Chapter 26 #3
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
My face rested between his shoulder blades.
“How are you?”
He turned his head slightly.
“I’m fine.”
“No doctor answers.”
His body softened.
“Tired. Happy.”
“Anything else?”
He thought.
“Still unsettled from yesterday.”
“Me too.”
“Do you regret going?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
I pressed my mouth against the back of his shirt.
“Turn around.”
He did.
I opened my arms.
Reid stepped into them without hesitation.
That mattered.
His head lowered to my shoulder.
My arms closed around his back.
The first time I asked him for a hug after the accident, he had held me as if every broken place could be kept from falling apart through pressure alone.
Now I tried to do the same.
Not because he was breaking.
Because he was allowed to lean.
“Better?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You always say that.”
“It is usually true.”
I rubbed one hand slowly over his back.
“We should talk about good days.”
He lifted his head.
“What?”
“Yesterday was terrible.”
“Yes.”
“Today wasn’t.”
“No.”
“I keep writing pain levels, medication, memories, triggers.”
“The journal is for recovery.”
“This is recovery.”
He waited.
“Today, I met people who wanted me at their table.”
His expression softened.
“I told Elias what I remembered and the memory didn’t own me.”
“That matters.”
“I promised Theo there would be a next time.”
“That matters too.”
“I knew when I was tired and came home before I collapsed.”
“Very impressive.”
“Do not ruin this.”
His mouth curved.
I continued.
“And I saw you let me take care of you.”
The humor left his face.
“Last night?”
“Yes.”
He looked down.
“I needed it.”
“I know.”
“I did not enjoy needing it.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“Unfortunately.”
I touched his jaw.
“I want us to count these things.”
“What things?”
“The moments we do something differently. Better.”
“Not compared to before.”
“No.”
I searched for the shape of the thought.
“I have spent so much energy trying to recover the man in the photographs.”
Reid went still.
“I thought every missing memory was part of me locked away. That if enough doors opened, eventually I would be whole.”
“You are whole now.”
“I’m beginning to believe you.”
His eyes shone.
“There may always be missing rooms.”
I put my hand over his heart.
“But I’m still living in the house.”
Reid covered my hand with his.
“That metaphor is dangerously close to literary.”
“I hit my head.”
“Fair.”
I smiled.
“The future used to feel like something I wasn’t allowed to touch until I remembered the past.”
“What does it feel like now?”
“Closer.”
He breathed slowly.
“What do you see?”
I looked around the apartment.
The green lamp.
Marlowe asleep in the patch of sun near the window.
Reid’s coffee mug beside the sink.
The harbor beyond the glass.
“I see work.”
“Of course.”
“A shorter day.”
“Better.”
“I see Theo’s boat in the loft.”
“Yes.”
“I see Miriam sending us home with enough food for a siege.”
“Already happening.”
I moved closer.
“I see you.”
His throat worked.
“In the future?”
“Yes.”
“How far?”
The question carried more fear than he intended.
I answered carefully because this mattered.
“Tomorrow morning.”
His brow tightened.
I touched it.
“Next week at the yard. Pear season at Elias’s. Winter storms. Marlowe getting older and pretending he isn’t.”
Reid’s eye shone brighter.
“Canada?”
“Eventually.”
“Another dog?”
“Only if Marlowe approves.”
“He will not.”
“Then we’ll lie.”
A laugh escaped Reid.
I continued before courage failed.
“The ring in the office safe.”
His breath stopped.
I had not asked to see it.
Had not wanted the weight of a proposal made to a man I no longer remembered being.
Now the thought no longer felt like a trap.
It felt like a road we did not have to take today.
“One day,” I said.
Reid’s hand tightened over mine.
“No promise?”
“No timetable.”
“All right.”
“But I can see asking you to show it to me.”
His eyes closed.
The emotion on his face made my chest ache.
“Not now,” I whispered.
“I know.”
“Soon.”
He drew me against him.
We stood in the kitchen holding each other while the harbor light changed beyond the windows.
After a while, Reid said, “You are rebuilding me too.”
I leaned back.
“What?”
“The day of the accident, I thought I lost you.”
His voice stayed quiet.
“Then you woke and looked through me. I told myself your survival was enough.”
“It was.”
“Yes.”
He touched my cheek.
“But grief doesn’t vanish because gratitude is larger.”
I held his wrist.
“Every time you remembered something, I got back a piece I thought was gone.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“Why?”
“Because what if I never get all of them?”
“I don’t need all of them.”
He kissed my forehead.
“I thought I did at first.”
Honesty roughened the confession.
“I thought if I was patient enough, good enough, careful enough, you would wake one morning and everything would return.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
He pressed his thumb over my mouth.
“I stopped waiting for that.”
“When?”
“The day you asked me on a first date.”
I smiled.
“That was a good date.”
“It was.”
“You entered the chorus early.”
“Tradition.”
Reid’s gaze moved over my face.
“You began choosing me without memory.”
His hand slid to the back of my neck.
“That put me back together differently.”
“Better?”
“Stronger in some places.”
“And weaker?”
“More honest.”
I understood.
I rested my forehead against his.
“Then we stop counting what came back.”
“What do we count?”
“What we choose.”
Reid smiled.
The expression was beautiful, but that was not what took my breath away.
What mattered was that I knew it now.
Not from photographs.
Not because someone told me.
I knew the way his mouth softened before he allowed hope. The way one line appeared beside his left eye first. The way his shoulders lowered only after he trusted happiness enough to let it touch him.
Memory had given me pieces.
Love had taught me the rest.
I kissed him.
Slowly.
The kitchen smelled of bread, pears, and rain coming in from the harbor.
His arms folded around me.
I held him in return.
No rescuer.
No patient.
No past version or present replacement.
Two men standing inside the life that remained.
When the kiss ended, Reid kept his forehead against mine.
“What happens tomorrow?” he asked.
“Coffee.”
“You complain about morning.”
“Work for two hours.”
“Rest.”
“I’ll argue.”
“I’ll win.”
“Unlikely.”
“Then?”
I thought of the future again.
Not as a vast road I had to map.
One ordinary day opening into the next.
“Then we come home.”
Reid’s hand settled over my heart.
“Together?”
I covered it with mine.
“Always.”