Chapter 21 - Remember
The bed was yet again empty much to Harm's chagrin. Cold too, he noticed by running a hand over the spot where Mac should have been. He figured there would be many restless nights ahead of but did not like waking up to find her gone.
Immediately his mind went to dark places like the time she broke the window and escaped. Or another time when she threatened to cut him to pieces but never had the heart. He lived in fear that just as quickly as Mac had appeared, Nazanin would too to dwarf memories or obliterate them altogether.
None of it made sense to him despite previously scouring the interwebs for information on amnesia and the absurd cases that seemed too outlandish to be true. With a huff, he pushed himself out of bed, slipped on his t-shirt and boxers to go in search of her.
He padded to the living room finding they'd left one light on which was enough for him to see that Mac was not there. The screened porch was just as empty. Her jacket hung on the coat rack next to his, her boots were atop the shoe box by the door. Clear indications that she hadn't simply left unless hypothermia was high on her list of necessities.
The bathroom was dark which was why he didn't initially look inside until he pulled the door open and threw on the light above the vanity. It was a gentler wattage than the ceiling light, casting a soft glow across the room which was how he saw the figure inside the bathtub.
To his surprise Mac sat inside the empty clawfoot tub wrapped only in her robe. She sat with her legs drawn up against her chest, head buried between her knees. What disturbed him the most was the sobbing.
She tried to confine the whimpers but each was still audible and terribly so. They sounded desperate and pained like her soul was being gutted slowly. And it was. It felt like someone took a dull blade and was cutting away at her from inside.
"Mac." Careful to speak gently he moved as close as he dared. Intuition told him to give her space and his heart begged him to take her in his arms and never let go.
When she didn't immediately respond to her name he settled on sitting by her until she acknowledged him. Harm sat on the fluffy mat which ran along the side of the tub and leaned his back against the porcelain wall that felt so cold against his skin.
The silence stretched and doubled punctuated only by Mac's muffled cries. She took in a deep, shaky breath and let it out on yet another sob, one just as uncontrollable as all the others she couldn't censor. That blasted internal clock ticked away each second from the moment she crawled out of her dream.
And crawl out she did because the nightmare had come on so suddenly breaking any tranquility Mac found in Harm's embrace. She woke from a dream within a dream that spanned over three years of a life that eviscerated her own.
There was a hospital of sorts resembling a mental ward by the way in which she was kept. A prisoner in a locked room adorned with a cot, a small table, a chair and pale green walls. Her arm hurt so badly beneath the bandages that covered her forearm. Her head ached just as bad as an odd pressure squeeze at her temples threatening to crush her skull. Mac felt a sting behind her eyes as if daggars were punching a hole straight through.
Most terrible of all were her memories - the lack thereof and the inability to string a coherent sentence in a language she knew to be her own. She spent days in her cell, scarcely checked on by the staff until one handsome man appeared claiming that her name was Nazanin and he was her husband.
She remembered.
She remembered everything and desperately crawled out of Harm's arms because she could no longer breathe. Mac hurried to the bathroom and prayed it was some mistake but when she looked into the mirror the woman staring back at her wasn't herself. The reflection wore the niqab with only sad, chocolate-amber eyes glaring back at her.
Mac opened her mouth to scream for Harm but the very breath was zapped out of her lungs as more and more unwanted memories flooded her mind. She gripped the edge of the counter but still felt her legs give out until she hit the floor only to wake several minutes later cold and naked.
The fear which lived in the edges revealed itself now and as Mac brought herself back to her feet she found herself unworthy of Harm's love. Her body shook both from the cold and the unbearable notion of what she had done. And so Mac wrapped herself in her robe and didn't remember how or when she slid into the empty tub until he came looking for her.
This wasn't the first time she'd felt the weight of emotional pain - that heavy cross she bared on a ferry ride in Australia and carried with her until they became lovers. Now she'd erected that cross and nailed herself to it. What had she done?
He knew.
Of course he did which was why she was met with reluctance to discuss the parts of her past Harm was privy to. Why he was still here and why he was willing to lay with her was a mystery Mac was scared to unravel. She felt dirty...like...like...a whore. Dear Lord, what had she done?
The crying ceased after nearly half an hour and when her head came up she was startled to find Harm still seated on the floor with his back against the tub. He hadn't asked her questions nor tried to stop the pain from overtaking her. He simply sat by waiting.
Damn him for that kind of control. Damn him for letting her grieve or whatever the hell was going on. Damn him for loving her. Oh God, he loved her. Why did he love her?
'Because he doesn't know everything and once he does…' A voice within Mac's head said, reminding her of what had happened during those three years. She swallowed hard, wincing as the lump in her throat hurt. When she finally spoke, it was with a raspy voice, in Farsi that at his harsh intake of breath Mac changed to English. "Do you love me?"
"Yes."
His voice was strong and just a simple word cracked the already broken parts of her heart. "Why? Why do you? How could you knowing what you know?"
"What do you think I know?"
Not everything, clearly. He wouldn't know about her day to day life or that it wasn't always bad. But, he knew about a specific man, the one who's bed she shared on countless occasions, what was worse; she'd even begged for Farid or at least Nazanin did. But where did Sarah end and Nazanin begin? They were the same weren't they? The thought made her stomach churn. "Farid Ahmadi, my...my... husband."
Harm's jaw clenched and his fists rolled into tight balls. He took a slow breath as that uncontrollable rage began to simmer inside. He really should have killed Farid when he had the chance, eradicated him from her life for all time. It would have been easier with the man gone, he knew but then he would have been hunted, both of them would. "Mac…"
"You can't love me anymore, Harm...You...you can't. Not with that hanging over our heads. I married someone else...I was with him."
He snorted, if only it were that easy to shut off his emotions. He tried for a time, tried so hard to move on when it seemed she would never return home. "You're my soulmate, Sarah. The other part of me, I can't just fall out of love with you."
"Stop that!" Mac yelled and finally raised her head to stare at the back of his. This watered down version of him which had been appealing hours earlier now only served to raise her ire. "Don't tell me some romantic bullshit you want me to hear… it' isn't you. It's never been you. Don't start now!"
The control within him snapped like a tree being hit by a bolt of lightning. He scrambled up to full height, his body towering over hers while he glared with a menacing expression that caused Mac to shiver. "What the hell do you want me to tell you? I didn't choose this!" Harm yelled as he violently waved a hand between the two of them.
"I didn't choose to fall in love with you. I tried so fucking hard to stop it!" Undoubtedly their chemistry had gotten them closer and closer until there was no turning back. Any other woman he was with never meant as much to him as Mac did. Every relationship was built on lies because Sarah MacKenzie ruled his mind day and night.
"I told myself I was only physically attracted to you. Maybe infatuated with a good looking woman or that it was because you looked like Diane... It was more than that. You have no idea how much more!" The nights he laid awake with Renee sleeping soundly next to him feeling like he betrayed Mac in some way. She would never know the agony he felt as the days led to her impending wedding to Mic; the notion that there was no way to stop it - he would lose her forever. "I didn't want to fall in love with you, Mac! I didn't."
Harm's body gave out, he suddenly felt so lethargic that he brought himself back down to the ground, leaning against the tub. He sighed heavily and let the tears that were stinging his eyes fall unchecked. "There are easier women in this World to love, you know? Ones that aren't so hard-headed or independent or infuriating...I fell for you because you challenged me...You're the other part of me and that's not some stupid romantic talk that I think you want to hear. I mean it...I love you. I love you more than you'll ever understand."
Mac shifted in the tub, enough to reach out and run a hand through his hair. She heard the rush of breath come out of him, heard the gentle crying and the realization that this had hurt him too. She just didn't want to destroy him further and the mistake of walking away had cost them so much. "I'm married to another man. You can't just forgive that so easily."
"I don't give a damn about Farid Ahmadi. You married me. You're my wife." He punctuated. "You were never confirmed dead. Our vows were not annuled. We were never divorced; the marriage certificate is still in my safe where I put it when we came back from our Honeymoon. I'm your husband, not Farid."
She'd told herself the same thing and yet there was so much time that had passed since they became husband and wife; time that now belonged to another man on the other half of the World. "I spent more time married to him than I did you."
And that time had molded Nazanin until her eyes could see no one else but Farid. She swallowed hard and let out a whimper when she remembered the nights in Farid's arms; the times she was aroused by him, wanted him, needed him. There was no one else in her eyes despite some of the atrocities he dispensed just because he could. "Time has a way of forcing certain things to happen between two people."
Harm leaned his head back and brought his legs into his chest. He suddenly felt so cold, something that had nothing to do with the temperature but came from inside. The words she said meant so much more than Mac was leading on and the bile rose in his throat as he asked her the one thing he didn't really want to know. "Do you love him?"
"Harm… don't do this."
"Answer me: Do you still love him?" He asked again with a forceful voice.
She shrugged. Part of Nazanin still held an affinity for Farid, Mac felt nothing but disdain.
"Part of me fell in love with him. Or at least Nazanin did...He was good to me; kind and understanding."
"Fuck." Stockholm's Syndrome, Harm deduced. It was the only clear reason why a woman, any woman could fall for a man like Farid. He still saw him beating her on the streets in Paris, an image that would never, ever stop replying in his mind. Farid had beat her, kicked her and had Harm not intervened, he was sure Mac would have been killed. "Oh yeah, I'm sure he was a real prince while he beat you in the street and lied to you about your marriage."
"I spoke out of turn." She defended although Mac couldn't remember what she had said to deserve Farid's anger. "And he rarely hit me. When he did it was for good reason."
"You spoke out of turn? You...That's not a reason! For any man to hit a woman especially if she's his wife…"
He was right, of course but that didn't change the customs of another land and the World she briefly lived in came with many consequences. "You didn't live there; don't know the customs. It's different, their laws and in the world I lived in, I should have been obedient. I wasn't and was punished for it."
"You're defending him?" Harm felt so disgusted by it that he could feel the bile rising. "How could you?"
"You don't understand."
Nor did he want to when there was nothing to understand. A loving husband wouldn't hit his wife. She knew that, lived through every single one of her mother's beatings and now, to defend a man like that made him feel so physically sick. "Do you love him? Please answer honestly...Do you?"
"Sarah doesn't… Nazanin." She hesitated because it just didn't make sense. To Mac it felt like a war was brewing within her. One side was the woman she always knew the other was created and yet led somewhat of a full life despite gaps in memories. "Nazanin was enamored with Farid, I guess she fell in love until he took on another wife and I felt...replaced?"
"No one could replace you."
"I can't explain why he treated Nazanin so differently. It was like he loved her and yet, couldn't help but do certain things...It wasn't all bad. At first he was the perfect husband...Patient, kind...he didn't...we didn't…"
"Tell me...tell me everything." Harm needed that band aid ripped off no matter how much it would hurt. He expected most of what she'd tell him would hurt but she needed the closure and so did he.
"Farid didn't force me to have sex with him. He waited until I wanted it...I guess I wanted him. Our first time was actually nice but then, Nazanin couldn't remember anyone else."
"I hate to ask this...was he better than me?"
She smiled a little, always amused at how such an arrogant flyboy could sometimes show his insecurity. Being intimate with Harm had no words to describe it because he'd touched her in ways no one else could. It wasn't just sex but so much more. "No. When we're together...I...I wish I had a word to describe it. There aren't any. It's like every move, every touch I feel to depths of my soul...Nothing will ever compare."
Harm let a breath out and groaned when he stretched his legs. "Get out of that tub, Mac. Come to bed. I can hear your teeth chattering."
She was shivering but she needed to tell him so much more and Mac was afraid to stop. She may never have the nerve. "I need to tell you things Harm...things that are hard to hear."
"I know. I won't lie, I kinda don't want to know but I won't stop you." He stood and offered her a hand. "Put on your PJs, I'll meet you in the living room with a cup of cocoa, deal?"
Harm padded to the kitchen, opened a cupboard and dumbly looked inside. The box of cocoa was staring back at him but he could only glare with unseeing eyes. He made a hasty retreat away from her needing to get his bearings back again or he would crumble in front of Mac. As it was he wanted to scream, to run, to tear down everthing in his path until the breath was sucked out of him.
This...all of this...was his fault.
It didn't matter that she ran away with Clay - he drove her to that point and for what? His breath heaved as his hands gripped the sides of the counter. Unable to hold back the tears he simply cried. He cried for her.
That was where Mac found him, hunched over the sink - a defeated man. All of that strength she always relied on was crumbling before her eyes. She wasn't sure what to do or if he even wanted any comfort she could offer.
Mac's arms came around him anyway and it was surprising to have him turn into her embrace. Time stopped when they held each other, even her internal clock shut off to give them that much needed private time. His head buried into her shoulder and every repressed feeling broke free then.
Her own tears fell unchecked and they simply held each other for as long as he needed. "I did this to us. I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, Harm."
His head came up, his hands cupped her face to brush away her tears. "No. We're not gonna do that, not gonna place blame. It happened, we both messed up."
"Where does that leave us?"
He sighed. "I don't know. It all depends on what you want."
"Simple. I want you." And with that Mac pulled him back into her arms.