Chapter 14
Ishould go after her.
The thought had been pounding through my skull ever since the door slammed shut behind her. It wouldn’t stop. It kept coming, louder each time, pushing against the panic clawing through my chest.
Go after her. Move. Get to her.
But my feet wouldn’t obey.
I stood rooted in the middle of the living room, staring at the door she had walked through. Tears ran unchecked down my face, burning against my skin. I couldn’t even lift a hand to wipe them away. My arms hung uselessly beside me, fingers numb, while every part of me screamed at me to move.
I should go after her.
I had been a few minutes late that night.
A few fucking minutes.
Those minutes had been enough to change everything.
I had stood frozen at the door, wasting time I could never get back. If I had moved sooner, I might have reached her. I might have climbed into that car beside her. I might have stopped her from driving away. I might have kept the accident from ever happening.
Instead, I’d been late.
And now she was leaving again.
My feet still wouldn’t move. I forced air into my lungs, but it came in short, uneven pulls that did nothing to ease the pressure crushing my chest.
Move.
I had to make sure she was safe.
I had to see her get into a car. I had to watch until she was somewhere I knew she would be all right. I needed to know she had made it away from this house without anything happening to her. I needed something—anything—to prove tonight wouldn’t end the way that night had.
But I couldn’t move.
My finger tingled, still warm from where I’d held her wrist.
I stared down at it, unable to make myself move.
Her skin had only touched mine for seconds, yet the sensation remained, stubborn and vivid, as if my body had decided to preserve it long after she was gone.
I pressed the finger against my opposite palm, harder and harder, needing something physical to drag me back into the room.
The pressure finally cut through the numbness.
I should go after her. I should stop her before she gets too far. I should tell her that she has it wrong.
Instead, when my legs finally obeyed me, they carried me to the couch.
I dropped onto it, the cushions sinking beneath my weight, and sat there staring at the empty space in front of me.
My chest felt too tight, every breath catching somewhere between my ribs.
I could still see her standing there. Could still hear the edge in her voice.
Could still feel the finality in the way she had walked away.
Her words echoed in the silence, sharp and undeniable.
Calling me out.
Telling me I only ever thought about myself.
I wanted to refute her. Tell her she was wrong. I wanted to argue that she was the most important person in my life. The only important one.
But the words turned to ash before they could leave my mouth.
Because she was right.
I had spent so long telling myself that I was protecting her from the mess inside my head, but even that had been about me. My shame. My fear. My inability to admit that I was failing.
When I begged her to stay, I wasn’t thinking about what she needed. I was thinking about how unbearable it would be to lose her. Even my apologies had been selfish. I wanted forgiveness because I couldn’t stand the person I had become without it.
I had only been thinking about myself.
The evidence kept piling up until there was nowhere left to hide from it.
I hadn’t told her the company was crumbling because I couldn’t bear to let her see how badly I was failing.
I hadn’t given her my time because I was consumed by problems I had decided were more important.
I hadn’t acknowledged how lonely she had been, even while she was right in front of me.
I had forgotten her needs, dismissed her hurt, and then expected her to understand why.
And all that time, I had been feeding myself the same pretty little lie.
I’m protecting her.
This is for her.
She doesn’t need this stress.
What about the stress she carried when her husband stopped coming home?
What about the nights she lay awake with no idea where she stood with the man who was supposed to be beside her?
What did it do to her when the person she had built her life around couldn’t even spare her enough time to look at her and ask how she was doing?
I pressed a hand over my face, dragging it down slowly as the shame burned through me.
Why hadn’t I thought about that?
One person drowning is better than two.
What a fucking cop-out.
Who died and made me king of what she could and couldn’t handle?
The truth was uglier than that. Simpler.
It had been easier to suffer alone than risk letting her see how afraid I was.
Easier to bury myself in work until exhaustion left no room for anything else.
Easier to convince myself that shutting her out was some noble sacrifice than admit the truth: I was terrified of failing in front of the one person whose opinion mattered most.
I had dressed it up in better words. Protection. Responsibility. Love. None of them changed what I had done. I had been so terrified of being seen as weak that I had chosen cowardice every single time.
And then she came back.
After almost dying. After I had spent days knowing there was a chance I would never hear her voice again, never see her walk through a room, never have the chance to tell her what she meant to me.
She came back, and I still found a way to make everything about what I needed.
I begged her to stay when she wanted to leave.
I threatened to fight her when she talked about divorce.
I dragged her from one old place to another, chasing memories through streets and rooms and corners of our past, trying to summon the woman I remembered back into the body of the woman standing in front of me.
I told myself that was the goal.
If she remembered us, everything would fall back into place.
I had convinced myself that my job was to bring my Alessia back.
But what about her?
What about the Alessia who was here now?
The woman standing in front of me with her own thoughts, her own pain, her own perfectly valid reasons for wanting to walk away from me?
Why had I decided that the person she used to be mattered more than the person she was now?
Why had I treated her present feelings as some temporary inconvenience standing between me and the past I wanted back?
I had spent so much time fighting for the wife I remembered that I had stopped seeing the woman in front of me. I kept reaching backward, desperate to drag our old life back into existence, while she was standing right there, trying to survive the life she’d been thrown into.
I wasn’t fighting for her.
I was fighting for the version of her I wanted back.
And in doing so, I had been trampling all over the person she had become.
“You are a profoundly selfish man, Cassian Sterling.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, but there was nowhere to hide from it.
She was right.
I am selfish.
I’d told myself I was thinking about us.
That getting her memories back was the key to everything.
Once she remembered, she could be furious with me.
She could hate me for every mistake I’d made.
She could finally understand what had happened, and then I could apologize to the woman I’d actually hurt.
I had built an entire justification around that idea until I almost believed it myself.
But underneath all of it was the same ugly truth.
I wanted her back.
I wanted the woman who had loved me, trusted me, built a life with me. I wanted the memories that made me her husband again. I wanted to hear my name in her voice with recognition instead of confusion. I wanted the past restored because I could not bear what the present demanded of me.
If I had truly been thinking about her, I would have stopped trying to force the past into her hands. I would have asked what it felt like to wake up inside a life she didn’t recognize. I would have asked what frightened her, what confused her, what she needed from me now.
Instead, I’d expected her to accept a marriage she had no memory of and pick up where we’d left off.
I had not been giving her a way forward.
I had been trying to pull her backward because I was too afraid to follow her into the present.
I should go after her.
No.
Maybe… maybe I shouldn’t.
Maybe the most selfless thing I could finally do for her was stay the hell away. Sit in the silence. Let her go. Let myself feel every second of it instead of finding another excuse to run after her and call it love.
I kept telling myself I needed to go after her because I was scared the accident would repeat itself. But deep down, I knew she would be safe. The part of me that wanted to chase her was just terrified of accepting the real, final truth.
I wasn’t afraid something would happen to her.
I was afraid of what would happen to me if I stopped following her.
If I stood there and let her leave, I would have to face the possibility that there was nothing left for me to fix.
Nothing I could say. Nothing I could do.
No memory I could bring back that would make her love me again.
For months, I hadn’t given my wife enough of my time. I had buried myself in work and convinced myself there would always be another day to make things right. I’d been so consumed by everything I was trying to hold together that I hadn’t noticed how much of Alessia I was losing in the process.
Then the accident happened, and I made the same mistake in a different way.
I had been so obsessed with getting my Alessia back—the Alessia who remembered our marriage, our history, our love—that I never stopped to consider the woman standing in front of me now.