“Julian is eager to cooperate,” Adrian cuts in smoothly. “He’s also eager to ensure his wife’s safety and privacy. Given her medical condition, Detective, I’m sure you understand that pressuring her with questions right now would be… unethical.”
The detective’s eyes narrow on my cousin. “I’ve spoken briefly to Ms. Wright and her care team. Without being able to remember what happened that night, all we have to go on is the limited footage and the evidence we found at the crime scene. She’s the best wit we have.”
“Yes, but she doesn’t remember. And Julian was at the office with me the morning she fell. He can’t possibly be a suspect.”
“Well, no?—”
“So I can’t see any reason why he should be kept away from his wife a moment longer.” He smiles at the patient advocate hovering nearby. “If you would, Ms. Boulanger? Please bring Julian in to see his wife. I’ll stay with Detective Hargrove and see if I can answer any more of his questions.”
The detective looks between us, weighing his options. I get the vibe that he doesn’t like us. But there’s an amnesiac woman in a hospital bed, and after nearly a week being here alone, someone has finally come to see her.
He huffs. “Fine. But I’ll need a statement about that morning.”
“Of course, Detective.” He gestures down the hall, in the way which we came. “Why don’t we step over there and handle the statement now?”
The detective hesitates. “Yeah. Let’s do it. Ms. Boulanger? If Ms. Wright remembers anything, you come get me. Yeah?”
The patient advocate nods, then waggles her fingers at me. “Right this way, Mr. Fairchild.”
The doors beep when she swipes her badge. The hallway beyond is quieter than the waiting room, the murmurs from those waiting replaced by squeaking shoes and non-stop beeping.
I follow behind her. My steps are too fast. My pulse is too loud.
Carol glances at me out of the side of her glasses. “Be prepared. She may not recognize you.”
“I know,” I grind out.
“She’s frightened,” she continues softly. “She’s been asking questions. About who she is. About… why no one came.”
My throat tightens hard enough to burn. That fucks me up more than anything because no one… no one came to see her. I understand why her husband wouldn’t. If the real Julian shoved her out of the fourth-floor window, he would stay away, hopingthat his handiwork ended Lucy. It was only a lick of luck that saved her. The room she was in opened up on the back of the hotel. After she fell, it seems as though she landed on an awning below. The impact broke her fall enough that she would’ve walked away with only bruises if she hadn’t landed roughly on her upper back—and her head.
It was her lungs that took the brunt of the hit. A pulmonary contusion is what the advocate explained to me on the phone. It’s why she was in a medical coma, why she was intubated. And though she must’ve hit her head, they’re still not sure why she can’t remember what happened to her or who she is… which means she has no idea that I’m Dallas Collins.
She has no idea that I’m not her husband.
And maybe I’m the biggest fucking bastard in the world because I’m going to use that.
As we pause outside of an open door, my nervous fingers dip into my hoodie pocket. I pull my phone out. Jabbing the screen, I pull up the locked album that I’ve tortured myself with for the past five years.
The one that keeps all of the pictures of me and Luce.
I look different. Younger. Softer.Happy.
The woman glances over at me, eyes darting to the screen. She relaxes a little to see proof that I really do know Lucy, that the photos of her with a big grin, her arms wrapped around me prove that we were happy together once.
I stare at the screen for a moment, and Carol lets me.
When I was twenty-five, I would’ve killed to make Lucy Wright my bride. My old man beat the idea into me that I’d have to get hitched eventually if I wanted to rule the Order, but the part of Dallas Collins that he couldn’t reach… the part of me that managed to hope despite knowing it was pointless… that part wantedher.
She was too good for me. I always knew that. The light to my darkness, I didn’t see the blood on my hands when I touched her. She was my salvation—and when she refused my proposal with tears in her eyes, she was my ruin.
And then she married Julian Fairchild. A man a decade older and a part of the Order’s old guard, my father arranged the match and gave her away. She went. To protect me, perhaps, to save my position in the Order, to keep my father from following through on his threats to arrange an accident of my own for me… Lucy left, and I was too shackled to this fucking town to follow after her.
Instead, I died that day. Oh, I’m still walking. I’m still kicking. But the kid I was, the foolish romantic hidden beneath the hardened shell of my exterior, I knew that life wasn’t worth living without Dandelion in it. I died, and I got the black spade tattoo—a symbol of death—on the side of my throat to commemorate the occasion.
The last time I saw Lucy, she kissed that spot before saying her final goodbye. I marked it purposely so that everyone could see, then had my father threaten to cut it out of my skin because, according to him, Order members were only allowed to mark their bodies with the society’s brand and nothing else.
And some of the Owed wonder why I don’t seem to give a shit that Jack Collins died. Hell, if I’d had the guts to do it five years ago, I would’ve. Maybe then I could’ve saved Lucy from her fate.
