The house was quiet, but her phone was on the counter, so she couldn’t have gone far. Letting the dogs out, I searched the back porch, hoping she was enjoying a cup of coffee out there on the swinging bed. The shower could wait if she was. Some fresh air while curled up next to my beautiful woman would always win in my book.
Slightly disappointed when she wasn’t outside, I backtracked down the hall, glancing in the empty guest room as I passed. I stopped at the office, and while she wasn’t there either, my laptop was open. She must have been up early, doing some work. If I were a betting man, I’d have placed money that she’d run out to help a client—superhero realtor style. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d left her phone behind and given me a heart attack. Silently scolding myself for always overreacting, I walked over to shut the computer down.
With one swipe across the trackpad, my whole fucking life came crashing down all over again.
The breath in my lungs turned to poison as the ground shook beneath my feet. Or maybe that was just the rattle of my heart slamming against my rib cage.
I never dreamed that an image of her smiling face would be my worst nightmare. But as the paused video appeared on the screen, knowing there was no possible way for it to be there unless she’d found it, that was exactly what it became.
She knew.
She knew.
Fuck. She knew.
For a beat, my web of lies cocooned me, tight and suffocating, rendering me unable to move. A surge of adrenaline tore me free.
“Remi!” I roared, hurrying through the house.
Her purse was gone, and as I jogged out onto the driveway, I discovered that her car was too.
“Fuck!” I boomed, my voice echoing off the brick of my house.
This was not the way she was supposed to find out. There was supposed to be a whole conversation where I gently and rationally explained the clusterfuck that was our lives. I was going to hold her while she cried for a past she didn’t remember and be there for her as she worked through the emotions of realizing she never would. I’d even considered a scenario where she was angry and hurt, but no matter which way it happened, she was never supposed to be alone, her mind no doubt running wild with questions and assumptions.
And fuck me. Fucking fuck me. Not all of her assumptions would be wrong.
But she couldn’t understand.
She didn’t know how bad it had gotten.
She couldn’t possibly fathom the depths of the darkness she’d fought through for the eight months leading up to the crash.
I had no idea how long she’d been gone, but I raced back into the house and grabbed my phone, immediately calling Aaron.
“Hello?” he answered.
“Have you seen Remi?” I snapped, stabbing my feet into a pair of running shoes.
“Jesus, did you lose her again?” There was humor in his voice. It wouldn’t last long.
“She knows,” I stated. It didn’t need an explanation or elaboration.
The line went silent.
His panic permeated the line. “What?” he shouted. “How?”
I snagged my keys off the hook and full-out sprinted to my truck. “She found some pictures.” I had no fucking idea how, although that wasn’t my concern at the moment.
“Why the hell did you have pictures in the house?”
I hit the ignition and gritted my teeth. “Because, while you spent six months sleeping in the bedroom beside her, those pictures were all that I fucking had. Now, just tell me if you’ve seen her this morning or not.”
He let out a low groan. “She hasn’t been here.”
“Are you at the house?”
“Yeah.”
Pinning the phone against my shoulder, I threw my truck into gear. “Go ask Mark.”
There was a muffled conversation followed by a deep rumbled growl, followed quickly by Mark’s voice on the other end. “What the fuck did you do?”
“I don’t have time for your bullshit right now. We can have a backyard brawl once we find her. God only knows what the hell’s going through her mind right now.”
He seemed no less pissed, but thankfully he dropped the accusations. “Did you call her?”
“She left her phone at my place.”
“Son of a bitch. Okay… Maybe…try her office. What kind of pictures did she see? We need to get our stories straight.”
“Stories?” I barked, backing out of my driveway. “She saw a video of us at her birthday party. What the hell kind of story do you think you’re going to come up with to explain that? No fucking way I’m stacking another layer of lies on top of this Goddamn mountain. It’s gone on long enough.”
“If you tell her the truth, you risk—”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew the risks. I’d lived on the frontlines of hell and was half a fucking man because of it. I didn’t have the time or energy to listen to him play the same broken record about what could possibly happen if she remembered the past.
