Page 313 of Once Upon a Fable

I might as well drown myself in the river.

I might as well end this goddamn struggle because what sort of cruel, sadistic joke was life playing on me when I finally had someone to call my own and I couldn’t fucking remember her!

You can’t afford to call her your own, remember?

Oh, God.

I didn’t know who I was anymore.

I had no strength or desire to love.

Yet I wanted to love more than anything.

My hands reached for the medical texts, my fingers running down spines, my eyes squinting past haze, struggling to read. My broken arm throbbed from whatever I’d done to it last night. The fresh cuts on my knuckles oozed, and the scent of papaya kept teasing my memories.

The smell hissed as if it was stark evidence, collaborating Gemma’s claim that we’d lain beneath the stars together.

I froze, doing my best to imagine it. Two of us in the bath. My hands on her body. My cock pulsing inside her.

I hardened.

I choked.

Come on.

Therehadto be something in this godforsaken place that could help me.

Ripping out a medical journal, I carried the heavy book back to the chair and collapsed.

Sinking into the leather, I skimmed the contents until I stopped on concussion.

Holding my breath, I flipped to the right chapter and shook my head, trying to be free of the rocks and fog that’d never left me alone since falling off that awful cliff.

Given the absence of a diagnostic test or biomarker for concussion, the current concussion diagnosis is confirming the presence of symptoms after an individual has experienced a hit to the head or body.

I skimmed the jargon, racing to find what I needed.

Basic concussion:

Can cause irritability, tiredness, forgetfulness. The individual might suffer from—

I skipped to the next part.

I wouldn’t lie to myself and think I had a mild concussion. I wasn’t an idiot. Mild didn’t equal being so fucking tired I could barely stay awake for a few hours at a time. Mild didn’t explain while Gemma said I woke up as different versions of myself—

Wait, you remember that.

You remember...

I groaned, forcing my messed-up brain to dig deep, to shovel hard, to uncover things I didn’t want it to erase.

A rabbit!

I choked as images of sunshine and a juicy rabbit flashed through my head.

Cooked meat.

The scent of skin charring and the stomach-churning fragrance of my own flesh being burned by Lev—