‘I’m sorry Adam. I just – I haven’t even told Greg that you’re back. If he knew we’d been spending time together it would break his heart.’
He sat for a moment, staring ahead of him at the long-abandoned firepit. I wondered whether he’d heard me. But then he half-turned towards me and his knee brushed my leg. He didn’t move away, but instead studied my face, his eyes scrutinising every inch as though he was searching for something. Maybe he was. After all, he couldn’t remember anything about me, or about us. Perhaps he was hoping that something about my face would bring those memories back. I held my breath.
‘You’re very beautiful,’ he whispered.
‘Thank you.’ The words barely came out.
He lifted his hand to touch my face and I had to stop myself from groaning. The skin where we were connected felt like it might melt, hot with betrayal and desire. I should have moved away, put some distance between us, but somehow it felt impossible.
As quickly as it had begun, the moment ended and Adam moved away from me, our connection broken.
‘I’m sorry Erin. That was totally inappropriate.’ He ran his hand over his hair. ‘I – I just feel this overwhelming urge to be near you. I can’t stop thinking about you.’ He looked down at the floor, then back up at me. ‘I just wish I could remember anything about us. It must have been wild.’
‘It was.’ My voice was low, husky. ‘It was incredible.’
He nodded, as though he hadn’t expected anything else.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ he said. ‘I can just feel it. That there’s something special here.’
I didn’t reply.
‘Why didn’t we end up together?’
How could I explain it to him? That everyone warned me about him, said he couldn’t be trusted and that, when I was away at university and he’d been touring round the country, he proved them all right by sleeping with groupies. And then, that night when he’d arrived at my university halls, drunk and angry, with a love bite on his neck.
Nothing I could tell him would ever fully capture the power of our feelings for each other, or properly explain why it ended.
‘It just didn’t work,’ I said. The words were weak, diluted.
‘Come on Erin. I’m lost here. I don’t know who I am any more. No-one ever tells me anything. My parents don’t want me to remember, and there’s no-one else who will ever be honest with me. I…’ He stopped. ‘I need to know who I was, what I was like. Why you couldn’t be with me, even though there’s clearly passion here.’ He looked up at me, his eyes wide. ‘Please tell me. Everything, warts and all.’
‘Okay.’ I shivered, the damp from the log seeping through my trousers.
He turned to face me properly. Then I told him everything.
When I’d finished we sat in silence for a while. I’d told him about how we met, how passionate it had been between us, how we could never keep our hands off each other. But also how it was always about more than just desire. That there had been a connection we both thought could and would never be broken.
I’d told him about how he’d betrayed me and made me stop believing in soulmates, and fate, and how, when he’d left that night after I told him I didn’t want to see him again, I’d sobbed and sobbed until I thought my heart would never mend. I told him how Greg, who had always been so kind and so loving, had been there for me.
I told him how we hadn’t seen each other again after that.
‘Wow. What an arsehole,’ he said.
‘You weren’t an arsehole. You were just angry.’
‘I get why I was angry at my parents. I mean, from the bits I’ve cobbled together, they didn’t really want me around. My dad clearly disapproves of me and is hoping to mould me into some sort of perfect son now that I can’t remember who I was before, and Mum is a cold fish who doesn’t seem to have feelings for anyone. But you? It sounds as though you were the only good thing in my life, and I ruined it.’
‘It’s hard to explain. I think it was just the wrong time. For us, I mean.’
‘And now it’s all too late.’
‘It is.’
He paused a moment and stared at his feet. ‘Do you think if we’d met now, we would be together?’ His question was so quiet I wasn’t sure at first whether I’d heard him right. But a glance at his face confirmed I had.
‘I don’t know.’
He nodded sadly. ‘I mean, it’s still there, right?’ He waved his hand between us. I didn’t reply. How could I? To say yes would be to betray my husband. To say no would be a lie.
