucked a damp curl behind her ear. “When your memory returns I think you’ll find I can,” she said.

“What do you mean you can? What does that mean? Because let me tell you right here and now, you damn well can’t.” Isabelle’s explosion had them both blinking in surprise.

Ren moved back, irritated. She gave Isabelle a sweeping, calculated look. Her cheeks bloomed under her tan and her eyes sparked dangerously, but she said nothing.

“What’s going on here that you think you can just lean in and kiss me?” Isabelle said. “Are you trying to tell me we’re lesbians, because let me tell you right here and now that I am
not
a lesbian!” She was very firm about that. Definitely not. Ren gave her a big, black-eyed blink and her knees liquefied.
Okay then…

“What I mean is…” Isabelle blustered on, ideas and theories and guesswork bursting out of her. “What I mean is, well, I may not be
totally
into men…” That felt true. “But that doesn’t make me a lesbian either. In fact, I suspect I’m not very sexual at all. Why, I could be a nun!” She was grasping at straws and she knew it. Ren narrowed her eyes at this hypothesis, and Isabelle shut up. She was being ridiculous.

A huge yawn caught her unawares. For the second time, she eyed her empty mug, sure it contained more than just cocoa.

“No. You are not, and have never been, a nun.” Ren rose and held out her hand. “It’s time for bed.”

“I am
not
going to bed with you.”

“I’m putting you to bed, not taking you,” Ren thundered in exasperation.

“Oh.” Isabelle accepted the offered hand and was pulled to her feet, a little embarrassed at her assumption.

Ren led her back to the bedroom. Her head swam and her legs felt leaden. The sleeping drug in the cocoa had kicked in. She was spilling toward sleep and it annoyed her. She wanted answers for her millions of questions, but her head was so fuzzy she was unsure what mattered more, her questions or Ren’s bizarre behavior.

“You never answered me,” she said, remembering the thread of their earlier conversation.

“I did. You’re not a nun.”

Moonlight spilled through the windows and illuminated the room in irregular blocks of soft light.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. You avoided my questions.”

They stood by the bed, Isabelle unwilling to get back in it. She’d spent eons in that bed. It was the last place she wanted to be. She fought down another yawn. Ren reached over and casually tugged her closer by the sash of her robe.

“I—” Isabelle clasped Ren’s muscular forearms, as if that would stop her if she chose to kiss her again. Ren lowered her head. Isabelle held her breath and closed her eyes in anticipation, her fingernails dug into Ren’s skin. Ren’s breath brushed across her cheek, and then her lips grazed her ear, so delicately every hair on the nape of her neck rose.

“I want you to remember us,” Ren whispered. “Not be told how it was.”

Isabelle gave a delicious shiver. She tilted her chin. Her lips were so close to Ren’s jawline that the merest pucker would—The room spun as she was lifted and laid down on the bed. Ren chastely drew the blankets up to her chin and withdrew, leaving a chasm of chilled air and confusion between them.

A knowing smile played on Ren’s lips.

“I have to go out tonight, and
you
need to sleep. It will help you heal,” she said. “You shouldn’t be running around so soon after your accident. You need rest.”

“I don’t want to sleep. I want to talk.” Isabelle wriggled upright. She was embarrassed at her urge to kiss Ren, and relieved she’d not given in to it. She suspected Ren was quietly laughing at her, and tried to read the sly smile, but the moon glowed behind Ren’s shoulder and cast her face in shadow.

“You’re so beautiful,” Ren said. She traced Isabelle’s cheek.

“No, I’m not.” Isabelle pulled away. “I don’t understand what’s going on, Ren. How are we connected? This doesn’t feel real to me. I have so many questions and you won’t answer me straight.”

“I’ll answer when you’re well enough. I promise to. But you’ve had a serious accident, Isabelle. You were lucky I found you. Everything else is just…complicated.” Ren gently pushed her back onto the pillows.

“And what makes you think I can’t deal with complicated?” She knew instinctively that she could. Complicated was no stranger, Isabelle was definite about that.

“And where are you going? You can’t just tuck me up in bed like a child whenever I get in the way.” She wasn’t so definite about that. She felt more childlike than ever at being abandoned. She wanted Ren’s company.

Where Ren was concerned, she knew very little but felt a lot. She’d awoken into a world that confused and scared her as much as any nightmare. The only answers she had were those she scraped together from errant memories and Ren’s cryptograms. She was in the middle of nowhere and she disliked the sight of herself in the mirror. What else did she know? Nothing. She was a vacuum. It was all a mess, and the one person who could help was walking away. At that moment the only certain thing was she wanted Ren to stay, to curl up beside her and hold her and keep the nightmares at bay. To stay and simply talk to her and help her make sense of it all.

“Hush. You need rest.” Ren soothed her, even as she made to leave.

“Don’t hush me. I’m your lover, aren’t I?” Isabelle’s anxiety put her on the offense. She watched Ren’s eyes narrow. “Are we having an affair? Running around behind someone’s back? Tell me the truth. Something isn’t right.” She pushed herself up to sit in the center of the bed. “Tell me. I can feel the truth writhing inside me, trying to get out, and it’s not a nice feeling.”

Ren bent over her until their faces were inches apart, her brow dark and frowning. Her eyes caught the moonlight in a weird amber glow.

“All you need to know is that you’re mine,” she snarled. “
Everything
about this is right.” She straightened and glared at Isabelle. “So start feeling it.”

A distant howl wavered from the woods, loaded with troubled melancholy. Ren stiffened, then abruptly strode from the room leaving Isabelle in bed, bewildered.

“Don’t you tell me what to feel,” she shouted with hollow bravado at the empty room. But she did feel it, in her own way. Ren was hers.

Now she was determined not to go to sleep. Despite feeling heavy-limbed and wooly-headed, she padded along the hallway on bare feet looking for the kitchen. A fresh pot of tea and a seat by the fire would help. She could sit and think and try and sift through the events of the past few days. Ren disturbed her. She drew out such a tangle of emotions in Isabelle. The liberty Ren had taken with that kiss, for example. Isabelle knew beyond all doubt they were lovers. She could feel it the moment they had touched; yet another part of her was uneasy with this insight.

“I’m a lesbian after all,” she told the planked floor in the hallway, watching her bare toes move along the warm pine. It didn’t feel wrong. In fact, it felt exhilarating and dangerous. “And I think I’ve fallen for the lesbian version of Heathcliff. ‘My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath, a source of little visible delight, but necessary,’” she quoted and froze mid-step.

“I can quote from Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights
? Wow.” It thrilled her she knew the classic well enough to quote from it, and that it was a favorite book. Another piece of the jigsaw fell into place. She loved books. First
Frankenstein
and now
Wuthering Heights
. She knew the classics, she adored the Brontës…oh, oh, and Austen and Browning, and what about Eliot and Dickinson? Their names rattled through her head along with a dozen others. How strange: she could remember authors and book titles, and even prose and plot, but not her own address? It cheered her up, though. Her memories were returning. She was finally forming into something solid.

She tried to dredge up some other quote to build on the first, to underpin her discovery. Her mind went blank.
Okay, so I can’t force it
. She thought again of the book Ren had been reading.
Frankenstein
. How fantastic that they seemed to like the same books.