Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Erika
It’s been chaotic since I stepped into the pit, and for the first time all day, I’ve finally managed to steal a moment to myself.
I no longer use any of my spare time to nourish or rehydrate myself; instead, I spend every available moment hunched over research papers on recent advances in understanding dissociative amnesia.
Some I’ve already read, some new. I can’t tell one from another anymore because I’ve read so many, and none of them say anything different.
We’re following Leon’s rehabilitation plan and doing everything right, and he still isn’t regaining his memory as quickly as I had hoped.
It’s hard not to ask him every day if he remembers anything, but I have to bite my tongue, because giving him time and space are the only things that will help him work things out.
After each therapy session, he’s always tired and sleeps for a worryingly long time.
I explained to him that his body needs to heal and that sleep will help with that.
Even though he’s been sleeping a lot, he’s still exhausted. Working out like a crazy man hasn’t helped, but I understand how it helps him stay busy. It has become his new focus, and he’s looking fitter and healthier than ever. If only his memory muscles were as strong as his abs.
Something I haven’t shared with anyone is, what if, eventually, he remembers me, and he feels nothing?
I’m already in mourning for the loss of our relationship that existed; I don’t think my heart could take any more heartbreak.
Loving him from a distance was easier than living beside him as a stranger. For years, we survived being only friends, and now, how do I go on being married to someone who doesn’t even recognize my face?
The only thing that is keeping me going is hope. Hope that part of me might return to him. That’s why I need to give him space, even when it hurts. Demanding that he remembers me won’t get me anywhere. If anything, it’ll push him away, and that’s the last thing I want.
Leon’s text sparked hope within me. He had a breakthrough.
He remembered the coin, my favorite color, and the stethoscope he bought. I don’t care that he didn’t remember it was for me; it’s progress. The therapy, journal, and logging memories are starting to work, I think.
Doris from reception taps me on the shoulder. “Erika, someone’s here to see you.”
I lift my head and come face-to-face with someone I never want to see again for as long as I live.
“Huck?” His name sputters from my mouth as if I’m disgusted. I am, and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. “What are you doing here?”
“You changed your number. I wanted to see you. To apologize.” He fumbles over his words.
“For?” He never once visited me at work when we were together. What a tool.
“Cheating on you,” he says softly, looking remorseful, but it’s calculated and disingenuous, his smirk giving him away.
Doris gasps, then expresses her disapproval with a tut. “I don’t buy it.”
I agree.
“Remember when we—” he starts, but I cut him off.
“Oh, no, you don’t. Don’t ever go there. We’re done. I’m married now, and I don’t want to see you, and as you can probably tell from the beds that are full of patients, I’m busy.” I look along the line of beds across from the doctor’s station.
“Please, Erika, just give me two minutes of your time,” he begs.
He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as me.
“No.” I don’t want to talk to the cheating bastard. “I want you to leave, and if you don’t, I will call security.”
“Your job is the reason we never had a relationship.”
“You’re pathetic, Huck.” The ignorance of this man. He avoids taking responsibility for anything.
“I heard Leon had an accident.”
Oh, great, he’s going there, is he? “He’s fine,” I lie.
“I heard he’d lost his memory.” Huck keeps pressing me to get a rise.
“As I said, he’s fine.” My temperature rises, making my palms clammy.
“That’s not what I heard.”
“You heard wrong, buddy,” Leon’s voice suddenly sounds from behind me. “So why don’t you listen to my wife, take your pathetic excuses for cheating on her, and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine? And get the hell out of here. Or, like she said, she’ll call security.”
His presence fills me with intense contentment, and the way he claimed me as his with such open admiration makes all the shadows across my heart float away like a cloud, revealing the sunshine.
A wave of powerful relief fills every cell of my body.
Joy returns in a rush. Something I didn’t think I could feel again.
How long had Leon been listening for?
What is he doing here? When he should be in the house, taking it easy.
And holy hell balls, the way my husband stood up for me is deliciously domineering as glimmers of my old Leon make an appearance.
Huck’s brows furrow in frustration, and without saying another word, he storms through the ER, and in a final desperate effort, shouts, “You will never love her like I did.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll love her harder. Now get out of here, you halfwit,” Leon counters, his voice full of certainty and strength.
I leap up from my seat and nervously look around the pit, my cheeks feeling hot from all the unwanted attention.
“Show’s over,” Doris announces, looking amused. “Holy shit. You have two men fighting over you? That’s so hot,” she says through the side of her mouth as I walk toward Leon, my heart full, butterflies dancing in my stomach.
“Just one,” I correct her, staring right at my husband.
“Girl, you get it,” Doris counters, chuckling under her breath as she snaps her fingers.
“Oh, I plan to,” I mutter, so as not to be heard.
“Are you okay?” Leon asks, looking over his shoulder, ensuring Huck has gone.
“Yeah.” I’m shaken but not completely rattled.
“So that was Huck?”
“It was.”
“He looks like a halfwit. Ash told me that’s what he calls him. Did you know that?”
I chuckle a little at that as I imagine how angry Ash sounds when he calls Huck that. “I do now. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.”
My already buoyant mood reaches new heights of euphoria knowing he couldn’t stay away.
“Could you not wait until I got home?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t. I got this, I don’t know, like a deep urge, a feeling, in here.
” He points to his chest with a hand that holds a gift bag.
“I wanted to see you. Had to get to you as soon as I could. I feel like… you, I don’t know, that I…
fuck, I’m sorry… this isn’t coming out right…
I feel like I wanted to, needed to, kiss you.
I didn’t kiss you when you left for your shift today.
And I wanted to, to do that—kiss you, that is. ”
“Holy mother of swoon.” Doris’s dreamy voice floats into our conversation.
When I side-eye her, I discover she’s sitting with her head in her hand, staring at us longingly as if she’s watching the best romance she’s ever seen; all she needs is popcorn.
“Get back to work, Doris. Nothing to see here,” I say, my voice laced with humor and joy. “And you, come with me.” I thread my fingers through Leon’s, tugging him along behind me.
“Bye, Doris.” Leon laughs, sounding every inch his old playful self as I pull him into the supply room, shut the door, and rest my back against it.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I can’t believe he showed up at my work.
“I told you. I needed to see you.” He’s so casual about the whole thing when he just made one of the biggest declarations of devotion to me, in front of my work colleague.
“To kiss me?”
“Yes, that and to also give you this.” He pulls out a Siberian husky plushie from the gift bag he’s been clutching.
“I think a husky is important to you, to me, us. I’m not sure, but this little guy looks exactly like the one I keep seeing in my dreams, like a memory that keeps floating in. Does that make sense?”
In temporary stasis, I blink once, then twice. “Oscar.”
“Who’s Oscar?” Leon asks, looking at the plushie, then back to me.
“My dog.”
“You don’t have a dog.” Confusion lines his brow.
My voice is small when I say, “I did, Leon, I did have a dog.”
“A Siberian husky? Please tell me it was,” he asks hopefully, his pitch slightly higher than usual.
“It was.” I nod enthusiastically. “You’re remembering.” I gasp because his memories, or sparks of them, are becoming brighter as if the light is beginning to penetrate through the fog.
“I’m remembering.” There’s so much warmth and happiness in his face.
“Leon.” I say his name as if it’s a blazing beam of hope.
“I’m remembering,” he says again, as if he can’t quite believe it.
I take the husky out of his hand and hold it against my chest. “His name was Oscar. He lost movement in his back legs and struggled to walk, and putting him to sleep was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.
But you were there with me. You held his paw, and you held me when my heart was breaking. I loved him.”
“Baby.”
The enormity of that one short word he calls me and the memory of my husky has my stomach churning with excitement. Slice by slice, small pieces of my life are emerging in his mind.
“You remembered Oscar.” Although I respond quietly, the thread of hope is woven into each syllable.
“Oscar.” Leon tests his name, something else for him to write down so he can remember it.
I tighten my grip around the fluffy plushie. “I’ve always wanted to get another dog.”
“Another Oscar?” he asks.
“Yeah. But I’m too busy. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“That makes sense.” He nods.
“So, about that kiss?” I ask, my skin prickling with desire.
“Yeah.”
“Is that still up for grabs?” I want him to claim me.
“It is. If you want it.” His large hand holds my face.
“I want it. But don’t be gentle.” I’m over us taking things slow.
His hooded eyes drift to my lips, and any remaining restraint dissolves into nothingness. With our next breath, he crashes his lips into mine, and I couldn’t care less if the world bursts into flames as I lose myself in him.
He tastes like peppermint and smells of his familiar, spicy, woodsy aftershave. Although he’s not fully back to me, everything about him physically is pure, unfiltered Leon.
One forward motion, and I’m in his arms, pulling me close, pressing his erection against me, which makes me eager to get him out of his clothes and naked, to connect us once again.
I can’t wait another minute, but I know waiting is the right thing to do. “I’m at work.” I pant against his lips as our hands become a chaotic blur of touching, in a desperate attempt to explore each other’s bodies.
“I want you,” he groans, tilting his hips, rubbing his hard cock against my stomach to chase his release.
“I want you more.”
In the same way he’s done dozens of times, Leon cups my ass with both hands, pulling me close to him, molding us perfectly together, chest to chest.
Then he’s kissing my jaw, my neck, and he bites the sweet spot behind my ear that drives me crazy and used to make me beg him to fuck me harder.
Does he remember that?
“We need to stop, Leon,” I pant, wishing we were anywhere but here.
“I know, but I don’t want to.”
“Neither do I.” I thread my fingers into his wavy locks at the back of his neck and steer him back to face me. “But we should stop.”
Why the fuck am I at work? This feels like a test. Torturous.
His goofy smile looks lust-struck, his lips twitching at the sides. “I really like kissing you.”
“And I really like kissing you. I’ve always liked your lips.”
“I love your eyes,” he admits.
In the best possible way, I can’t breathe. His words sink right into me, and I’ve heard them before, but it’s like I’m hearing them for the first time. “Thank you.”
He adds another beautiful compliment. “And your smile. Your smile makes me forget what I was going to say sometimes.”
I wasn’t prepared for these confessions.
“And I love everything about you, Leon. I wouldn’t change a thing.” I suddenly feel shy, my cheeks feeling warm.
“Not even my broken brain?”
“Not even that, because I think you’re starting to fall for me all over again, and that’s exciting.” And scary as hell, because what if he eventually decides I’m not the one for him?
“This feels right. You and me,” he admits, opening his heart.
Why am I shaking? Pull yourself together, Erika.
“You need to get back to work,” he finally says.
“I do. I dropped my plushie.” I search the floor to see where he fell, finding him right behind Leon.
“What are you going to call him?” Leon asks inquisitively, a smirk playing across his lips.
“Oscar.”
“It’s perfect. You’re perfect.”
I’m not, but I’ll take it. A sudden thought hits me. “How did you get here?”
“I called Jerry. I told him to wait outside. Stash is outside too. I don’t need a bodyguard and to be watched over twenty-four-seven.”
“That’s just as well because I was about to lecture you on the dangers of driving with a head injury.” The mix of fear and worry disappear in a flash.
“I swear I could have driven here myself. I feel fine.”
“That’s breaking the law. You’re so naughty.”
“I want to be naughty. With you.” And there’s my cheeky man, I’ve come to know and love.
Yes please, to being naughty. My heart and mind know it’s too soon, but regardless, I like the sound of that.
Dropping his forehead to mine, Leon asks, “I want to take you out on a date.”
“Really?” I squeak.
“Yes. Drinks, dinner, a movie, whatever you want.”
I have an idea. “Well, we’re attending the Edmonton Eagles Legends game tomorrow night, so we could go for dinner after?” This will be the first year Leon hasn’t played a legends game since he retired, but he wanted to attend as a guest, to show people he’s alive and physically well.
“It’s a date.”
I have a date with my husband.