He paused and cleared the rasp of emotion from his throat, but it felt like a hot coal was burning in mine.
Holy shit. What the hell had happened to me? Had I been assaulted? Tortured? Worse? I glanced at the scars on my wrists. I had always assumed they were from the crash. Hell, I’d been told point-blank that they were from the crash. But now I knew they were self-inflicted. Were they covering marks I’d gotten from whoever had taken me? Had this person threatened me? My family? Bowen?
My stomach twisted as all the possibilities raced through my mind. It must have been horrendous. There was no other explanation. Suicide? God, who was that person? It wasn’t me. I never would have put anyone I cared about through that kind of torture. But that was easy to say when I wasn’t sinking in the quicksand of pain and trauma.
He continued. “But then a fucking miracle happened. That plane crash saved us. Me, you, Aaron—we’d all survived. Better than that, you were suddenly reborn. You were smiling again. Laughing. Joking and teasing. Finally, you were back to your old self. Everything we’d thought was impossible. So we made the decision to let you forget.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make,” I hissed.
“Not everything needs to be a memory. I’d give anything to be able to forget.”
“I don’t know, Bowen. It sounds to me like you did forget.” I crossed my arms over my chest as a chill exploded across my skin. “We were engaged, right?”
He dipped his head in confirmation.
“And what? After the plane crash, you just left me?” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that. It was that easy for you, huh?”
His eyes flashed wide. “Are you fucking kidding me? Letting you go was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There wasn’t a minute of those six months when it didn’t feel like I was simultaneously drowning and on fire. Everything fucking hurt. But you know what? It didn’t hurt for you anymore, and that was the only way I got through the nights. You are the only woman I have ever, will ever, and could ever love. But even knowing that, I had to make the sacrifice.”
“I didn’t ask for a fucking sacrifice!” I yelled, because in a lot of ways, that realization hurt more than the months of betrayal. The idea that a timeline existed in which Bowen had abandoned me felt like a knife through the heart. Tears dripped off my chin as emotions I’d long since packed away exploded, shredding me as they ricocheted inside me with no way out. “You promised me you’d never leave.”
His chin jerked to the side. “You remember that?”
“I don’t have to fucking remember it to know it happened. Whatever version of me you convinced to marry you would have made you swear to it before she ever accepted your proposal. And still, you left.”
“Remi, I didn’t have a choice. It was either leave you or lose you.” The desperation on his face threatened to undo all the anger I’d used as fuel to get through this conversation.
I pushed it down deep and forced a laugh. It held no humor, but rather a whole fucking lot of pain.
“Well, now you get to do both.” I shoved past him to the door and snatched it open, sweeping my arm in an exaggerated motion before I managed to grit through clenched teeth, “Get out.”
“No.” He furiously shook his head. “I made that mistake once. I’m not doing it again.”
Oh, he’d made a lot of mistakes. But so had I. The biggest mistake of all? Trusting him in the first place.
“Get. The. Hell. Out.”
He stood stock-still, both feet planted firmly in place and matched my tone, “Never.”
“Fine. Watch me leave instead.” I didn’t give myself a chance to think twice.
With my keys in my pocket, I refused to pause even long enough to grab my purse. I just marched through the door to my car. It didn’t matter that I was falling apart, lost in a sea of confusion and grief.
All that mattered was that I got out of there and away from Bowen before I let him spin another web of lies and deceit I would inevitably be unable to escape.
Remi
For the next two hours, I aimlessly drove around the city. Without my phone or my purse, the dwindling gas tank became more threatening by the minute. I had nowhere to go though.
Mark and Aaron would be at home. I wasn’t sure what their roles had been in this charade, mastermind or puppet. Though, in a lot of ways, what they had done was even worse than Bowen. They hadn’t left me. They’d stayed, day after day, lying directly to my face. Filling my head with detailed stories of the eleven months I’d lost that couldn’t possibly have been true. I’d point-blank asked them if I’d had a boyfriend. Dated anyone. Slept with someone. No, no, and no were always their answers.
