Chapter 29
NASH
“It's like I wasn't even there,” I tell Lindy. I just needed someone to talk to, and calling my cousin seemed like the best option.
“I'm sure it wasn't that bad.”
“I'm telling you, she was flirting with Stetson right in front of my face without a thought of me.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do?” I lift my shoulders. “To Sadie, he's still her boyfriend.”
Lindy blows out a long, sad breath. “That's messed up.”
“But it gets worse. She left the party with him and isn't back yet.”
“She didn't leave with him. She probably just went to talk, get some closure on that chapter of her life.”
“I hope so.” I spread my fingers over my brows, trying to rub some of my frustration away.
I thought about jumping in a car and hunting them down, but Dr. Hatchet’s words keep replaying through my mind.
Give her space to figure things out.
Let her discover who she is.
Don’t pressure her to be who you want her to be.
I guess running off with her ex-boyfriend—no , ex-fiancé —is part of Sadie discovering who she is.
I just have to sit back and watch it happen.
And it sucks.
“But besides the ex-boyfriend—who is the current boyfriend in Sadie’s mind—how is everything else going?”
I drop my hand. “Her mom seems to like me more, and the same with her sister. Then yesterday, we spent the afternoon together doing Christmas stuff in the town village. But it's just not the same. She’s so standoffish. I can see it in her eyes.”
“She just needs some time to get to know you better.”
“What if she doesn’t need time? What if she just doesn’t like me?”
“Nash, you’re impossible not to like,” Lindy counters.
“I have a wife that may not agree with you.”
“Then change her mind.”
I scoff, feeling like Lindy’s answer dismisses how hard this is.
“No, seriously, you did it once before. You can make her fall for you all over again.”
“How?”
“Fight for her. Show her all the things about you that she likes. Remind her of your chemistry. It's not like you're starting from scratch. You know everything about Sadie. You know what she likes. You know how to turn her on. How to drive her crazy. Do all of that.”
“So you're saying I should try to win back my wife?”
“Absolutely.”
Isn’t that what I’ve already been doing since she woke up?
“ Nash, you don't have any other choice. You either win Sadie back, or you come home without her.”
A sobering thought.
So I better win her back.
SADIE
Nash sits at the bottom of the stairs when I get home. His elbows rest on his knees, hands clasped together. He looks up the second I walk through the front door. My heart pounds. It’s hard to answer to a man you feel has no say in your life.
This is a pit-in-my-stomach, heat-crawling-up-the-side-of-my-neck situation. I feel like a teenager who got caught staying out too late, or in this case, a wife who got caught spending time with her ex-boyfriend.
“Hi.” It comes out more like a whisper. I don’t know if that’s because the house is dark and everyone has gone to bed or because of the guilt rising in my chest.
“Hi.”
I walk to Nash, sitting down beside him. “I was with Stetson.”
“I know.”
“We were just catching up.”
He nods several times and then looks at me. “Did you get all the answers you were looking for?”
My gaze meets his. The dim lighting makes it almost impossible to see what’s behind his stare. “Not all of them.” I shrug. “But enough for now.”
The silence between us thickens, constricting my breath.
“It was Tate's death, wasn't it? The reason I stayed away from my family for so long.”
“That was part of it.”
“Last night, I opened up the text messages between me and my mom—at least what was still saved on my phone.”
“And?”
“There were only four or five in the last seven months, and one was on Mother's Day, and one was on her birthday.” A sneer puffs out. “I mean, how did I get so callous that I barely texted my own mother?”
“You weren’t callous. You were just trying to deal with your own emotions.”
“Stetson said I started to change when I got the internship and moved to Chicago.”
“Is that his excuse for breaking up with you?”
“He knows that was a mistake.” Regret and longing are behind my words. “A lot of things might’ve been different if he’d been more supportive of the internship.”
I probably wouldn’t have married the wrong man.
“He said after moving to Chicago, Tate happened, and the friction between me and my parents just got bigger and bigger, and then—” I stop myself, but it’s too late.
Nash finishes what I didn’t say. “And then me.”
“I’m not blaming you. I know I’m the one who made these decisions, but it doesn’t seem like me. And then talking to Stetson and hearing how I just dropped him out of the blue. I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense. Nothing went how I thought it would go.” I shake my head, pushing my hair back from my face out of frustration.
“It's all so confusing, and I don't expect you to understand, but the last thing I remember is planning a future with Stetson, and then I wake up, and everything is completely different, and I don't know how I got here, and I'm just…” Emotion swells in my eyes. “I'm mourning the life I thought I would have.”
The life I wanted.
“It’s just so depressing looking at how everything turned out so wrong.”
“You were always the one thing that turned out right in my life.” His head shifts, and his chin drops slightly, enough for me to know what I said hurt him.
Hurting Nash is all I seem to do.
“You're right,” he says with a heavy breath. “I don't understand everything you’re going through. And maybe you'll wake up in two months, and your memory will come back, and everything that doesn’t make sense now will fit together. But until then, I want you to know you were happy. We were happy. Our life together wasn’t what you planned, but it was our life, and you loved it.”
I swallow, feeling the weight of his words in my chest. I blink a few times as a tear or two falls.
“I promise you’ll be happy again.” His lips lift. “All of this will sort itself out.”
Yeah, it will sort itself out, just not how I want.
I’ve been waiting for this nightmare to end so I could go back to how things were—the life I remember. But maybe it’s time I need to face the facts.
My old life doesn’t exist anymore.