21. Eve
EVE
The Christmas lights Morgan strung around the living room cast everything in a warm, golden glow that should feel festive but instead makes my chest ache.
She's been bustling around Nash's apartment for the past hour, transforming his stark, masculine space into something that actually acknowledges the season exists.
"This place was fucking depressing," she mutters, untangling another strand of lights. "Like a bachelor pad owned by someone who's allergic to joy."
I'm perched on the edge of the couch, pretending to focus on the romantic comedy playing on the television while my mind keeps circling back to this morning.
To Nash's hands on my body, the way he made me come apart with such devastating precision, and then the look on his face when he pulled away—like he'd done something unforgivable.
The memory makes heat pool low in my belly, followed immediately by a sharp stab of humiliation. He'd looked at me like I was a mistake he couldn't wait to escape from.
"You're being weird," Morgan says, draping tinsel over a small tree she somehow procured. "Weirder than usual, I mean. And that's saying something, considering you can't remember your own life."
I shift uncomfortably on the couch, pulling Nash's throw blanket tighter around my shoulders. It smells like him—clean soap and something indefinably masculine that makes my body respond in ways I don't understand. "I'm fine."
"Bullshit." She drops the tinsel and turns to face me fully, hands on her hips. "We're friends now, right? So talk to me."
Friends. The word feels foreign on my tongue, especially when applied to Morgan.
Every time I look at her, there's this undercurrent of irritation, like she's done something to piss me off that I can't quite remember.
But she's been nothing but kind since I woke up in that hospital bed, bringing me clothes and food and now Christmas decorations.
"I don't know what you want me to say."
"How about the truth?" She moves closer, her dark eyes studying my face with uncomfortable intensity. "You've been moping around here all day like someone pissed in your cheerios. And Nash took off this morning looking like he wanted to murder someone. So what happened?"
The question hits too close to home, and I find myself looking anywhere but at her face. On the television, the main characters are having some ridiculous meet-cute in a coffee shop, all sparkling dialogue and chemistry that feels as foreign to me as my own lost memories.
"Nothing happened," I lie.
"Right." Morgan's voice drips skepticism. "That's why you're sitting there looking like you want to crawl into a hole and die. Come on, Eve. I'm not stupid."
Part of me wants to tell her everything—about the way Nash touched me, the hunger in his eyes, the devastating gentleness of his hands.
About how my body seemed to know exactly what it wanted from him, like we'd done this dance before.
About the crushing disappointment when he walked away without a word.
But admitting any of that feels too raw, too vulnerable. Especially when I don't understand any of it myself.
"He's been taking care of me," I say finally, choosing my words carefully. "I just... I don't want to be a burden."
Morgan snorts. "Trust me, if Nash thought you were a burden, you wouldn't be here. That man doesn't do anything out of the goodness of his heart."
There's something in her tone that makes me look up sharply. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She shrugs, but there's a calculating look in her eyes that makes my skin prickle. "Just that Nash isn't exactly known for his charitable nature. If he's helping you, it's because he wants to."
The implication hangs in the air between us, heavy with meaning I can't quite grasp. Before I can ask her to elaborate, a commercial comes on the television—something cheerful and holiday-themed with music that sounds vaguely familiar.
The melody is simple, sweet, the kind of song that gets played at high school dances and wedding receptions. But the moment it fills the room, something sharp and electric shoots through my skull.
The gym was decorated with silver and blue streamers, cheap decorations that somehow managed to look magical under the dim lighting.
I was sitting alone at one of the round tables, watching my date—Derek something—press another girl against the wall near the punch bowl, his tongue halfway down her throat.
The memory hits me so hard that I'm sent reeling, so vivid and immediate that I gasp out loud.
Morgan's voice sounds like it's coming from underwater as she asks if I'm okay, but I can't respond.
I'm seventeen again, wearing a beautiful dress, feeling invisible and annoyed while the boy who'd asked me to the dance made out with someone else.
Then Nash was there, looking impossibly handsome in a black suit that looked so good. His sandy hair was perfectly styled, his blue eyes serious as he held out his hand. And he dragged me to dance with him.
We moved together like we'd been dancing our whole lives, his hands sure and steady on my waist, my body fitting against his like it belonged there. When he leaned down, his lips almost brushing mine?—
And I panicked. Pulled away and ran, leaving him standing there on the dance floor looking confused and hurt.
The memory fragments, leaving me gasping on Nash's couch with tears streaming down my face. The details keep filling in, the sounds and colors, the things we said. And it makes less and less sense as it does.
Because I wanted him to hurt for once. I was wary of him and he told me to stop making it so hard on him all the time. There's so many pieces to this memory that slot in and yet make no sense with the years still missing in my broken memory.
I blink slowly and realize Morgan is kneeling beside me now, her earlier irritation replaced by genuine concern. "Eve? What's wrong? Talk to me."
I can't explain what I'm seeing, can't make sense of the emotions churning through me. There's more coming, another memory pushing at the edges of my consciousness like water behind a dam.
Three days later, I was at my locker when Derek approached, sporting a spectacular black eye and a split lip. Nash was across the hall, leaning against his own locker with that same serious expression I remembered from the dance.
"I'm sorry," Derek mumbled, not quite meeting my eyes. "About the formal. It was... it was a dick move."
I stared at him, then at Nash, who was making no effort to hide the fact that he was watching our conversation. The pieces clicked together in my teenage brain—Derek's injuries, Nash's presence, the rumors that had been floating around school about Nash getting into a fight.
"Did you—" I started to ask Derek, but he was already walking away, moving like someone who'd learned a very painful lesson.
The rest of that semester, Nash seemed to be everywhere I was. In the hallway between classes, at every bonfire and party, even at the grocery store when I went shopping with my mom. Always watching, always there, like he was keeping guard over something precious.
And I hated it. Hated the way my pulse quickened when I saw him, hated how safe I felt when he was nearby, hated that I wanted something I was too scared to reach for.
Hated that I hoped that he actually cared about me after all those years. Only for him to leave like he hadn't spent months flipping my life upside down.
The memory dissolves, leaving me shaking and disoriented. My head is pounding, a sharp, throbbing pain that makes me press my palms against my temples.
"Ow," I moaned, clutching at my face.
"Jesus Christ," Morgan breathes. "What the hell was that?"
I can't answer her. Can't make sense of what I've just remembered. The boy in my memories—intense, protective, quietly dangerous—doesn't match up with the Nash who's been taking care of me. That Nash had been sweet, gentle, almost hesitant in the way he touched me.
But the Nash from my memories... he'd punched a boy for hurting me. Had stalked me through our small town like he owned me.
The contradiction makes my brain feel like it's splitting in half.
"I remembered something," I whisper, my voice hoarse. "About Nash. About when we were in high school."
Morgan goes very still. "What did you remember?"
"He..." I struggle to find the words, to make sense of the tangled emotions the memory has unleashed. "He danced with me at his last formal when my date ditched me. And then he punched the guy. After the winter formal, he was just... everywhere. And I think I hated him for it."
But even as I say the words, I know they're not quite right. Hate is too simple, too clean for what I'd felt. It had been more complicated than that—fear and want and resentment all twisted together until I couldn't tell where one emotion ended and another began.
It was the more intense versions of what I felt when I first woke and saw him. Those were mere echoes compared to the pure desperation, anger, and hurt I felt in that memory. Like I wanted Nash and hated him for that too.
It didn't make any sense.
"That doesn't sound like hate," Morgan says quietly. "That sounds like you were scared of how much you wanted him."
Her words hit me like a slap, mostly because they ring with truth I don't want to acknowledge. Even now, sitting here with my head splitting open from recovered memories, my body still hums with awareness of Nash. Still wants his hands on me, despite everything.
"Why would I be scared of wanting him?" I ask, though part of me already knows the answer.
Morgan settles back on her heels, studying my face with those dark, calculating eyes. "Because Nash isn't exactly safe to want. He's intense and I know he wasn't the easiest to be with when you were younger." She looks at me with understanding I don't feel.
But it also explains why my body knows his touch, why everything about being with him feels like coming home. We have history—complicated, messy history that I'm only just beginning to remember. It's definitely more than just the vague acquaintances that he made us sound like.
"Did he..." I swallow hard, afraid to ask the question. "Did we ever...?" I don't even know how to finish that. There's so many ways to fill in that blank.
"I don't know," Morgan says, but there's something in her expression that suggests she knows more than she's saying. "Nash doesn't talk about his past. Especially not about you."
The way she says it makes my chest tight. Like I'm some forbidden subject, too dangerous to even mention. Which only makes me want to understand more.
"Why won't he talk about me?"
Morgan is quiet for a long moment, and I can see her weighing her words carefully. When she finally speaks, her voice is gentler than I've ever heard it. "I think, deep down, you know that answer."
The Christmas lights blur through my tears, turning everything soft and golden. On the television, the romantic comedy continues its predictable arc toward happily ever after, but real life feels infinitely more complicated.
"I don't remember enough," I whisper. "I don't know what happened between us, how I ended up here, or why Nash treats me like he doesn't know me when he does."
"Maybe that's for the best," Morgan says softly. "Maybe you can start fresh. Sometimes the past is…complicated."
But I don't want to start fresh. I want to understand why my body knows his touch, why my heart races when he walks into a room, why even my recovered memories are tangled up with want and fear and something that feels dangerously close to love.
I want to remember everything, even if it destroys me.