Page 107

“Didn’t know if I’d lost you again.”

She clutched him tighter. It became glaringly apparent, back in the place where this all began, that she could never let him go. Memory or not.

“I’m sorry,” she said against his chest.

He loosened his grip and pulled away enough to look at her.

“Please don’t apologize,” he said, ragged. “You’re alive. And you haven’t forgotten anything else.” He took a small breath, offering her a smile. “Which means I don’t have to convince you to love me again. Though to be clear, I’d have done it. As many times as I have to. But I am going to ask that you stop collecting head injuries. And that you never, ever try running into a condemned building again.”

That last request, dead serious, brought with it a flood of memories about how she’d ended up here.

“Oh no. Oh my God, I—” Molly broke off, heart hammering. Looking closer, she saw that Aster’s face was tinged slightly pink, and what looked like a shadow on the right side of his jaw was actually a purpling bruise beneath his pale skin.

“Apparently there’s been a periodic gas leak happening in our complex for a while,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“That smell we thought was coming from the dumpsters? That was the gas. They add the smell so you notice it. But clearly no one noticed enough. Your doctor thinks there could be a connection to your memory loss.”

“How?” A sudden tightness seized her chest.

“I don’t know yet. I’m not sure she does either.” He ran a hand down her cheek. “She said there’s still testing to do, but having a potential answer seemed to give her hope. But, Mols—” He stopped, swallowed, and then relocated to the bedside chair. Lacing his fingers through hers, he propped his elbows on the bed as he leaned forward. “What were you thinking? Running in there? That was the most reckless thing I’ve ever seen you do. You could have—I could have—we both could have died.”

Molly quietly struggled for air, drowning in guilt for what she’d done. He dropped another kiss to her fingers, and she saw the act for what it was: an attempt to put her at ease. But beneath that soft gesture sat something else, something uneasy drawing deep creases across his forehead and frosting his gaze.

“We were very, very lucky the stairwell protected us, and that the blast came from several units over. We were a little singed though. I have a broken rib. They thought you could have had another brain bleed. They kept you unconscious for days as a precaution.”

“I’m so sorry,” Molly said, sucking in a wavering breath as she tried not to cry. Singed. A broken rib. She had no good excuses. Not even bad ones. Not a single reasonable or coherent thought had crossed her mind when she ran up to their apartment. She’d been driven entirely by a desperate need to know.

Aster rested his forehead against their hands. “And I think it’s my fault. Keeping that fucking room locked. You ran up those stairs, but God, I feel like I gave you no choice.”

He was exactly right. And yet, he was still very wrong. “I shouldn’t have put myself in danger like that, shouldn’t have put you in danger like that. I can’t explain what came over me.”

Aster lifted his head and gave her a broken look.

“It was a nursery,” he said, and then crumbled.

Molly wasn’t certain she breathed for several minutes. Silence descended with the strength of a blizzard around them: muffling sound, whiting out sights. Chilled.

“Part of a nursery, at least. The beginning,” Aster finally said. He squeezed her hands and sat straight. “We were excited. You weren’t very far along, but you love to plan and you always have a jump on things. We started testing out paint samples, bought a couple books, ordered a crib way, way before we should have. But . . .” He trailed off, eyes landing on her.

Molly barely saw him through the blur flooding her eyes. She shook her head, body feeling stiff, locked up. Like it refused to participate in this conversation. “No.”

He only nodded, squeezing her hands again.

“When?” she asked.

“The middle of last year. You were just shy of the second trimester. Justine was the only one who knew, but only because she can sniff out a secret in her sleep. You asked me to lock it. You didn’t want to see it. I—I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. But especially after you realized we were trying and we had that fight, I couldn’t bring myself to make it worse. Early on, I used to come home from work and find you sobbing in there and I—Mols, I couldn’t put you through it again.” He clawed at his chest, fingers digging into his breastbone. “I don’t know if it makes me an awful person or a coward or just unforgivably presumptuous, but I was trying to carry it for both of us. So you didn’t have to.”

Knowing and not remembering was a unique kind of torture. Molly ached, something deep and horrible opening up a hole inside her chest. Grief like hot tar bubbled through her, scalding her, consuming her.

Perhaps worse than the grief was the guilt. Guilt for a thing she should have remembered, needed to remember, and couldn’t. It felt like cheating her grief. It turned her stomach to wonder if maybe it was better that she couldn’t remember.

Despite the severity of her grief and guilt, her pain remained strictly emotional. No agony spiked through her skull with the force of an ice pick. No memory suddenly made itself known. It was overwhelming, but she wasn’t overwhelmed. Not in the way Aster worried about.

There were so many things she might have said in response to his rambling explanation-turned-apology. You should have told me sooner and we’re supposed to be partners and I wish you hadn’t said anything at all. Molly chose to be gentle with the man who ran after her into a building on the brink of explosion. Who she watched try his best, flawed as it was, again and again.

“Thank you for trying to protect me.”