Page 26 of The Rook’s Obsession

“The doctor we consulted,” I tell her while draining the pasta, “warned us that recovering memory after this long isn’t always possible.” Because she deserves the truth. The full story. There was so much taken from her already.

She stops stirring the sauce and looks at me. “Then why are we here?”

“Because he also said it can be done. The right environment, the right triggers. Being around people and places from your past. It’s not a sure thing, but it’s the best shot we’ve got.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“Then we deal with that when it happens.”

She holds my gaze for a beat longer than usual. Then she turns back to the stove without a word.

We eat at the small table by the kitchen window. The sun is setting behind the trees on the far shore, turning the water into something that looks like liquid copper. The bolognese is good. Even better than good, actually, which I’m sure has to do with her knife work and whatever the Russo cook taught her. I tell her so, and she accepts the compliment with a nod that’s almost gracious.

We don’t talk much during the meal. The silence is different now, though. Less hostile. Less electric. It’s the kind of silence that happens when two people have said enough for one day and are okay to sit and eat and coexist.

After dinner, I wash while she dries. The kitchen is small enough that we’re constantly in each other’s space. Reaching past each other for the dish rack, stepping aside at the sink, shoulders brushing. The music is still playing, something low and warm, and the cabin smells like garlic and tomatoes and the wood smoke from the fire I lit in the hearth while the pasta was boiling.

She’s standing next to me, drying a pan, when I make the mistake of looking at her.

Not a glance. Not the careful, controlled observation I’ve been maintaining since Prague. An actual look, the kind where your eyes settle on someone’s face and your brain stops doing anything useful. The low light from the fire catches the angle of her jaw, the curve of her neck, the way her dark hair falls against her shoulder. She’s still wearing the blouse I picked out for her, and somehow, despite everything, she looks like she belongs here. In this kitchen. In this light.

She catches me looking. Of course she does. She catches everything.

But this time, she doesn’t call me on it. She doesn’t say you’re staring, or raise an eyebrow, or go for a weapon. She just looks back. And for a long, silent moment, neither of us moves.

I don’t know who closes the distance. It might be me. It might be her. It might be mutual, the way two people sometimes drift together when the current is stronger than either of them.

But then my mouth is on hers, and nothing else matters.

She kisses the way she does everything, with intensity and focus, a kind of fierce concentration that makes the rest of the world fall away. Her hand comes up to the back of my neck and her fingers dig in, pulling me closer, and my hands find her waist, her hips, the curve of her back. She tastes like red wine and tomato sauce, and she makes a sound against my mouth that undoes something I’ve been holding together for twelve years.

Laura. This is Laura’s mouth. Laura’s lips, which I memorized years ago and thought about day after day once she was gone. I held onto the memory, the taste and the feel of her, desperate to keep her alive at least in my mind. Now, here she is, and I’m kissing her again. This is real. I can hardly let myself believe it’s real.

It escalates fast. Her back hits the edge of the counter, and I press into her, one hand braced on the countertop behind her, the other tangled in her hair. She pulls at my shirt, her hands finding skin, and the contact sends a jolt through me that’s almost painful in its intensity. I want her. I want her so badly my hands are shaking, and for the first time since Prague, it feels like she might want me back. Not as a play. Not as a tactic. Just this—raw, real. No thinking. No plotting. Feeling.

Until she pushes me away with both hands flat against my chest, arms locked, creating distance.

She’s breathing hard, and so am I. Her lips are swollen, and her eyes are bright, and she looks at me with something that isn’t anger and isn’t fear but might be worse than both.

“Why do you keep fighting this?” I ask in a rough voice.

“Are you kissing Ivy?” she asks. Her voice is just as rough. “Or are you kissing Laura?”

The question lands like a blade between my ribs. Because that’s the question, isn’t it? The one that’s been underneath everything since the moment I found her in Prague. When I look at her, who do I see? The girl I lost, or the woman she became? The ghost, or the reality?

I don’t step back. I step forward. My hands find the counter on either side of her, boxing her in, and I lower my face until it’s inches from hers. I can feel her breath on my lips. I can see the pulse hammering in her throat.

“Can’t it be both?”

Something flickers behind her eyes. Not a memory. Something that might scare her worse than any memory could. “I don’t know yet,” she whispers.

That ends it. Not with a bang, not with a fight. With a step backward and a silence that fills the cabin like smoke. She walks to the living room once I let her go. I stay in the kitchen and grip the edge of the counter until my knuckles turn white.

We don’t talk much for the rest of the night. She sits on the couch and stares at the fire. I clean the kitchen a second time because it gives me something to do that isn’t going to her, pulling her against me, and kissing her again until she stops asking questions neither of us can answer.

When it’s late enough that the fire has burned down to embers and both of us are running on fumes, I break the silence. “We should get some sleep.”

She stands without argument, which tells me how exhausted she must be. We walk down the hall to the bedroom, and she surveys the bed after stripping down to her bra and panties without hesitating.