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Mandi’s hand is so tight around my wrist, she’s going to pop open a vein with her nails.
Lucy stops outside the doors to the inn.
My stepsister Mandi owns this place and I’m assuming she was appointed the designated Greene to watch out for me showing up here because as soon as my truck pulled into the parking lot, she was out the door, telling me to go home.
How can I go home? I drove Alicia home and she tried to lure me into her house by palming my dick through my pants. Sadly, nothing happened, not even a chub—the consequences of having your estranged wife show back up in town is limp dick apparently. So I walked her to the door and said good night.
I told myself to drive home. I really did. To just go to bed. But I couldn’t convince myself I’d get any sleep. Still, waiting until tomorrow, like my dad said, is good advice. But somehow, my truck took a wrong turn and then another wrong turn, leaving me outside the inn.
“Hey, Luce,” Mandi says, still with a vise grip on my wrist. Seriously, her hands are freakishly strong. “Did you need something?”
Lucy shakes her head, our gazes finding one another under the dim lights of the parking lot. “No. Just thought I’d clear my head.”
“Where’s your mom?” Mandi asks.
“Getting ready for bed.” Lucy zips up her jacket and shuffles her feet in place. “Adam, do you want to talk?” Her voice is so shaky and raspy, I barely recognize it.
I dislodge myself from Mandi’s Herculean grip and walk toward her. “Sure.”
“Adam…” Mandi’s tone holds warning, but I raise my hand.
“It’s my life.”
She says nothing else, and Lucy smiles over my shoulder at what was once one of her good friends. Mandi’s only a year older than us, and when Lucy and I were dating in high school, it was usually Lucy, Mandi, Chevelle, and me hanging out in the basement of our parents’ house. I wonder if Lucy remembers that.
“Please don’t make me the one responsible for organizing a search party, okay? Don’t run off,” Mandi says to our retreating backs.
“Don’t worry. I’ll bring her back within an hour,” I say.
“An hour?” Mandi screeches.
But I’m too busy soaking in the fact I’m walking toward the bay with Lucy next to me. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her, so it’s odd how normal yet weird it feels to be near her.
Lucy is taking in everything as we increase our distance from any sign of life.
With tourist season starting tomorrow, our small town of Sunrise Bay is more crowded than normal. Luckily, down by the inn, it’s more secluded. The majority of guests staying at the inn are probably having fun in the square, where most of the festivities are tonight. I find us a spot on the rocks closer to the shoreline and we sit. I pick up small pebbles and toss them in, needing to keep my hands busy before I do something stupid like touch her.
I’m not sure what to say, so like an idiot I blurt, “If I’m dead tomorrow, your mom probably killed me.”
“I get the gist she isn’t a fan?” Lucy sits next to me, picking up her own pebbles and throwing them in the water.
I glance over. The moonlight shines down on her face, reminding me of the nights in our cabin up in the mountains when we’d look at the stars and end up making love on our deck. I shut my eyes because that no longer exists. We aren’t that naive couple who thinks love can conquer the world anymore. In fact, now I know for certain it can’t.
“What do you remember?” I ask her.
I know absolutely nothing about amnesia, other than what I’ve seen in the movies, and I’m pretty sure that’s not completely accurate. Like that rom-com Lucy made me watch once where the guy is in a coma and when he wakes up, they convince him he has a fiancée. But whoops, she fell in love with the brother while he was fighting for his life.
“At first nothing. I didn’t know my name. But the doctors called my parents, and as soon as I saw them, I remembered them. They thought my memory issues would be temporary, but then nothing else came for a long time.”
“So you forgot all about me, huh?”
“I guess,” she says. “I remembered they were my parents, but I couldn’t recollect much else. Then when I saw you, I remembered you’re my husband.”
“Soon-to-be ex-husband.” I mentally reprimand myself for my tone when her shoulders sink.
“Can I ask you what happened between us? Did we break up because of your girlfriend?”
I guffaw. Of course I must be the one at fault. Anger is a hot pit in my stomach, but it’s still hard to admit one of the most embarrassing and painful things that’s ever happened to me. “I was never unfaithful to you. You left me.”
