“Indie showed me the dress she wants to wear to our wedding.”
“What?” Rupert’s eyes flew open.
Jodi stared back at him. For the first time since the accident, he didn’t look bewildered.
“She told me I was your boyfriend, that I had been since she was tiny, and she wants us to get married.”
Words failed Rupert. He’d always known Indie would give him away, if Jodi even believed her, which was doubtful. He hadn’t believed anyone else. “I—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Jodi—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jodi’s voice was low, but the anger in his tone left nowhere to hide. “All this time I thought I was going fucking mad and youknew. Everyone knew, didn’t they?”
“Knew what?”
“Don’t give me that shit.” Jodi scrambled from the bed, lurching to his feet. Rupert stood too and moved to steady him, but Jodi blocked his reaching hands. “Why didn’t you tell me? Some bloke stopped me in the street and called you my boyfriend, then I come home and a child I can’t even fucking remember does the same. Can’t you see how messed up that is? Why didn’tyoutell me?”
Rupert took a deep breath as he absorbed Jodi’s fury. He’d waited so long to finally tell Jodi the truth, part of him had made a tired, warped kind of peace with the fact he probably never would. That all he and Jodi had shared would remain confined to a past Jodi would never remember. “Indie told you whatever she told you because she was the only one I didn’t ask not to.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“What does? OhGod.” The enormity of what was about to happen nearly sent Rupert to his knees. “Jodi, please, you have to understand. You’d been awake for ages, but you hadn’t spoken ... I didn’t know what to do.”
Jodi stared, his gaze a potent mixture of rage and confusion. “I know all this. I know I was a walking zombie for months. It doesn’t explain why you never told me something so fucking important.”
Rupert should’ve found hope in the fact that Jodi felt what Indie had told him was important, but his mind was in bits. What if Jodi believed it and rejected Rupert anyway? Rejected him once and for all? Living in limbo had left Rupert a broken man, but with no end in sight, it had been too easy to imagine another world, a world where Jodi had woken up remembering how much they loved each other.
How much I still love him.“I tried to tell you when you first woke up, but you didn’t understand. Then the doctors tried to tell you too, and you got really ill—you deteriorated, you didn’t speak for days. It was like you couldn’t bear it, like it horrified you so much you’d rather be dead—” Rupert faltered. “You came back, but you didn’t remember being awake, and you didn’t remember me at all.”
“I still don’t remember you.”
Rupert tore his gaze from the floor. “I know, and I’ve come to accept you probably never will.”
“I should, though, shouldn’t I?” Jodi took an unsteady step forward. “I should remember you because I was in love with you.”
Was. Rupert swallowed the bile in his throat. “Is that what Indie told you? That you were in love with me?”
“No. She told me I was your boyfriend. I’d already worked the rest out for myself.”
“Eh?” Rupert felt dizzy. “I don’t understand.”
Jodi snorted. “Not nice, is it? To feel so much about something that doesn’t make any sense?”
Rupert sank backwards onto the bed. “You had your voice back. You could speak up for yourself, tell the doctors what hurt so they could help you get better. Tell Sophie you needed her. It seemed like you’d been trapped behind that fucking scar on your brain for so long, I couldn’t be the reason you lost yourself again.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make. You should’ve told me who you were to me. All that time I thought you were some creepy flatmate who stared at me a lot. Scared the shit out of me when I found myself gawping at you too.”
Rupert blinked. “What?”
For a moment it seemed Jodi might leave the room, but he didn’t. He sat down beside Rupert, close enough that their legs almost brushed. “I wish I could remember how it felt to be in love with you, but I can’t, because I don’t know you.”
“I get it,” Rupert said. “The doctors kept warning us not to put ideas in your head, that we couldn’t lead you to the memories that meant the most to us—to me. I’m so sorry, Jodi. I just didn’t know what to do.”
Jodi sighed. “I’m tired, but to be honest with you, I’m fucking relieved. I thought I had a glitch in my noggin that was making me gay or some shit, like the accident had twisted my dick and pointed it in the wrong direction. To know it’s real—that it’s tangible. Fuck. It makes more sense than anything I’ve ever known.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Rupert felt like he’d been dropped into a vortex that took his wildest dreams and stretched them around a muted reality that didn’t quite fit. “If it’s any comfort, as far as I knew up until the accident, you still liked girls too.”
