Now this was exactly what I’d expected—and dreaded.
“Not really.”
“No or not really?” he asked, his focus leveled on me like a laser.
“I mean, I have dreams, but there’s no way to distinguish if they’re real or not. Nothing rings any bells if that makes sense. My doctor says that they might come back over time, but they might not. Head trauma is more of a guessing game than a science sometimes. To be honest, so many people had it worse than I did after the plane crash. People lost limbs. Katherine was paralyzed.” I paused and took his hand, intertwining our fingers. “You lost Sally. And after spending countless nights with Aaron as the memories of the runway ravaged him, I kinda feel like I’m one of the lucky ones not to remember it.”
“You lost almost a year of your life, Remi. That’s gotta be hard.”
“Eh, not as hard as you’d think. With the exception of waking up fifteen pounds lighter with some new clothes hanging in my closet, everything was pretty much the same. Mark and Aaron have filled me in on the highlights I missed, but besides that, I don’t feel like I lost anything at all.”
He stared at me, his eyes darkening, but a small smile pulled at his lips. “Good,” he murmured almost inaudibly. Resting his hand on the side of my face, he leaned over, pressing his lips to mine with a reverence I’d never felt before. It was probably similar to the kiss I’d given him the night he’d told me about Sally. Caring for someone in the present meant also caring for the past that had molded them into the person they’d become. I loved how he clearly felt that way too.
When he pulled away and leaned back in his chair, it occurred to me that while I knew all about what Bowen had been through with Sally before the crash, I knew little about his experiences after.
And since our proverbial locked door was currently standing wide open, I figured that it couldn’t hurt to slip through for a minute.
“Were you injured at all?” I asked.
“Physically or mentally?”
“Both.”
He looked at me with a grim expression. “The last thing I remember on the plane was telling Sally to leave me the fuck alone.”
I couldn’t hide the way my eyes flashed wide, but I was careful not to let my mouth fall open.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Nice topic, Remi. How did I always manage to barrel through this damn proverbial door like Kramer from Seinfeld?
“Oh,” I breathed.
He turned in his seat and took my hand, intertwining our fingers. “I have a lot of regrets in life, but that one conversation with her would be somewhere at the top of the list. We were arguing because she’d insisted on leaving a rehabilitation center before she had completed the program. She swore it wasn’t helping and that she didn’t need it. But I was absolutely terrified to bring her home. It felt like the weight of keeping her alive fell solely on my shoulders, and after everything we’d been through, I was buckling under the pressure.” He smiled, but it was wholly sad. “There’s no excuse for what I said to her.”
I brought our joined hands to my lips and kissed his knuckles. “Maybe not an excuse, but that kind of fear rarely brings out the best in people. You’re a good man, Bowen. The last words you said to her were not the only words you said to her. If I know you at all, there were at least a million other words that conveyed to her how you truly felt. Don’t focus on the few that she probably wouldn’t even remember anyway.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he let out a low hum. “That’s a good theory.”
“Facts, Bowen. Straight facts.”
“Thank you,” he whispered, his shoulders sagging.
I nodded, not sure what else to say on the Sally subject. I felt like I was always walking a narrow line of being there for him but doing my best not to overstep. So I went for a quasi-subject change. “Physically?”
“Punctured lung, broken arm.”
“Just one arm?” I scoffed. “Amateur. I broke both of mine from wrist to shoulder. I have tons of random little scars too.” I hooked my finger under his watch band, pulling it back to reveal a similar jagged vertical scar to the ones I had on both of my wrists. “I noticed we have a matching set.”
He jerked his arm away so fast it startled me.
With that, he shot to his feet, the muscles in his neck straining. “I’m going to run to the bathroom and grab another beer. You want one?”
I blinked up at him.
What the hell had just happened?
Like, literally. I was clueless.
He’d been able to carry on a full conversation about his dead fiancée, but a scar had been too much?
“Did I say something wrong?” I asked.
“No.” He bent at the hip and touched his lips to mine. “Not at all.”
I eyed him skeptically. “You sure? ’Cause it kinda feels that way.”
“Positive. Now, another drink or are you good?”
I sat there for a minute, an odd feeling making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, but short of pinning him down and demanding an answer, there wasn’t much I could do.
I plastered on a smile. “Bowen, we’re second row behind home plate at a freaking Braves game. I need another beer, a hot dog, nachos, maybe a bag of peanuts.” I paused. “Wait, no. Scratch the peanuts. That reminds me: Did you bring your EpiPen?”
He was in jeans and a T-shirt with no place to hide anything. It was safe to say he had not, but in an effort to avoid my question, he repeated back to me, “Beer, hot dog, and nachos coming right up.”
As he walked away, the knot in my stomach loosened a bit, but it didn’t completely go away. Something was off. Call it a feeling or a gut instinct, whatever. But the way he’d snatched his arm away without offering the first explanation didn’t sit right with me.
I took the moment to inspect the scars on my own wrists.
I hadn’t had them before the plane crash—at least not that I knew of. If I looked closely, there were several little lines of varying colors and thicknesses. That was nothing new though. I also had burn scars on my back, an L-shaped one on my shin, and a gnarly line of raised flesh on the back of my head, which my hair had thankfully grown out enough to hide. I didn’t question how I’d gotten them because I didn’t figure anyone would know.
Suddenly, I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe I should ask.
I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and snapped a picture of my wrist. Then I sent it to my group thread with Aaron and Mark.
Me: Where did I get this scar?
A response came almost immediately.
Aaron: Where are you?
Me: At a Braves game with Bowen.
Aaron: Are you good? Everything okay?
I crinkled my nose. What kind of question was that? Throw a few plants in the stadium and I would have been at my own personal Mecca. He knew how much I loved baseball—and Bowen.
Me: Last I checked. Why?
Aaron: No reason. Baseball game just seems like a strange place to be inspecting scars.
Me: Bowen has one too and it got me thinking. I have no idea where it came from.
I expected another instant reply, but it must have been at least five full minutes before my phone pinged with a response. And it wasn’t from Aaron.
Mark: You got it from the crash. Not sure how exactly, but they were on both wrists when your casts came off.