“No,” I sternly tell her again.
“Why? It won’t hurt,” Vivian says.
I sarcastically laugh. “It won’t hurt? Who? Xander? Because it will definitely hurt me, and I already hurt enough.”
“You don’t know that.” Piper points at me.
“My heart is crushed enough. I don’t need to set myself up to get trampled even more. No, there will be no hanging out. I need to figure out how to work next to him, and that’s it.”
The girls all exchange a look, and I know they want to argue with me, but I hold my hand up. “Please, let it be. I can’t be a second-place person because he can’t find Billie, and I can’t live hoping he will remember what we had. He will never remember me, and I don’t need false hope.”
“But—” Piper began.
“Please. Don’t.”
She lets out a big breath and nods.
“There is no future for Xander and me besides as work colleagues.” As I say it, I tell myself it’s the truth, but it doesn’t make it any less painful.
5
Xander
Five Months Earlier
“Come on.We’re taking you out,” Noah insists.
“No offense, but I’m not really in the going-out mood,” I tell him.
It’s been a month since I woke up in the hospital. Part of me wishes I’d have just stayed asleep or died in the accident.
Everything is confusing and frustrating. Noah, Jamison, Chase...they all tell me I’m not twenty-two. It’s twelve years later. I’m no longer a paramedic. I’ve gone through med school and am a surgeon. According to Noah, I invested in several companies with him and am pretty wealthy. My apartment is fancier than I ever thought possible. And I am no longer with the love of my life, Billie.
Except I don’t remember a single thing about the last twelve years, and every day that goes by, I lose more and more hope I’ll ever get my memory back.
“Sorry, but I’m not letting you sit at home all night. Get dressed. You’re coming out with us.” Noah has his, ‘I’m not letting you out of this,’ expression on, so I groan, go into the bathroom, and remove the pajama bottoms I’ve been wearing all day and take a shower.
When I walk out of my bedroom, Noah nods at me. “Good to see you can still clean up well.”
“Funny. Good thing I didn’t lose my good looks and amazing fashion sense in the accident.” I joke about it, but I would have rather lost those things than my memory.
“What would all the ladies do if that had happened?” Noah teases me, but we both know I’ve not had any ass since before the accident. Any ass I got right before, I don’t remember, so did it even happen? All I remember is screwing Billie since I was nineteen, in multiple positions and places, but she is nowhere.
To make things worse, a faceless woman haunts me every night, and it’s not Billie, so I live in a constant state of guilt. I don’t tell anyone about my dreams. I’m sure it’s just my screwed-up mind playing more games on me. I never even had wet dreams this intense when I was a horny teenager, and the last thing I need to do is tell anyone about it and be deemed crazy.
“Let’s get this over with,” I mumble to Noah and snatch my keys off the table.
Noah’s car and his driver Lou are waiting at the curb. That’s another thing I can’t seem to get used to. Noah, Jamison, and Chase have all changed. Yes, they are still the same guys I’ve always known, but they all have lives...stories I don’t know. Thelast I knew, we were all paramedics. Now, Noah runs one of the largest merger and acquisition firms in the country and is worth billions. Jamison and Chase own ambulance companies in several states and are expanding. And my investment portfolio has more zeros behind it than I could have ever dreamed.
Apparently, the three of us were smart and gave whatever we could to Noah to invest in various companies and are all self-made billionaires.
I mean, seriously, how do four guys who scrambled for scraps become not millionaires but billionaires?
I thought Noah was playing a joke on me when he sat me down and said, “We need to go through your finances so you pay your bills on time and don’t screw up your credit.”
“Am I going to lose everything since I can’t work right now?” I asked him seriously.
Noah laughed but then seemed to realize I was freaking out. “Xander, you’re loaded. You never have to work again if you don’t want to.”
