That was quickly dashed when her doctor informed him her memory hadn’t returned.

Rob found her sitting up in bed, watching cable news with the deputy and the barely eaten remnants of her lunch still sitting on her bed tray. The deputy nodded to him and left to sit in the hall, closing the door behind him.

“Hi, Laura.”

She didn’t look away from the TV, where she stared at it, frowning over a commercial for a local landscaping firm out of Venice. “Hi.” The engagement ring sat on the bedside table next to her.

Rob tried not to show his pain. The last thing Laura needed now was to deal with his emotions. He wanted her to focus on getting her memory back.

He pulled a chair up next to her bed and showed her the albums. “I brought some stuff for us to look at. The doctors said maybe it would help.”

Then she pulled her attention from the TV. “Can we talk first?”

“Sure.”

“How did we meet?”

He paused, not sure how to handle this hot potato. “Through mutual friends,” he said, their usual answer to someone vanilla who asked that same question.

He thought she might ask him for more details, but then she started asking about other things and the questions came one right after another.

Where she was from? Florida. Where was her family? Her parents were dead, killed in a car accident a little over a year earlier, and he hadn’t been able to contact her brother, Bill, in Montana. What did she do for a living? She owned a dive shop and charter business, and wrote freelance articles for fishing and scuba diving magazines and websites.

Why, who, what, where—it nearly wore him out until he put it into perspective that she was, essentially, hearing these things for the first time.

Laura finally paused and lay back in bed, closing her eyes.

“I also brought you some clothes. Your clothes,” he said. “I thought it might make you a little more comfortable.” He opened the duffle bag for her. She reached in and sorted through them, finally selecting a T-shirt and pair of sweat pants.

When he offered her his arm to help her sit up she hesitated at first, then tentatively let him assist her out of bed. He helped her to the bathroom, standing back while she locked the door behind her. She obviously wasn’t comfortable having him so close.

He wasn’t used to this from her, someone he’d shared his life and bed with for two years.

Someone who, until a few days ago, had called him Sir.

Someone who had trusted him with her life and safety when they played very edgy scenes.

Someone who had never hesitated—before—to turn herself over to him completely and without reservation.

Once again he had to force himself to remember he was a stranger to her.

She took several minutes to change and when she emerged, he helped her back to bed. The Laura he knew was physically there, but the tangible emotional gulf felt miles deep and infinitely wide.

Laura reached for the photo albums. The first were from her childhood. Rob thought maybe the older memories would return faster, based on what the doctors had told him.

He watched while she slowly flipped through the pages, occasionally asking him for a name or place. Some he knew, some he didn’t. Once they got to the albums with pictures of them as a couple, he told her the stories, trying to relive them for her as best he could. He also had a ton of pictures on his phone, but until he could sanitize the photo album and remove the ones of her in bondage, or her proudly sticking her ass out so he could take pictures of her bruises, he’d hold off showing them to her.

They were halfway through one album when she smiled at a picture of them on a fishing boat. Rob held a large amberjack. Laura used two hands to hoist an impressive grouper.

“Do you remember that day?” he asked.

Laura closed her eyes, deep in concentration. “Something about a ledge.”

Rob didn’t give her any information, made her search for it.

“Maybe a…croaker?” She looked at him, her brow furrowed. He nodded.

Her finger traced the picture. “We were scuba diving?”

“Yes.”

“I know how to do that?”

He forced the smile. “You’re an instructor.”

“Oh, yeah. You said that, didn’t you. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I know you’re overwhelmed.”

That earned him a sad smile. “That’s an understatement.”

She stared at the photo for a few more minutes without speaking. The obvious intensity of her effort was mind boggling. “Something about a lobster.” After several more minutes she finally shook her head. “That’s all I remember.”

He tried to hide his disappointment. She’d been so close to getting it. “We were spearfishing in the Gulf. You shot the grouper, and he went under a ledge, making the loud croaking noise they do when they’re wounded or scared. While you were digging it out, I shot that amberjack and had my hands full. You yelled into your regulator and I turned and you had a hold of the grouper, but a large lobster had backed out of the hole and you didn’t have any hands to grab it.”

“Was that good?”

He laughed. “Well, it would have been if we could have got it. Lobsters aren’t common this far north in the Gulf. It was lobster season, and we had lobster stamps on our fishing licenses. But he got away, baby girl.”

She flinched and looked at him with a suspicious glare.

“What’s wrong?”

“Baby girl?”

That was one of his pet names for her, had been for years. She was his “baby girl,” even though they didn’t do age play, and he could call her that regardless of who was around. In front of vanillas, she’d teasingly call him Fireman instead of Sir. Or Hose Jockey, depending on her mood and whether she was trying to get him into bed. She had a hellacious sense of humor.

But alone, she always called him Sir.

“That doesn’t bring anything back?” he softly asked, hoping his voice didn’t tremble. He tried to remember Singh’s warning, that he had to stay strong for her.

“Not really.” She wrinkled her nose again. “You really called me that? I liked it?”

“Yeah.” He hoped he could choke out the statement without breaking down. “If you don’t feel comfortable with that now, I won’t.”

She slowly nodded. “Thanks.” She returned her attention to the album.

He felt another piece of his tattered soul ripped from him. But if she didn’t want him calling her that now, he wouldn’t.

No matter how much it hurt.

* * *

Laura finally shook her head as she stared at the picture again. She was going to ask him more questions when someone knocked on her door.

The deputy entered. “You have another visitor.” An older woman with short blonde hair walked in. It was obvious she made an effort not to react to Laura’s battered face.

“Hi, honey. How are you feeling?”

“Laura,” Rob said, “this is Carol Langhbine. She’s an old friend of yours. She was in some of the pictures I showed you.”

Laura looked at her, feeling something as new memories swirled in the darkness without fully surfacing, but she wasn’t sure if they were true memories, or just things she’d seen in the pictures. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

* * *

Rob somehow managed not to swear when Carol entered the room. He’d specifically told her and Steve both not to come to the hospital yet.

Then he spied the tears in Carol’s eyes.

“Excuse us for just a minute, Laura. I need to talk to Carol outside.” He hustled her out of the room and into the hallway.

Carol’s voice barely rose above a tearful whisper. “Oh my god, Rob. She looks horrible!”

Rob had kept both her and their friend Steve away from the hospital while Laura was unconscious. There was nothing they could do for her, and he knew Laura—the old Laura—wouldn’t want them seeing her like that.

“That’s why I warned you not to visit until I told you to.” He struggled to contain his irritation. He’d wanted a chance to sit down with Carol and Steve and fully brief them before having them come in.

Tony and Shayla were different. He knew he could count on them to maintain a strong façade in front of Laura.

And especially to not say anything about their BDSM activities.

Carol, however, was practically family, even though she had no clue about the private aspects of their relationship.

“She doesn’t remember anything.”

Carol looked at him. “Nothing?”

Rob shook his head. “Everything’s a blank. Even me.”

“Oh my god.” She dug a tissue out of her purse and tried to clean herself up. “What can I do?”

“Just put on a smile and come in there with me and talk to her. She needs information and support right now.” He glanced at the clock over the nurses’ station. “And let’s keep the visit short so you don’t overwhelm her.”

He wanted Carol out of there well before Tony and Shayla arrived so he didn’t have to deal with Carol’s hurt feelings about him inviting others to see Laura before her.

Carol sniffled and nodded. “Okay.”

He waited while she went to the bathroom and washed her face. They returned to Laura’s room and Rob pulled a chair next to the other side of the bed.

Carol had been best friends with Laura’s mother since Laura was five. They returned to the old family photo albums, where Carol was able to fill in names and places Rob couldn’t.

Eventually, Laura asked, “Who would want to do this to me? Who had a motive?”

Rob and Carol looked at each other across the bed. Carol found her voice first, something for which Rob felt extremely thankful.