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“Yeah,” I agreed sadly. “I know. And I havenoidea how it happened. It just did.” I lifted my hands helplessly and then let them fall down to my sides again. “So… I’m really sorry that I flipped out so terribly. I think this was why I didn’t want you to know unless you remembered on your own. I subconsciously realized I’d do something crazy like this, which…” I sighed. “Can’t be very helpful to you while you’re already going through so much. I just—I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Shrugging on my shirt, I started for the door. But Raina touched my arm, and whispered, “Foster…”
I paused. “None of this is your fault. I don’t blame you. I know you can’t control what you are or aren’t able to remember. It just—it’s…” I finally glanced at her, and all the emotions I felt for her welled to the surface. I didn’t care if she never remembered our time together. I didn’t care if she never wanted to sleep with me again. I just needed to keep any scrap of her in my life that I could.
Which is why I found myself blurting, “Sublease your apartment to me.”
Raina blinked and pulled back. “What?”
“Yeah.” Nodding because the idea made more and more sense the longer I thought it through, I added, “I need to move out on my own, anyway. Two of my sisters are already squabbling for my bedroom.” With a shrug, I added, “I was just going to rent a spare room at Archer House since my buddy Hudson’s moving out to live with his girlfriend, but…” I glanced around Raina’s compact apartment. “I think this would suit me better. A little time just to myself. And that way, if youdochoose to come back in the fall, this will still be here, waiting for you, and I can move into Archer Housethen.”
“Foster, I—this…” She shook her head, utterly flustered by my sudden change in conversation.
“You might remember andwantto come back,” I pleaded.
Pity filled her eyes. “And if I don’t?”
I lifted one shoulder, then reached out and cupped her cheek gently in my palm. “Then I get to keep sleeping under the same roof you did and breathe in the same air you breathed.” Sending her a small, begging smile, I wheedled, “You can give me that much at least, right?”
Her lashes fluttered, letting me know my words affected her. Then she blew out a breath and shook her head. “I have no idea what I did to make you fall the first time around, but wow, I wish I could do it again…and remember it this time.”
38
FOSTER
Raina left Westport for good two weeks later.
When her dad showed up with a moving truck, I offered to help pack boxes, but she told me no, claiming she already felt guilty enough when it came to me; she didn’t think she could handle moving help on top of it.
“So, I’m confused,” Keene said as he hefted a box of my old football trophies into his arms and followed me from the back sliding door of my old room that Amy had finally won possession of. “Are you two together or not?”
“Me and Raina?” I asked, glancing back at him in question. When he nodded, I sighed and faced forward again, leading him around to the front of the house where my truck was parked and already half-loaded with other boxes. “No, we are not.”
“But you two are friends?” he persisted.
“Right.”
Plopping his box into the back of my truck, he frowned at me in confusion. “And you love her?”
I nodded and scanned the space that was left, playing mental Tetris as I tried to figure out what else could fit in here for this trip. “Yep.”
Keene threw up his hands in defeat. “Well, how the hell doesthatwork?”
I glanced at him in surprise. “I don’t know. It just does. We text every couple of days”— mostly about the apartment— “I sent her money for rent, and she shipped me a copy of the apartment key. It’s…fine.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “And you’renotactively pursuing her for more?”
A splinter of pain pierced me. But I shook my head. “Not right now, no. It’s not a good time for her. Plus she’s all the way in Galveston, and I’m stuck here for at least another year. She’s where she needs to be, and I’m where I need to be.” If it was meant to happen, it would.
Narrowing his eyes suspiciously, Keene guessed, “You’re just waiting for her to remember, aren’t you?”
“A little bit, yeah,” I answered. “But even if she doesn’t…” I shrugged. “We started off as friends last time. I figure that’s the best way to worm back into her heart again.”
“And you don’t care at all that she could just go off and nail whomever she wants in the meantime?”
I narrowed my eyes at him because I’d never even considered the possibility of her dating someone else while I was playing the long game. But I definitely wasnow, and I didn’t particularly like it.
To Keene, however, I said, “She’s still healing from her car accident and mourning her sister.”
