If I Can't Have You by Patti Berg

shaken before; not like this.
    The tremors were bad, but even worse was the way the woman stared at him. He wasn’t a drunk. This wasn’t delirium. Some hellish thing was happening.
    He slammed the glass on, the bar, and it shattered, spraying shards of glass and amber liquid over his hand, the shrunken length of his sleeve, his unbuttoned jacket, and wrinkled shirt.
    He felt the sting and stared at the trickle of blood on his fingers, grabbed the towel from the bar, and gripped it tightly to stop the flow.
    Looking up, he saw the woman’s frightened eyes. He wanted to grab her, hold her, tell her he wasn’t a madman. He wanted her to believe him because maybe, if she believed, he might believe he was sane, too.
    He plowed his fingers through his hair, then turned around and looked at his own bloodshot eyes in the mirror over the bar. His cheeks were hollow, his chin and jaw coated in heavy black whiskers. The circle of skin below each eye was dark and swollen, his face red and blotchy.
    Dear, God! What had happened to the Trevor Montgomery he normally saw in the mirror?
    Turning slowly, he looked at the woman at the door and took a deep breath. “I have no memories of your time, your present,” he said in a low, hesitant voice. “Apparently I have no home any longer, and if the things I read in that book are true, I doubt I have any friends.”
    She opened the door wider. “I think you’d better go.”
    He had no energy to argue. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. She’d already formed an opinion about him, and she wasn’t about to change her mind.
    He grabbed a full decanter of whiskey and walked toward the woman, hoping she would offer some sympathy, a helping hand, or at least ask him to stay. He needed someone to talk to, someone to help make sense of this lunacy happening around him. He needed to stay in his own home, the only place that still seemed sane.
    But she did nothing but step back and give him plenty of room to walk through the door.
    Trevor stopped at the threshold. “I wanted to die,” he said, looking into her eyes that held many emotions, especially contempt. “I would have, too, but something went wrong. I don’t know how. I don’t know why.” He looked past her to the inside of his house one last time. “Thank you for not telling the officer about me.”
    “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me,” she said. “What was I supposed to do, tell him you’re Trevor Montgomery?” She laughed lightly. “He would have thought I was crazy.”
    Trevor smiled, shaking his head. “I’m the one who’s crazy. Not you.”
    “Please leave,” she repeated.
    He owed her his freedom. The least he could do was grant her request, although he had no idea where he’d go.
    “I’m sorry for what happened,” he said as he stood in the doorway.
    She didn’t acknowledge him, though, she just looked over his shoulder and out at the night sky.
    He smiled softly and stepped through the door. She closed it tightly, and he could hear the sounds of bolts and chains locking him out of the only place where he had thought he might be safe.
    oOo
    Leaning against the door, Adriana stared across the room to the bar where the intruder had stood, drinking her whiskey, gazing at her with bloodshot eyes that looked vaguely familiar.
    He’d implied that he was Trevor Montgomery. She didn’t believe it. It wasn’t possible, but the stranger had sounded like someone she knew.
    Was it the fear of photographers and having her picture in the papers that had kept her from turning him in, or was it the familiar voice and eyes?
    Any other man—or a man who’d had a so-so smile and dull, boring eyes—who had broken into her house, shoved her against a wall, bruised her wrists, or made her think she was going to die would have been on the way to jail by now.
    She supposed her intruder should have been on his way there, too.
    How could she have let her fear of gossip and those piercing brown eyes that begged for help