Smoked

see her hospital gown had ridden up, exposing her bare hip. I grabbed the bedclothes and covered her before reaching down to give her an awkward hug.
“Lie with me.”
It popped into my head again that Siren was playing me, but after one look into her imploring eyes, I rested my hip on the bed. “Be careful,” I warned when she tried to scoot over a second time. I gingerly put one arm around her waist and folded the other above her head. She closed her eyes.
A few minutes later, the door opened and a different nurse scowled at me. Before she could speak, I eased away from the sleeping Siren, put my finger to my lips, and stood. I brushed past her and out the door when my cell phone rang with a call from the man who’d hired me to do a job I failed.
“Rile,” I answered, leaning against the tiled wall of the corridor.
“How is Siren?”
“Out of surgery.”
“And?”
I shrugged my shoulder, not that he could see me. “Stable,” I muttered, trying to recollect the thoughts I’d been able to formulate before Siren’s request to hold her caused my mind to go blank. “Rile, I—”
“Say no more. Your first duty is to your partner.”
“But, Konstantine—”
“Is dead,” he said, interrupting me for the second time.
“Kensington?” I asked of the woman we’d been hired to protect from a Hungarian madman. The Hungarian madman I’d let escape after he shot and almost killed Siren.
“She is safe and asleep at my side.”
“I’m sorry, Rile.” I got the words I’d wanted to say at the beginning of our conversation out.
“I’ll notify Director Hughes of Siren’s condition.”
“Listen, can you keep the details vague for the time being?” If the Director of Irish Military Intelligence found out Siren had suffered several mini-strokes and her memory was sketchy at best, not to mention what the doctor had said about her having trouble controlling movement on the left side of her body, the likelihood of her ever being able to return to duty was minuscule.
“Of course, my friend, given I have none.”
I could envision Rile’s smirk. “For now, she’s out of surgery and her condition is stable. That’s all Hughes needs to know.”
“Very well. We will speak again soon.”
I stuffed my phone back in my pocket, wishing I could get my hands on a shot of bourbon before I went back into Siren’s room. With that thought, the door opened and the nurse stepped out.
“She’s asking for you.”

2
Siren
“Where is Smoke?” I asked when I opened my eyes and felt a cold hand on my wrist.
“Smoke?” asked the woman who was attaching a blood-pressure cuff to my upper arm.
“The man who was here earlier.”
“He stepped out.”
“Did he say when he was coming back?”
“Shh.” She glared at me while she pumped the ball, tightening the cuff. “Where in Ireland are you from?” she asked as she released it and typed something into her laptop.
“Um…” I scrunched my eyebrows. The name of my birthplace was right on the tip of 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