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things eluded his memory, buried behind the impenetrable mist. But he could see Maddensfield clearly, the house he grew up in, the faces of his brothers and sister in turn. He remembered high school, remembered scoring the winning touchdown to advance the team to the state play-offs. And recalled the bus stop the night he’d left home.
    “Come now, Garret, don’t waste your energy on words,” Suzanne said briskly, though her heart was already pounding in her chest. The strange tightness returned to her stomach, and she felt anger thread into the weave of anticipation coursing through her blood. She edged away from the bed, and began to tidy things on the table. “You should sleep,” she continued, proud of the steadiness of her voice.
    “There are so many things I don’t remember,” he went on, his head rolling restlessly. “Last week, the weeks before that. The year before that. All I see is the mist in my head.” He looked up. “So why do I remember the bus stop? Why do I see it again and again in my mind?”
    His gaze caught her this time, pinning her like a helpless butterfly while her hands fluttered uselessly over the tabletop. The anger and tension weaved tighter, her spine turning brittle and rigid. Why was he asking her these things? Why was he looking at her like that? “You’ve had a nasty bump on your head,” she grated out under the onslaught of his glittering eyes. “You need some rest, Garret. That’s all.”
    He frowned, and at once, she could see the telltale creep of color under his darkly tanned skin. “Do you remember the bus stop?” he demanded again, the words hoarser and edged with feverish determination. The air around him began to crackle with the pent-up electricity of his need.
    She set her jaw, her gaze approaching mutiny. But the intensity of his gaze refused to be denied. Damn feverish fool.
    “Yes,” she admitted suddenly. Her hands unconsciously clenched the edge of the nightstand, while his eyes flared brighter.
    “Do you remember what you said?” The fever flushed his cheeks, lacing the words with urgency and fire. This time, she managed to shake her head.
    “You said you loved me,” he said abruptly, his body shifting with the restlessness of the encroaching flames. Hot again, he could feel the hint of the fire pressing against his mind, the heat just beginning to roll forward. Once more he fastened upon the picture of the bus stop, the rain cold and cleansing on his face, the tears slow and desolate on her cheeks. He could still see her lips soundlessly forming the words, while something strange and inexplicable wrenched his chest. He could still feel the phantom ache, and it drove him mad in his heat-sensitized mind.
    His gaze latched onto hers even more fiercely, the glittering depths tortured and cornered and possessed. His bandaged fists began to slowly twist the sheets at his side.
    “I was sixteen,” she managed to blurt out, the beat of her heart painful against her ribs as his eyes bore into her own. “And you were…” She faltered, hating the weakness and hating him for dragging her through his fever-ridden memories. Her lips thinned, and she stared him straight in the eyes. “And you were James Dean.”
    He grinned suddenly, a slow cracking of his heat-parched skin that turned to a wince. James Dean. Of course, he’d been James Dean. But had James Dean’s head ever felt as if it had been stuck in a vat of boiling tar? Did James Dean remember nothing but the woman he was supposed to forget?
    “And now?” he demanded urgently with a sickening lurch of his head, feeling at once lost and desperate. Flames leaped at the corners of his memory, his body bowing with rigid intensity. “And now?”
    His gaze burned so dark, she felt a moment of panic. He was feverish, she realized dully. Sick and lost in his ravaged mind, saying words he didn’t even comprehend. The knowledge lent her strength, and gently, firmly, she laid her hands on his shoulders. With