The same moment had happened to me twice.
Once before the accident—a memory that went straight from my mind to my heart—rushing through my bloodstream, embedding itself into bone, but lost to me even with all that.
Once after the accident—I felt it even deeper than my heart. I felt it in my bone and in my blood when I looked at him. I felt him there. I would never forget it, like I hadn’t truly forgotten it the first time.
The memories might have turned to ash, but wherever deeper things existed, in places that couldn’t be lost, the feelings were preserved, and they reminded me that he was vital to me.
Just like he had been doing.
Even though the inferno blazed through a chunk of my memories, it couldn’t touch who he was to me.
Instead of concentrating on the lost memories, I decided that I was ready to start focusing on the future. A pressure that had weighed heavily on my heart lifted when I let go—freed the memories that were never coming back to make room for the ones yet to be.
From underneath the covers, I lifted my hands, wiggling my fingers, imagining the ashes flying to wherever they were supposed to go. The most important feelings had been left behind.
A smile came to my face, and I laughed a little when I thought of Aniello’s face when he’d watched me leave that morning. His face was always so serious. So intense. So, as I walked past the dining room on my way out, I stuck out my tongue at him when no one was looking.
He’d narrowed his eyes at me like I’d lost my fucking mind.
Maybe I had. I’d laughed the entire way to my car. I was laughing even harder then. There was something about taking Aniello Assanti off guard that I found hilarious. Because it seemed like it rarely happened, and when it did, he had no clue what to do with me. I was starting to realize that in a world of steel, maybe I was the one vulnerable spot in his life.
“AHH!” I screamed when the pillow was ripped away from me and my mind registered a man sitting on the edge of my bed. Right next to me. It was a delayed reaction, but I took another pillow and whacked him in the head with it. Then my eyes narrowed right before I tried to scramble away from him. “Aniello! What are you doing?” I hit him with the pillow again for scaring the shit out of me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” He smoothed his hair where I’d messed it up.
The sight of him disheveled would have made me grin if my heart hadn’t been stuck in my throat. His hair was usually perfectly coiffed, each piece in the spot where it was supposed to be. This version of him was rare to see, and that caught me off guard, too.
“What amIdoing in myownbedroom?”
He mimicked my hand movements when I was freeing the memories turned to ash. Then he covered his face with the pillow and started laughing into it. It sounded crazed. When he pulled the pillow down, his face was dead serious.
“Honestly?”
“I’d know if you were lying.”
I was doubtful when it came to this, but I figured I might as well be honest. “When I was doing this—” I made the hand gestures again “—I was having a…funeral, or maybe a memorial service, for my lost memories. Letting them go.”
“You’re not a masochist,” he said.
“Why would that make me a masochist?” I tried to pronounce it like he did, but I knew it was still off. It was one of those words—almost impossible to say correctly. He did. I bet he could say charcuterie too.
“You were laughing.”
“Well…” I didn’t want to explain why I was really laughing, because in a way, the freedom did come from letting the dead memories go. So it really wasn’t lying, but omitting. “Holding on, trying to remember so hard, was a burden. I’d get these really bad headaches. From overthinking. Maybe some would call it obsessing. When I let the old memories go—” I shrugged “—it freed up some room for…a little happiness.”
He stuck his tongue out at me.
“Wha—” Then I remembered that morning, and a smile came to my face. “Yeah. A little bit of that.” I stuck my tongue back at him and tried not laugh.
He stared at my tongue for a second before his eyes made slow work of my face, until he met my eyes. The way he looked at me was intense, harder than usual. Except in the depths of his eyes, a spellbinding fire burned.
My cheeks heated and I looked down, because I wanted that fire to burn only for me—for the rest of our lives.
When I finally looked up, he was standing, unbuttoning his dress shirt. He’d already laid his jacket over the chair in my room.
I took a deep breath. “Why are you here?” I should have saidwhy didn’t you knock?But it was a waste of my time to even ask.
He didn’t seem like the knocking type, and besides, it thrilled me that he didn’t. He came in like he owned the place. Like he owned me.
