Smoked (The Invincibles #5) - Heather Slade Page 0,3
my tongue, as they say, yet I couldn’t recall it. Just like I couldn’t recall much of anything else. I knew my name. And Smoke’s.
Wait. His name couldn’t just be Smoke. Like I couldn’t recall where I hailed from, I couldn’t remember his full name.
I rested my head against the pillow and closed my eyes. I opened them again when the woman’s cold fingers rested on my pulse.
“What is that?” I asked as she inserted a needle in the port of my IV.
“Your pain medicine.”
A warm sensation flooded into my arm and up through my chest. Why could I remember things like what an IV was called and even a port, but not the name of the place where I was born or the full name of the man I loved? I tried to fight against falling asleep before he came back, but was overcome by grogginess.
“Smoke…” I whispered.
* * *
When I woke, he was sitting in the chair beside me, studying something on his phone. His brow was furrowed. Did he do that often? Why couldn’t I remember?
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw one thing. Smoke, holding himself above me as I lay on a blanket on the beach. Somehow, I knew we were on an island. It was nearly dark, but I could see his face, his eyes. I could remember every detail of his lips on mine and everything that followed. It wasn’t just the memory of how our bodies felt, naked as the ocean breeze swept over us. It was more that I could recall every feeling I had from the first kiss until we lay in each other’s arms by the light of the moon and stars. In the face of not remembering anything else, I knew deep in my soul that I loved Smoke and he loved me.
I opened my eyes a second time and found him studying me instead of his phone.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Drugged.”
He smiled. Or maybe he smirked.
“What?”
He leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees. “You aren’t usually quite so…docile.”
“Docile?” I might’ve shrieked if my throat didn’t hurt so bad.
He laughed out loud. “There’s the Siren I know.”
I rested my head against the pillow. “There are so many things I can’t remember. In fact, I remember almost nothing. The nurse asked where I was from in Ireland, and I couldn’t tell her. I know your name is Smoke, but I don’t know if that’s your real name or your last name.”
“My name is Broderick Torcher, and my code name is Smoke.”
“Thank you.” I sighed. “Wait. Code name?”
“I work in the intelligence business. So do you.”
My head throbbed. “My name is Siobhan.”
“That’s right.”
“Gallagher. Siobhan Gallagher.”
“And your code name is Siren.”
“Siren,” I whispered. “Smoke and Siren.”
“Hard to believe, but it was a coincidence. We both had our code names long before the first op we worked together.”
“How long ago was that?”
He held up one finger when his phone vibrated. “I need to take this.” He stood and walked out of the room.
I had so many questions. He said we had our code names before we worked together. Did we work for the same company?
The door opened, and instead of Smoke, a different nurse came in. I rested my head and closed my eyes when, like the other, she checked my blood pressure. I looked up at her when I felt her hand on my wrist.
“Wait, is that pain medicine?”
“It is,” she said without even looking at me.
I tried to jerk my hand away, but it wouldn’t budge. “Hang on.”
“What?” she snapped.
“Another nurse already gave me pain medicine.”
With the syringe still in hand, she picked up a piece of paper. “You’re due. Once every four hours.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Yeah, you do,” said Smoke, coming in the door. “You’re nowhere near ready to be off that stuff.”
“How do you know?”
“If you had a mirror to look into, you’d know.”
“What does that mean?”
Despite my protests, I felt the warm sensation flow through my arm and into my chest. “Fecking hell,” I groaned. “I don’t want to sleep.”
The bitch of a nurse scurried out, leaving Smoke smiling at me.
“What?”
“You’ll be back to your regular self in no time.”
If I could lift my arm, I’d have flipped him off, but I couldn’t. Maybe the pain killers they kept shooting into it made it numb. “I wonder if that’s a good thing,” I muttered.
“You need to get some sleep, and I need to eat. I’ll come back in the morning.”
“Morning? What time is