There was a woman on her knees in what looked like a patch of hearty, deep green kale, humming happily to herself as she harvested the coniferous plants into her basket.
“Mira,” Jay called, and the woman looked up, a gorgeous smile lighting her face as her eyes landed on me.
“Oh my… Milo?!” she exclaimed, abandoning her basket and getting to her feet.
“Mom?” I croaked, and she beamed, stripping off her gardening gloves and walking toward me with outstretched hands.
“I’m soglad you’re here! Your father kept saying you were coming soon, but it feels like I’ve been waiting weeks!”
Wait… My father?
My mom wrapped her arms around me, and I tossed a shocked, questioning look over her shoulder to Jay, but his lips were in a firm, grim line.
“Sometimes she confuses me for your dad. I’m sorry, but he really did die that day in the N-car accident. That was real.”
My mother was still hugging me tightly, humming happily in my ear, and I felt my throat close up as I fought off another bout of tears.
“H-how? They were both happy and healthy before…”
Jay’s gaze darkened, and he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Luke. That whole two years after MIT, when you lived alone, was set up by him with the intention of luring you back to willingly work on the product. Melanie was obviously a plant to try to sway you, but he had to deal with your parents somehow. Otherwise, they’d know where you were that whole time and would have made it impossible for you to just lose two years of your life without noticing.
“From what NOVA and I have been able to dig up, the N-car accident your father was in was sabotage, just like it was with my father. They dropped your unconscious body off at the scene of the accident, knowing the hospital would list memory loss as a side effect of being out for so long. That’s why you can’t remember being in the car with him before it crashed. You were never in the car.”
“Fuck…” I choked, going three for three on the ‘f’ bombs today.
“And my mom?” I whispered as she pulled back, smiling down at me and fussing with my hair, clearly uninterested in our conversation.
“Faulty memory manipulation. She was patient 002. She wasn’t with me in The Cave long, but they tried to manipulate her into believing their version of events… Clearly, it wasn’t successful. I’d barely had time to work on the tech before they started using it on her, and it… obviously didn’t go well.”
Rage twisted in my stomach as my mother started asking me what I wanted for dinner, and explaining that my ‘father’ would be home soon.
“Mom… let’s… let’s go inside,” I whispered, needing to get her settled somewhere so I could figure out what I was going to do with all this.
“Okay, honey!” she chirped, trotting back toward the cabin and leaving Jay and me out in the cool mountain air.
“I’m sorry,” Jay said, sounding absolutely miserable.
My head whipped to face him.
“What couldyoupossibly be sorry for?” I snapped.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe if I did a better job with the NeuroManipulator or had been able to work faster, she would be in a better place.”
“Jay, none of this is your fault.” I strode up to him and placed my hands on his shoulders, hating how vulnerable and sad he looked as he stared down at me.
“I told you, we’ll figure this out. I’ll find a way to fix you, and I’ll fix my mom, too. I just need time… and maybe some equipment. Do you have a real lab here? Something I can use to tinker?”
The scarred side of Jay’s lip quirked, and he nodded.
“Yeah, Milo. I have somewhere you can tinker,” he said, and for some reason, that made heat pool in my gut.
I stood on my toes and brushed a kiss across his stubbled jawline, relishing in the way this big, bad man trembled in my arms like the hurt, broken thing he was.
“Mmm. Maybe we can get my mom settled, and you can show me somewhere we can be alone together instead? Somewhere preferably with a hot shower and a bed. I can tinker in the morning.”
He pulled back, giving me a surprised but hopeful look. That twitch at the corner of his mouth jumped again.
