Telling me I’m worth it.
Telling me anything is possible.
And it’s all thanks to him. The man who wanted to be the end of me.
It’s starting to look like he was actually the beginning of my life.
34
LIAM
It’s a strange feeling. Caught between excitement and the sense of being hollow. Drained.
Laura. She’s really out there. She has no idea who she is. No memory of me, our parents. My one blood tie still living in this world, and she doesn’t know I exist.
I’ve never seen myself as a hopeful person. Hope is expensive. Hope is wasteful. I would rather spend my time planning. Preparing. Now, there’s nothing I can do but hope all of the planning was enough. We didn’t exactly take much time—less than twenty-four hours after learning Laura has been alive all these years, Nick is on a jet, in the air by now.
While I sit and stare out the window, reeling thanks to the way life flipped on its head all at once. Sitting in place and waiting isn’t in my nature. There’s an itchy ache from head to toe. My body is urging me to move, to do something, anything. I can’t just sit here and wait.
Does she ever get her memory back? Can she ever be the person she was before everything changed? That’s a pointless question, and not something I should expect. She won’t be thesame, because I will never be the same. Time has changed us both. That’s what time does.
I changed twice over. First, in the years after the explosion.
Now, thanks to Aurora, I’m a different man than I was in the moment before charging into her home and taking her as my prisoner. I don’t want to change back. This is much better.
I keep myself busy by turning my attention to what she needs. A text comes through from the delivery service.The truck is on schedule, loaded up. I reply with a thumbs up. They should be here within the hour, meaning I’ll need to wake Aurora soon if I’m going to get her out of here in time for the surprise to go as planned. I had already put together plans to make my home hers and help her become more comfortable, but Laura’s situation sped up the timeline.
Strange how something so earth-shattering can realign your priorities. We’re going to be living in limbo until Nick locates my sister—and that still won’t be the end of things, because he’ll need to convince her to come home. It stings, imagining her looking at him with no memory of what they meant to each other.
This is my way of combating that sting. Turning toward hope. To happiness. I’ve made up my mind to go and wake her up when she shuffles into the room.
She’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I feel the ice around my heart thaw more and more every day to allow in these new feelings. Tenderness. Affection. And there I was, imagining I was incapable of anything so basic. She’s wearing her pajamas, yawning, rubbing knuckles over her eyes before giving me a sleepy grin. “When did you get up?” she asks before yawning again. She hasn’t even brushed her hair yet this morning. It’s flat on one side, sticking up a little.
The sight makes me smile. “I didn’t sleep much,” I admit. She looks at me, concerned, and all I can do is lift a shoulder. “I have a lot on my mind.”
Her head tips to the side and concern pinches her features. “Do you wish you were the one who went instead of Nick?”
“Yes and no. I know it was for the best that I stay.”
She walks around the desk and leans against the edge, covering her mouth with her hand to stifle another yawn. “But part of you is always going to be out there, with him, until they come back.”
Her perceptiveness has a way of startling me. “That’s about it, yes. I don’t want you to think it means I would rather not be here, with you. That, you don’t need to worry about.” There’s so much more I want to say. A lifetime’s worth. It’s all right there, in my heart, like a flood behind a dam. It wants to break free, wants to break down those carefully built walls. The work it takes to hold everything back is damn near exhausting.
But what she told me about words—how empty they are, how useless—holds me back. I can’t tell her in words. She wouldn’t believe me. So I have to rely on actions.
That’s why I briskly clap my hands. “Go on. Get dressed. We’re going out.”
Her eyes narrow. “What? Where?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Can you see how I would be worried about it?” She’s trying to joke, but I hear the anxiety underneath.
“I promise, it will be fun, but you need to move your ass.”
Now she laughs, looking me up and down. “Fun? I didn’t know that was a word in your vocabulary.”
“There are a lot of things about me you don’t know.” But I want to show her. I can’t wait to show her. “Now get moving, because I’m hungry.”
