Chapter 23 Stone
Stone
I am lost. Completely, utterly lost for this woman. It makes no sense. It’s not normal to fall for someone you’ve only known a week.
But something happened to me when I lost my memory. Something broke.
Or maybe something cracked open—and what poured out was the part of me I never let anyone see.
And I want Coco. She fills me in a way that’s impossible to explain. How she moves. How she laughs. How she’s always got her hair up—everything about her has worked a spell on me, and I’ve been blown apart.
It feels like I’ve always known her. Like she’s always been part of me. It’s unexplainable.
I’m falling for her, and I’m terrified the man I used to be would never have deserved her.
What’s worse, I’m afraid the man I was before—the one drowning in his own pain—would’ve shoved her aside. A person can’t carry around what I was without hurting those nearest to him, and I don’t even know specifics, just what I felt when we visited her parents.
I never, ever want to hurt Coco.
I love her with everything that’s inside me.
It’s been over a week since the party at her parents’ house. We haven’t kissed since then, and I’m dying to. I want to slide my hands up her cheeks and drink her in—taste her, feel her, make her moan.
But I’m trying to play it cool. It’s going about as well as a fire in a paper factory. I send her maybe twenty texts a day, asking how she’s doing at work, showing her pictures of what the resort’s got going on. It’s moving quickly, as if the earth itself is helping us.
Hell, it probably is.
Today I’ve left the construction site early. Coco had some errands to run, and I want to surprise her with a nice dinner.
I get to the cottage (yes, I’m still staying here—no, I don’t want to leave) by midafternoon, trusting the site to the guys.
Hercules runs in and goes straight for his bowl. I finally grabbed the poor guy some feed to supplement his diet. I drop the groceries on the table and spot a small velvet box.
That wasn’t here this morning. It sits there quietly, like the twin girls from The Shining, waiting to either take me to hell or to heaven.
Calm down, Stone. It’s just a box.
Coco mentioned running back to the house before leaving again, but she didn’t mention jewelry.
What’s inside, I wonder?
Curiosity gets the better of me and I open the lid to find a ring—an emerald surrounded by diamonds. It’s an antique, and beautiful.
My gaze lands on it for all of five seconds before a memory stabs me.
It’s blurry, like I’m looking through a filter. There’s the ring. There’s Coco. And there I am, offering it to her.
Holy shit.
A cold shock vibrates through me, and I drop the box.
It clatters to the table. I rock back on my heels.
I plow a hand through my hair, and I realize Coco’s been trying to tell me, wanting to tell me, but she keeps being interrupted—by me.
No. It can’t be.
But maybe this explains why I feel so close to her.
Maybe it explains everything. Maybe we already promised each other forever, and I just forgot.