I deserve to suffer, I want to tell him. Suffer for what I did to Liz that night. I don’t deserve her forgiveness. I don’t deserve a second chance. But I’ve always been a selfish bastard when it comes to her. I don’t tell my brother any of this.
“The last words I said to her were ‘get out.’ I kicked her out of our house. And for what? For protecting you. For standing by you when you needed someone. For being your friend. What happened to her is on me. It’s my fault, Julien. I need to make it up to her. She needs to know how sorry I am. I will never love anyone else the way I love her. She’s my everything. And I almost got her killed. I didn’t protect her. I wasn’t there to save Ann, John, or Hailey.” I sink down on my haunches in the middle of the parking lot. “What happened to Liz is all my fault.”
“If we’re going to play the blame game, you have to submit my name as well.” Julien stands beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder. I grab it and hold tight. “I could have stopped her from driving off. I didn’t fight hard enough to get her to stay. If she stayed, she would have been with us the entire night. She wouldn’t have gone home. She wouldn’t have been attacked. You’re not the only one drowning in a cesspool of guilt.”
I look at my twin. We are so alike yet so different. I guess we all have our own demons we fight.
Julien reverses our grip and helps me up from my crouched position. “Come on. Let’s fix her door, eat some pizza, and spend time with our girl. She’s here. She’s alive. She’s a fucking sight for sore eyes.”
Yes she is. “She looks good, doesn’t she? But what’s with the hair?”
“I like it. I think her pink streaks are sexy. I wonder what else has changed this past year.”
“Her left hook.” I touch my chin where she hit me. “She clocked me good before you guys showed up. Missed crushing my balls by inches. She has changed. We have a fighter on our hands.”
“She’s always been a fighter,” Julien replies somberly.
“How do I get her back, Jules, if she doesn’t remember?”
“Honestly? I have no clue. I wouldn’t push her right now. We need answers as much as she does. It’s going to take time. We don’t know how severe her amnesia is or how much she does or doesn’t remember. Like I said. Time and patience. But at least she’s here. We got her and I will make damn sure we don’t lose her ever again.”
I couldn’t agree more. No matter what, I will get the love of my life back. She’s not the only fighter in our group.
“…and CU allowed me to defer since I was already accepted. So here I am.”
When Jules and I finish fixing her door so it hangs right and closes properly, the pizzas arrive. Liz has been answering all the questions we’ve asked her. Little by little, we learn more about her past year in Seattle.
“How long were you in the coma?” Elijah asks her before rolling his pizza slice like a burrito and biting it in half.
Liz licks grease off her fingers. “About two months.”
“You’re shittin’ me. Seriously?”
She nods at Elijah. “They told me the swelling in my brain was what caused it. Daniel and Drew placed me in an excellent rehab facility. The staff were wonderful to me. I did all my outpatient with them too, so I got to know many of the doctors and nurses.”
“Other than memory loss, was there anything else?” This from Julien.
“Yes,” is all she says, not elaborating. She peels a slice of pepperoni from her pizza and sucks on it.Fucking hell. My dick reacts and I tamp the fucker down.
“If you were in a medical rehab facility, why couldn’t our PI find you?” This asked by me.
Liz shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “More than likely because of Daniel and Drew. They kept me in a private facility under a false name for my protection. They’ve been really good to me.”
Elizabeth already told us about her distant cousin, Daniel, and his husband Drew. How they took emergency guardianship over her, flew her to Washington, and have been caring for her over the past year. We were surprised to hear that she had a distant cousin that we never knew or heard about. In the thirteen years Jules and I have known Liz, no other family members ever visited; there was no one else she or her parents talked about. Both sets of her grandparents were deceased. There were no aunts or uncles. As far as we knew, it was just her, Hailey, and their parents.
“How bad is it? Your amnesia?” This from Ryder. We’ve avoided asking her anything about the attack. I don’t think any of us are ready to tackle that blight of hell anytime soon. I still have nightmares about that night.
“It’s basically like someone wiped my operating system clean and I was rebooted. I don’t remember anything. Well, that’s not exactly true. I remember things like math and science – school stuff. I can play the guitar and the piano, but I can’t remember how I learned to play. I remember songs and movies. It’s the people, places, and events from before that are missing.”
“You must remember some things. Why else would you pick a Hellcat like mine for your car?”
She chews on her thumbnail considering his question. “I guess you’re right. Everything’s just locked away so tight. The doctors are cautiously optimistic that things will come back to me, but they can’t make any guarantees. I do have flashes of memories. Like tiny little puzzle pieces I have to string together to make a complete picture, except there are a lot of missing pieces.” Her gaze goes to Ryder. “I had some flashes of you today.”
Ryder chokes down his food. “You remembered me?”
“Yes.” Is Liz blushing? What the hell?
“What did you remember?” I want to know.
