“Wow,” I breathed, sitting down. “What exactly does your brother-in-law do again? I may need to consider a career change.”
Bowen chuckled. “He’s an attorney to some of the oldest money in Georgia. Half of his clients are in the grave. The other half are spoiled rich kids living off their inheritances. Trust me. Stick with real estate.”
I smiled over at him. “Have I said thank you yet?”
He winked and brought my hand to his lips to kiss the back. “You have, but I’m more than willing to add it to your tab.” Smirking, he snagged the beer from my hand and took a sip before setting it in the cupholder between us, a casual silence falling over us.
Well, it was casual for him. My knee was bouncing a million miles a minute as I worked up the courage to tell him about my secret.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I blurted out. “I honestly don’t know who he was.”
Curiously, he swung his gaze my way. “It’s fine. Friends hug. Though I’d prefer if those friends could read social cues too.”
“Noted and agreed. But you should know that kind of stuff happens to me a lot.” Shit. Just rip off the damn Band-Aid already. “I, um…suffered a head injury in the plane crash. I lost about eleven months of long-term memory. I’m assuming the first time I met that guy falls into that window of time somewhere.”
“Really?” he said, his eyebrows drawn, but it wasn’t quite the surprise I’d expected.
“Yep. The last thing I remember was driving home from my dad’s house with Aaron. When I woke up in the hospital, I thought we’d been in a wreck. You should have seen my face when the doctors told me it was a completely different year.”
“Have you gotten any of your memories back? Like flashes or dreams?”
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.”
