The words are a blip—gone the moment they appear. I want to grab on to them—examine them from every angle, analyze the tone and the shimmer of butterflies they let loose in my belly—but they evaporate before I can grasp them, and now they feel more like fantasy than memory.
His eyes search my face before dipping lower. He scans my body as if he’s looking for evidence of my injuries. I stand still under his appraisal—too curious to leave, too scared to move forward.
No. Not scared. Nothing about this large man scares me—even if it should. I’m not scared. I’m unsure—of him, of myself . . . of us.
He doesn’t move toward me, and I don’t move toward him. We just stare at each other, the space between us charged with my questions and his dark intensity.
“Want me to start a new pot of coffee for you?” Nate asks from behind the bar. I’ve come here with my sister a few times since being released from the hospital. He knows I don’t drink much. I’m too worried about the consequences of mixing alcohol with the pain meds I don’t take.
I shake my head. “No, it’s late. I’ll never sleep.” And sleep is hard enough to come by as is.
“Club soda with lime?” he asks with an arched brow. He waves me closer. “Come on, El. Stay a while.”
I force a smile, trying and failing to ignore the way the dark-haired man is looking at me. “That would be great, thank you, Nate.” I walk to the counter and lean my elbows against it, leaving one barstool between myself and my stranger.
“Are you going to act like you don’t know me?” he asks softly.
“Sorry,” I say, then take a leap and add, “Jackson Harbor just feels like another lifetime at this point.” Not a lie.
His jaw hardens. “Right.”
I’m not sure why I don’t tell him the truth—that I don’t remember him—but I tuck it away. I’m missing years from my life, and if he knows that, he might feed me lies. I can’t risk that from this man. Not when those eyes make me want to climb into his arms. If pretending I remember means I’ll get the truth, then that’s what I’ll do.
He cuts his gaze to his beer. “That’s why you didn’t return my calls?”
“I don’t use that phone anymore.” The police seized my phone at the scene but returned it after they were satisfied they’d gotten everything off it they might need. I haven’t turned it on since. Just one more tie to the life that almost killed me.
I wanted to cut all ties with Jackson Harbor, but the fact that this man is here shows it’s not going to be that simple. The fact that I don’t want to walk away from him proves no one can make a clean break from their past.
He brings his dark eyes back up to meet mine, and I see anguish written all over his face. I don’t understand the emotion or why it tears me apart inside. “I thought we were going to lose you,” he whispers. “And then you lived. And we lost you anyway.”
“Can you blame me?” I search his face, looking for answers, trying to figure out what I mean to him. “I almost died.”
Those words seem to hit him too hard, because he closes his eyes for a beat. What is he thinking? Is he feeling sorry for the poor girl whose boyfriend beat the shit out of her? “Can you remember any part of that night?”
I shake my head, not wanting to say more.
I was right. He doesn’t know about my amnesia. I was still in a medically induced coma when Mom had me moved to a hospital in Chicago. It’s possible no one from Jackson Harbor even knows about my condition. We haven’t advertised it. If anything, we’ve been extra private since I was discharged. Colton hurt me, and if he’s still out there, I don’t want him knowing anything he doesn’t have to.
“You can’t just cut us out. That’s not fair. I’ve been so worried about you.” The man shakes his head. “Christ, I’ve missed seeing this face.” Slowly, he reaches out and brushes a knuckle down the side of my cheek. Electricity races through my nerve endings at the contact. “I’ve missed hearing your voice.”
Why is he here, looking at me like I’m his everything, like he wants to take me home and hold me? And why do I have this ache in my chest that makes me want to let him?
“Where are you staying?” I ask.
“We’re at a house down the street. An Airbnb thing.” He slides his thumb down the side of my neck. I know I shouldn’t let him touch me, but I can’t make myself back away. “You could come back with me. We could . . . talk.”
“Is she there?”
He pulls his hand away as if I’ve burned him. “Who? Ava? You won’t speak your best friend’s name now?”
Ava. My best friend. I wait for the words to click into place in my consciousness. Instead, they float in empty space with no context. Like two random puzzle pieces found under the couch.
The man sneers, disgust all over his face. “You owe her an explanation, at the very least. If you’re pissed that she wanted you to stay with Colton, tell her. If you can’t forgive her for knowing about Molly’s kid and keeping the secret, fucking tell her. But enough of the silent treatment already.”
I open my mouth, but I’m not even sure what I want to ask. Who is Molly? What does her kid have to do with anything? Why would my best friend have wanted me to stay with a dangerous man? I have so many questions—but instead of any of the reasonable ones, I hear myself ask, “Are you with her? Ava?”
He blanches. “How could you even ask me that? Is that what you think of me now?”
“It’s just . . . the way you touched her.” You love her. You have some sort of connection to her.
“She’s marrying Jake. And I . . .” He searches my face. “Do you think so little of me? Just because of what happened with us?”
I think everything of you, and I don’t even know you.
It’s the strangest feeling, but it’s there as much as the skills I don’t remember learning—like how to drive a stick shift. That came as a surprise when I borrowed Brittany’s car. Skills, the doctor said, aren’t like memories. They’re from a different part of the brain. That part must also hold the belief that I can trust this stranger. It’s part of who I am, and I don’t even know his name.
“Do you have questions about what happened while you were in the hospital? Have they talked to you about the investigation?” He studies my face, and I feel like he’s cataloguing every centimeter. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “Do you wonder about the people who love you and are waiting for you back home?”
I have so many questions, but none of them matter if I’m not safe. “Do you know where Colton is?”
The dark-haired stranger turns away from me and toward the bar. He doesn’t like the question. “Nobody knows. My guess is somewhere at the bottom of Lake Michigan.” There’s no glee in those words. Only pain. An ache that reverberates through the syllables.
“You think he’s dead?” Does anyone else think that? I know my mom doesn’t. She speaks of Colton like he’s in hiding, not like he might be in trouble.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“But you’re his friend?”
He shrugs. “You know he wasn’t telling any of us shit about what was going on with him. Not even Molly.”
There’s that name again. Molly.
“You’re afraid of him?” he asks.
“Of course I am.”
The man searches my face. “That’s why you won’t come home. You’re afraid of Colton.”
“I don’t want anything to do with that life.”
He exhales heavily and rolls his shoulders back, as if he’s trying to shake off a ghost. “That’s not fair to the rest of us. To everyone who loves you, everyone who was sick with worry when they put you into that coma. Not. Fucking. Fair.”
I shrug. “Maybe losing a child and almost dying has made me a little selfish.”
His gaze drifts down to my stomach, and I cover it with my hand without thinking. “I’m sorry about the baby.”
I nod, tears springing to my eyes. “Me too.” So sorry.
“I understand if you want to live here now, but don’t cut us out. We all lost something that night.”
“Did you?”
He narrows his eyes. “You think I didn’t care? That this was all some game to me, and losing you was nothing?”