Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Becoming a parent means being prepared to kill the spider. I’m not sure if I can do that.
—Nettie to Boone
Nettie
I had no memory of my entire life.
If that wasn’t crazy as hell, I didn’t know what was.
Even crazier, I was currently in the car with a man who’d not only gotten me pregnant, but also married me.
The first time he’d walked into my hospital room, I’d seen him and been flabbergasted. I’d nearly sucked red Jell-O down my windpipe.
As it was, that Jell-O had melted in my wide-open mouth as I took the man in.
The woman in my room, my sister apparently, had told me about him. She’d told me that he was a great guy and that he was the love of my life. Had been so since I was fourteen and he’d walked into the cottage that I’d been standing in at the time.
I could see why I’d been enamored with the man.
He was tall, dark, and had eyes so brown that they reminded me of dark chocolate.
Over the last few days, we’d recovered together.
I still wasn’t allowed to have a television or my phone—not that I knew what I’d do on it anyway since I couldn’t remember anything. Not a password. Not a face. Not a name. Nothing.
Which was crazy, because I could come up with words no problem. I knew that the sky was blue and the grass was green. I knew I was in Montana. I knew all about the game of soccer.
But that was it.
As we drove down the long, winding driveway that would lead to Boone’s and my place, I took every single thing in. The way that the grass was well-manicured and tidy against the driveway. The way that just a little bit farther off the driveway, there was a lush forest of wildflowers.
“You asked me once to plant you a field of wildflowers so that the bees could always flourish when they were near,” he said when he saw my gaze’s direction.
“You heard that bees were dying at an alarming rate because of the manicured lawns that everyone keeps. I got rid of most of my grass and put in that wildflower mix. There are bees here every summer now.”
Wow.
“Oh,” I breathed.
When we got up to a split in the drive, he took a left and parked underneath a covered parking area that had the house on the left side and a second building on the right.
“What’s this?” I pointed toward the second building on the right.
“Detached garage. That’s where your car is parked right now.”
“This isn’t my car?” I wondered.
“This is a loaner because of the accident,” he explained quietly. “The other truck is totaled.”
He sounded horrified by the fact that it was totaled.
“Did you love the truck?” I wondered.
He took his seat belt off then gripped the steering wheel for a long moment before he said, “That was where you told me you were pregnant the first time. Where you told me that you loved me the first time. What I took you out in on our first date. What you laughed in. What you cried in. It was where you and I spent a lot of time together when we were younger. It was very sentimental.”
My heart ached at the sadness in his voice.
“But the good thing is, you’re alive. The baby is alive.” He got out of the truck and rounded the hood before I could process his words. He had the door open and his hand out before I’d turned in my seat fully.
I unbuckled my seat belt and took his hand. “You’re more hurt than I am.”
His mouth twitched, which had to hurt since he had a lot of bruising on the side of his face that his lips had quirked up on. “I’ll live. I’m just glad we finally got you out today.”
Me, too.
Being in a hospital with nothing to do sucked.
Being in a hospital with no memory of the people that were constantly bombarding that room sucked even more.
Luckily, Boone had never been one of those people that I disliked having in my room.
Not that the people that’d visited were bad or anything.
It was just awkward as fuck when someone came in and had to introduce themselves with how I knew them.
Boone didn’t make me feel awkward, though.
He was so soothing.
I felt like I could breathe when he was near.
That was why I’d had no issues with going home with him.
Why I was in a strange-to-me man’s house instead of with my sister.
I breathed in his scent as he pulled me out of the car and was quite disappointed when he stepped away and put distance between us.
My body literally screamed to be held by him.
And again, showing that he missed nothing when it came to me, he asked, “Do you want me to hold you?”
I all but dove into his arms, and almost felt bad when he gave a pained grunt.
He folded me in those warm, hard arms, though, and held me so tight that I knew it was paining him to do so.
His poor arm.
His poor face.
His poor hip.
I nuzzled my face into his chest, unable to stop myself from taking his scent deep into my lungs.
He smelled like soap and deodorant.
But there was an underlying smell, like the outdoors, that had me all but melting into his arms.
“Let’s get you inside,” he suggested. “I’m sure the sun is killing your head right now.”
It wasn’t.
I was okay.
But I knew the man had to be hurting, so I went with him into the house, taking everything in along the way.
I noticed a pair of women’s shoes by the door—mine.
A soccer ball was right inside that door, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching for it with my toe.
“I don’t think so.” He chuckled as he deftly took it away from me and kicked it across the room. “No jarring whatsoever.”
I pouted, which he thought was cute, because he said so.
“You may be cute,” he murmured. “But we’re not going to do anything to jar that head any. It was a really bad concussion, Net.”
He had a point.
Also, if I wanted to get better, I had to follow the rules.
“I hate not having my memory.”
“You and me both, baby.” He paused. “Nettie.”
“You can call me what you usually do,” I pointed out. “Maybe it’ll help jar my memory.”
He nodded once, his jaw clenched.
He took me through a kitchen, and I paused at all the boxes on the counter.
“What’s all this?”
“Stuff you ordered before…”
“Before I had my head bashed in by some unknown man or woman in a snowplow?” I filled in for him.
“Yeah,” he rasped.
“What’s in those boxes?” I wondered.
There were three huge boxes from on the counter, as well as several smaller ones on top of those.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he admitted. “I have zero control over your relationship with .”
My lips twitched. “I guess we can find out later…once you give me a tour.”
He walked me through the house, and I stopped in the entryway to the living room. “Wow.”
The fireplace was massive.
As was the TV above the fireplace.
“Why’s it so big?”
He hesitated, then said, “I bought the big one so I could watch you play over the years if I couldn’t make it to your game.”
“Oh,” I said. “Why’d you hesitate to tell me that?”
He laughed then. “I wasn’t so sure I wanted you to know how obsessed with you that I am.”
I reached for his hand and said, “Lead the way, hubby.”
He jolted. Shot me a smile that made my heart melt—along with other things that I wasn’t willing to examine right then—and guided me through the rest of the house.
There were five bedrooms. A formal dining room. An informal dining room. A master bath that was three times the size of the other bedrooms. A bathroom that looked like it stepped right out of a luxury home ad, and a closet that was big enough to accommodate ten people. Not just two.
But it was the fourth bedroom that was closest to the master that had all my attention.
It was a soft, baby pink.
There wasn’t much on the walls yet, but all of the other stuff was there.
A crib. A rocking chair. A changing table. A baby play mat. Several other baby things that looked super fancy, and a pink fluffy circular rug right in the middle.
The wall decorations were laying on that rug with a “hang these up for me already, loser” note taped to the glass.
I giggled.
“I was going to do them.” He paused. “I know that sounds like an excuse, but I swear, I was going to do them. That day of the accident I had plans to come home and hang them up. I’d already built the glider while you slept in that morning.”
He pointed to said glider in the corner.
I squeezed his hand. “What’s her name?”
He cleared his throat. “We’re naming her Margery. After my grams.”
“Oh.” A little niggle of a memory hit me.
An old woman with soft eyes.
But just as fast as it was there, it was gone.
Shit.
“I like it,” I decided. “And the middle?”
“We’re debating,” he admitted. “I like Margery April. You like Margery Mae.”
I snickered. “I have good taste. I still like Margery Mae. It’s cute.”
“It is,” he agreed. “And we’ll probably go with that one. But Margery April has sentimental value to it.”
“Why?”
“April is the month we met. The month that we became officially husband and wife. And the month that I asked you to date me. It’s a damn great month.”
Him and his sentimentality.
“You’re cute,” I said. “What was my argument against it?”
He hesitated.
I poked him.
“It was the month that we lost our first daughter,” he rasped, pain in his voice.
“Oh,” I breathed.
Another memory niggled.
One of pain and fear. Anguish.
Again, gone before I could dig into it fully.
“I think we need to go with Mae,” he admitted. “But that month didn’t only have bad. It had a lot of good.”
If I wasn’t already married to this guy, I’d definitely say he was marriage material.
He was so sweet.
And big, like a teddy bear.
He also gave the best damn hugs.
I bent down and ran my fingers over the writing on the Post-it Note. “We have two more months, right?”
“Less than.” He shrugged.
“Then we have time.”