Page 3 of Broken Butterfly
“You always call me kitten,” I mumble.
“That’s because I’m an asshole.”
If I didn’t feel so utterly destroyed, I may have chuckled. “You’re not an asshole, Fallon.”
“A lot of people would disagree.”
Old Elizabeth would agree with that. She would never have come to Fallon for help. She would never have allowed him to touch her. Old Elizabeth was both wary of and cautiously fascinated by Fallon.
I roll over and look at him. We are almost nose to nose. I take in his crystalline blue eyes. They are a unique color of blue, almost like the blue of arctic ice. His sandy-blond hair is disheveled and sticking up at the top, and his lower jaw is covered in a day’s growth of dark blond stubble.
“I never thought I’d see the day when I got Elizabeth Fairchild in my bed.”
“I take it back. You are an asshole.”
We lie quietly and stare at each other for a long time.
“Secret for a secret?” he asks me. I nod yes.
“What happened?”
“My worst fear.”
“Inflatable tube guys?”
This time I do chuckle. “No. The other one.”
Fallon’s eyebrows scrunch up as he thinks. I lift my finger to the creases and smooth them away. “I remembered.”
He goes rigid next to me. I would never have been able to tell if I wasn’t lying so close to him. “What did you say?”
“My memory came back. I remember everything.”
He swallows a few times. “What do you remember?”
“Everything.”
“Elizabeth, what happened?”
I roll over onto my back, not able to look him in the eye when I say it. “I slept with Jayson last night.”
He curses a few times. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
I burst into tears.
“Shit. Elizabeth, stop crying.”
I cry harder. He curses some more.
“It’s her fault!” I finally say.
“Who?”
“Old Elizabeth. I hate her. I didn’t want her to come back, but she did. She’s ruined everything!”
“You know that you sound crazy as fuck right now.”
He’s right. Perhaps I have lost my mind. I suck in a deep breath and wipe my face.
