“So you guys switched seats,” I filled in for him.
“Yep. Three of the twenty-seven luckiest seats on that aircraft.”
With a sigh, I leaned into his side. “I’m just so confused.”
“That’s fair.” He tossed his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in tightly. “Everything we did. Every lie we told. It was because we wanted you back. Things were beyond awful. I’m talking I’d prepared a dozen times for a phone call telling me you were gone.” His voice broke as he trailed off.
“I read my medical records.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “Did they…ya know…bring back any memories or anything?”
“No. But it made me realize I lost far more than eleven months of my life. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Life is measured in experiences. Good and bad. And while, yes, I can see now how you guys thought you were helping me, it doesn’t excuse what you did. You stole time from a person who had already lost so much. Instead of eleven months, now there’s almost two years of my life where I can’t sort fiction from reality.”
It hurt. All of it.
The fact that I’d dealt with something so traumatic.
The fact that I’d sunk into a pit of grief and self-destruction.
The fact that I’d dragged the people I loved most down with me.
The fact that they’d felt they’d had to lie to save me.
The fact that I’d believed them so completely I’d never allowed there to be a moment of doubt in what they told me.
But most of all, the fact that I had no idea how to go about trusting them ever again.
After rising from the bed, I walked to my hotel room door. “You should go.”
“Remi, come on. Please don’t do this.”
I shook my head and opened the door. “I have to do this on my own. Whatever that entails.”
He started to object again, but I lifted a hand to silence him.
“It’s not up for debate. You owe me that much.”
Aaron winced, but we both knew I was right. He stood up, found his phone on the floor, and slowly meandered to the door. He paused before stepping into the hall. “If you need anything…and I mean anything, Remi. I’m here.”
“Thanks. Now, get out of here. Oh, and stop tracking my phone. Pass that along to Mark too.”
He smiled, sad and hopeless.
And I returned it, broken and lost.
Where I went from there, I had no idea. There was still so much to process. But if I’d learned anything, I was the only person I could truly count on from here on out.
Bowen
“I’m going to lose my mind if you don’t stop cleaning,” I mumbled from the couch. With my eyes closed, I pinched the bridge of my nose, wishing like hell I could stop my head from pounding.
Cassidy continued to swirl around my kitchen, sing-songing, “A house can never be too clean.”
In the three days since Remi had taken off, my insane family had once again taken up residence inside my ass. Tyson had spent each night on my couch, Cassidy took to babysitting me during the days, and my parents were in charge of bringing dinner every afternoon. It was the tag team trifecta from hell. There was no point in trying to get rid of them though. I could rage against them all I wanted, but there was no denying I was a fucking wreck.
I couldn’t eat.
I couldn’t sleep.
The tension in my shoulders felt like it might snap me like a rubber band at any second.
For the most part, I just paced the house like a caged animal, a toxic combination of anxiety and anger fueling my every step.
At first, I’d felt better knowing that Remi had reached out to my mom at the PT center—even if she hadn’t realized she was my mom. Though as day number three without her was drawing to a close, the familiar hopelessness once again roared in my ears.
Giving her the time and space my mom swore Remi needed was killing me. I wanted to chase her, to force her to listen and put herself in my shoes. I wanted to bring her home—to my home. To my bed. To my life and our future. I wanted to hold her and tell her how much I loved her. How much I needed her. I wanted to go back to one week ago when everything had been perfect.
But perfect didn’t exist for me and Remi. We were battered soldiers fighting an endless war. A war I tirelessly waged day after day and night after night—for her. Remi Grey had been born to be mine, and I would die trying to keep her if that was what it took. Though the wait for that savage death was killing me in a different way.
I bolted upright when the clatter of pots and pans came from my kitchen. “What the—”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Cassidy chanted. “I was trying to wipe out the cabinets and knocked them on the floor.”
“And you’re done.” I marched over to the bar, grabbed her purse off the counter, and held it out in front of me as I said, “Get out.”
“What? Why? It was an accident.”
“Because I have a splitting headache and all of this hovering is making me crazy.”
“I’m not hovering. I’m helping out around the house.”
“Ah, see, there’s the problem. Right now, I really just need you to help yourself out of the house.”
She curled her lip. “Not happening.”
“I’m not exactly asking.” Grabbing her elbow, I walked her to the front door.
“Okay. Fine. Let me go,” she hissed, snatching her arm away. “I could stand a trip to the store anyway. You’re almost out of floor cleaner, and I need to mop.”
“Awesome,” I mumbled, handing over her purse. “Make sure that store is in California so you won’t be back until next week and I’ll let you mop anything you want.”
She patted me on the chest. “Nice try. I’m going to the grocery store three blocks away. You have an hour.”
“Cass—” I had every intention of saying her full name. I was also planning to lock the deadbolt when she left and never open it again. But all thoughts ceased when she yanked the front door open and a pair of unbelievably blue eyes collided with mine from the other side.
“Shit!” my sister yelled. It had less to do with the fact that it was Remi and more that she’d seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
My heart, on the other hand, felt like it was going to tear free of my chest. Stunned into silence as if I’d somehow conjured her into fruition, I wordlessly stared at her. Like she was salve to my soul, my headache vanished immediately.
“Hi,” Remi whispered, following it up with a shaky smile. Her gaze flicked from me to Cassidy and back again.
Oh fuck. She hadn’t met Cassidy, not since the plane crash. And there I was, not three days after Remi had stormed out of my life, standing with another woman in my foyer.
“This is my sister, Cassidy,” I rushed out so loudly and so fast that, had I not been on the verge of self-implosion, it would have been comical.
“I figured. You look just like Linda.” Remi extended her hand toward my sister. “Hello—again. We’ve met before, right?”
Cassidy nodded sheepishly. “You were one of my best friends, so I guess you could say that.”
Remi’s face paled, and she cut her gaze to the welcome mat. “I’ve been doing a lot of research recently and it’s hard for me to believe I was anybody’s friend back then.”