CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

“I DON’T REMEMBER any of this.”

I spun toward him with our daughter in my arms. The warmth of her stopped the chill in my blood from flooding through my body, but only just. “What do you mean you don’t remember?”

He turned to me. “I don’t remember the life these pictures show. It means nothing to me.”

“Why would you let me think you had?” I asked, backing away from him slowly just in case this was part of a bigger plan to catch me off guard. He could have done that a minute ago while your back was turned. Without the pain of labor racing through me, my body’s first reaction to the renewed fear he inspired in me was anger, only I didn’t have the fire of the sunbird for protection any longer.

He simply shrugged.

“I stood up for you,” I shouted. “I went out on a limb for you! I believed that I had my husband back. You let me believe that!”

Ava seemed to sense my fear and her skin warmed in my hold. I panicked for a moment about what that might mean, but as worrying as the implications to it were, it wasn’t the immediate concern. I tried to calm my breathing and release the anger and anxiety that battled in me. If my fears were right, I needed to calm down for Ava’s sake.

The blue ring of Clay’s eyes appeared even more vivid than usual as he assessed me cautiously. “I didn’t want to frighten you.”

“Are you freaking kidding me? You didn’t mind that at all a few seconds before your miraculous turnaround. You know, when you were trying to kill me.”

I should raise the alarm.

He’d been confined to quarters and that, combined with Aiden’s obvious distrust, made me certain a shout of help from me would have the room flooded with guards relatively quickly. I just wasn’t certain whether or not I needed to be afraid.

He’s had multiple chances to hurt you since he turned around, and he hasn’t.

I needed to hear him out. “Why didn’t you want to scare me? What made you stop?”

“You didn’t kill me,” he said simply. “Then your pain was so apparent that it made me think maybe you weren’t lying. I witnessed the raw emotions of your tears and your anger. They were both so real that I realized you had to be telling the truth. Based on what I’d seen, I couldn’t justify your death any longer. I thought you were evil. A seductress willing to tempt me back to your side with the power of your spell, but I could see I was wrong. Everything I saw with my own eyes contradicted what I’d been told about you. At that time, you needed help, and I was willing to offer it. I never claimed to have remembered anything about you.”

“Told about me?” I asked, seizing on the moment to find out more about what had happened to him. My mouth was dry, and I worried I sounded too eager when I added, “By who?”

“By Dad.” He shrugged as he moved around the space again, taking in the details of our life together. He paused in front of the frame with three photos—two, one from my youth and one of Mom and Dad, which had been in the room after I’d woken from my near-death experience after the attack on Bayview, and a third, a more recently added wedding photo.

“Dad?” I asked as his words confirmed what I’d feared since he’d left. If his father was involved, would he continue to be a threat? Was he aware of where Clay was right now?

I shifted closer to the crib and placed Ava next to her brother because between my racing heart and trembling body I was beginning to worry about my ability to hold her securely. I also didn’t want her to sense my fear because that seemed to warm her skin further, which only served to add another layer to my stress. Once I’d laid her gently alongside our son, I shifted so that I formed a barrier between my babies and their father, just in case he moved to hurt them.

“He found me in Alaska,” Clay said, turning back away from the photos to finally look at me before his eyes flicked away again almost as quickly. “I had absolutely no memory of anything and the ability to see things I shouldn’t have been able to. Dad cornered me near the edge of a rock face. Just as I went to attack, he told me who he was. He showed me a mirror so that I could see the similarities between us.”

The casualness of his glance as he moved around the highly personal area again made me feel almost violated. The horrific realization that I’d fed my children for the first time in front of him followed—it was something that I’d thought was private, and I’d done it in front of a practical stranger. Even though it was too late to protect my modesty, I tugged the ends of my shirt against each other to ensure it was completely closed.

“I should have known he was involved in this somehow,” I growled. “Why would he do this to you? To us?”

“Why do you assume that he did anything?” Clay said, his voice defensive and sharp.

I rolled my eyes but then reminded myself that Clay didn’t know the history of his family and me. “For starters because it’s too much of a coincidence that out of anyone in the world who could have possibly found you in the Alaskan wilderness, it was your dad. Why was he even there?”

“He was there with me before I lost my memory.”

Clay’s words confirmed that his memory loss was part of a grand plan on his father’s part.

“No, you went there with Ethan. No one’s heard from your Dad in months—not since he almost killed me.” The memory of waking to Clay’s confession that he’d pulled me from the fire that was set to consume my body made tears prick at my eyes. The love he’d shown then was a far cry from the detached man in front of me now.

“Ethan,” he murmured. “My brother.”

Even as he said the name, there was no emotion in his tone, and I wondered whether he even realized that he’d attacked his own brother at our house.

I doubted whether he even cared, but then he glanced up at me. “He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?”

I nodded as I took in the concern in his eyes. “Apparently he will.”

“Good.”

“Ethan said it was almost as if you’d both been led to that place,” I said, recalling the conversation I’d had before Clay had reappeared. “I think maybe your Dad knew about the waters of Lethe and deliberately wiped your memory,”

“That’s a pretty big accusation,” he growled. “Especially coming from—”

“A freak?” I challenged, selecting the one word that my Clay would have vehemently fought against, if only because he knew the pain it held for me.

Clay just shrugged. “Exactly.”

I pushed aside the pain of Clay’s uncaring attitude and tried to think through the possibilities of Troy’s plan. “I wonder if he was behind the púca as well. Ethan said it was acting strange.”

I wondered again whether the púca that had gone to the fae and potentially saved Ethan’s life was the same one they’d been tracking in Alaska. It was another unanswered mystery, but hopefully one I would get answers about soon enough. After all, Aiden wanted me to talk to the púca.

Except going there means leaving our babies alone with Clay.

Despite what I’d said to Aiden when I’d thought Clay was back, the idea of leaving this new Clay alone with our children made my heart race and my palms sweaty. He’d attacked his brother, tried to kill me, and allowed me to believe he had his memory back. What else was he capable of? Would he hurt them?

“Why would he do something like that?” Clay asked, repeating my own questioning thoughts back at me but with a slightly unkind tone to his voice. “He’s not a monster.”

I closed my eyes at the word, wondering whether Clay had thought of me as a monster again when he’d hunted me in our home. “No, but he thinks I’m one.”

Troy most likely didn’t know that the sunbird was resting—and had in fact now passed on to the next generation. He would have thought I was still something other, something only worthy of study or destruction. And I knew he had no longer had any desire to study my capabilities—not considering he blamed me for his split from his family.

“But if I cared about you as much as these photos seem to illustrate, if that wasn’t just some trick, wouldn’t he want me to be happy?”

“I wish it was that simple.” The twisted logic of Troy began to make some strange sense in my mind. “He probably thought it was a way to get at least one of his children on his side,” I guessed as my anger subsided into sorrow and self-preservation. “He probably even thought that if you were working with him, you’d turn Louise and Ethan to his viewpoint.”

“Why?”

“Because in his mind, you turned them to my side.”

As my words washed over Clay, he frowned and his mouth twisted.

I shook my hand, trying to get him to disregard the statement because it was easier than trying to explain it all. “Regardless of everything that happened between all of you, I do think he loves you three . . . in his own messed up way that is.”

Clay stared at me as if trying to figure out the meaning behind my words, but without the knowledge of our past, it would have been impossible for him to understand. How could anyone understand seven years of both pain and euphoria without having experienced it first hand?

“So if you were mistaken about your belief that I wanted to hurt you and you are no longer obsessed with hunting me, what are you going to do now?” I asked. I wasn’t sure that I knew what I wanted him to do. I didn’t want him to stay with me against his will, but neither was I entirely willing to let him go. Despite all of his admissions, he was still Clay. Plus, he’d helped deliver our children.

And he’d paused long enough to save my life. Again.

I didn’t want to say goodbye to him forever so soon after getting him back. At least, not until I’d tried absolutely everything possible to bring my real husband back to me. It was a confusing situation where the man I loved was no longer the man I loved.

I don’t want this. I just want my Clay back.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, sounding so lost that all I wanted to do was comfort him. Considering how instinctive that was to me, I actually had to force my arms to stay by my side and my feet to stay stationary.

Watching his confusion, I gained a greater appreciation of the fact that when he’d been forced under the waters of the river he’d lost everything I had and more. At least I had a family and support group that had helped me deal with my loss. I had the memories of all of the happy times we’d had together to use as a light to guide my way through the darkness. He’d had his father filling his mind with lies and propaganda against me and the fae.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to Dad just yet, at least not until I know the truth about a few things. I think I need a little time to work out what’s real and what’s not.” Sighing, he turned his back on me and stared at the picture of the two of us again. “We look really happy,” he murmured.

“We were.” Tears pricked at my eyes and stole my voice. Even though there didn’t appear to be any malice in his deception, it hurt more than I could admit to myself. I was a fool for being so willing to believe his turnaround. There was more to it than that though.

The tiny fissures that covered my heart had repaired when I thought my husband had returned. After his admission, each one of them had ruptured into gaping chasms. Regardless of whether his intention had been good or not, the result was that I’d just lost Clay for the second time in as many months.

“I wish I remembered what it felt like to be that happy,” he said wistfully. “It would be nice to feel something other than hate and confusion.”

My heart broke for him. How could I even start to fix him, though, when I didn’t know how to fix myself. My tears fell in earnest. “You really don’t remember anything?”

He spun toward the sound of my tear-strained voice. His eyes narrowed and his face reddened as he watched my tears fall. Despite the obvious anger contorting his features, I didn’t feel in danger. It was clear his rage wasn’t directed at me, my tears just brought it to the surface.

“I really don’t. And I really hate that because I can see so much love in these photos and I just helped deliver a child who looks exactly like me. It’s clear that we were happy at some point, and somehow I did something to ruin that. You said so yourself. Now I’m left to deal with the fallout of the mistakes of another man, and I hate it.” His hands clenched into fists by his side.

I sobbed at his words.

“I hate that you’ve made me doubt what my father told me, that from the very first time I heard your voice, I questioned everything he tried to make me think was true. I’ve been trying to convince myself that he had to be right.”

He took a step farther away from me.

“I hate that I allowed him to manipulate me into trying to hurt you and that I didn’t know better before I did potentially irreversible damage. I hate that I believed the vicious things that he said about you and about the fae—especially now that I see that this place is like one giant family where everyone genuinely seems to look out for one another.”

His continued confession made me wrap my arms around myself and step backward until my back hit the crib. I reminded myself of the two tiny people relying on me to hold myself together. Even that wasn’t enough to stop me from wanting to slide to the floor to let the pain take me. I gripped the side of the crib to keep myself upright.

His words were a stark reminder that I’d been so selfish. I’d only considered how I was hurting with loss and confusion over his lies. Since learning that he’d lied to me about his returned memories, I hadn’t given a thought as to what Clay must have been going through. I’d barely considered what the confessions he’d made to me might’ve cost him to make.

I gazed at our children, unable to focus on Clay. He might be suffering, but he could easily have cost them their lives. He didn’t specifically deserve to be hurting, but I couldn’t carry the pain by myself.

“Above everything else I hate looking at you.” His words drew my attention, and I raised my tear-soaked eyes. He was closer than I’d expected, just inches in front of me. He was close enough that I could reach out and touch him. I’d backed myself up so far that I had nowhere else to go.

“Since I told you the truth, there’s this look you keep giving me.”

“W-what do you mean?”

“Every time I so much as glance in your direction, I see you staring at me with the same look in your eyes. It’s like I’m disappointing you for something that I didn’t even do, something I can’t control.”

Violent sobs ripped their way loose from my chest. His arms surrounded me an instant later.

It felt so right, so natural, for his body to be wrapped around me and for the scent of his familiar musk to surround my senses. I couldn’t enjoy it though. Despite how wonderful it was, it sent a sharp pain into my heart that all of the things that were so natural to me would have felt unfamiliar to him. Reluctantly, I pulled out of his embrace and stepped sideways.

“I’m sorry I can’t be who you think I am,” he murmured.

Our son started to cry, and I turned away from Clay to attend to him.

“I think you should go,” I said as I pulled our son from the crib, knowing I couldn’t deal with the fallout of Clay’s confessions right now. I needed time to think, to try to understand what I wanted—what our children needed—before I could even consider Clay’s issues.

When he didn’t move to leave the room, I swung around to look at him with pleading eyes. “Please?”

I needed a moment to be alone. There was too much in my mind to process it all with him watching me, staring at me through my lover’s eyes when he wasn’t that person anymore. He didn’t move, and I closed my eyes.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m under house arrest, remember?”

I flinched as he said the last word. That one stupid word was the cause of all of our problems. If only he could remember.

“Can you do me a favor and go to the ensuite then, please? I need to feed this little one again.” I knew I would have to give our son a name soon, but even that thought made me anxious. How could I name him when Clay—my Clay—wasn’t around to help me pick something suitable?

Holding our son tightly in my arms, I crossed the room to the bed as Clay nodded to confirm he’d do what I asked.

“I’m just going to have a shower,” he said as he walked to the bathroom.

One thing was becoming very clear to me: I had to force myself to accept the fact that Clay was truly gone. I was a widow even though my husband was still alive and currently living in the same room as me.

I glanced up at Ava to make sure she was still sleeping soundly as I shifted my son into position to feed. While he fed, I brushed my fingers across his forehead. “What are we going to do about your daddy?” I murmured under my breath. “And what are we going to do about your name?”

I relished the relative quiet of the room; it gave me a moment to think about everything that had happened since Clay broke into the house earlier that day.

If the fae thought he hadn’t changed from the man who’d attacked the guards stationed in front of the house, they would punish him for the atrocities he’d committed in his attempt to get at me. I recalled Fiona’s description of the Void and the thought of Clay having to spend time mentally locked away there made my heart ache. Even though he wasn’t my Clay, I had enough sympathy for the man he was—at least the one I knew he could be—to not want him to spend years serving punishment for one rash decision inspired by his father’s lies.

He didn’t kill anyone. They’re all recovering. They’ll be okay.

I truly believed something had shifted within him after his revelation and he would no longer pose a threat to myself or the fae, but I wasn’t sure I could convince the fae of that if they knew that my Clay wasn’t back. Aiden especially would be difficult to persuade. Unless, of course, Clay’s memories genuinely had returned . . . or at least if we were able to convince everyone else they had.

After I finished feeding our son, I covered myself up and called Clay back into the room to explain my epiphany to him. Then I told him what I thought we would have to do. He sat on the end of the bed while I cradled our son back to sleep.

“You want me to keep pretending?” he asked.

“Just while we’re here. If they think your memory has returned, I don’t think they will hold you responsible for what happened while it was lost.”

“But it hasn’t returned, and I am responsible. I could have killed my brother.” Emotions that had been absent before began to seep into his tone, confirming I was making the right choice standing by him. “I could have killed Ethan.”

“Knowing what you now know, would you do it again if you had the chance to do it over?”

He stared at my face for a moment before shaking his head.

“Then you don’t need to face extra punishment for your father’s issues.”

“You believe me, just like that?”

I sighed. “What other choice do I have?”

“And you’d lie to these people, ones that you consider family, for me?”

I chuckled darkly at how ridiculous his statement was. If he had even one memory of me, he’d know I would do anything for him. “I already have, haven’t I?” I asked. “Even if I didn’t know it at the time. If it bothers you so much, we can just call it wishful thinking.”

He flinched at the second part of my sentence. “And then what?”

I shrugged. “Then after we go back home, we say that the burden of twins was too much for us to handle and you needed to leave.” Even saying the word hurt, but it would hurt more for him to be in the Void if I could keep him away from that punishment.

“Won’t they all hate me for leaving you alone with two babies?”

“Maybe, but what’s the alternative?” I asked. “I couldn’t bear to see you forced to endure the Void because of lies you were told that led to a stupid mistake on your part.”

“I’m not sure it will work anyway,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

He reached for our baby boy, and I reflexively pulled him back to my chest. In response, Clay sighed and pushed himself off the bed.

“Because they won’t believe you if you can’t trust me.” He turned back toward me, scrubbing the back of his neck.

Knowing that he was right, I glanced down at our little boy. “Do you promise that you won’t hurt him?” I asked, still reluctant to release him from my arms into the hold of a possible killer.

You can’t think like that, I chastised myself. It’s Clay. Even if he’s not himself at the moment, he’s still the one who was willing to walk away from the Rain, from everything he knew, for you.

“I had the chance to do that while we were alone at your house.”

His choice of words stung—once upon a time, it would have been our house—but he was right. If we were going to fool his family, I needed to prove to them that I believed in him. Despite my reluctance, I slowly lifted our baby in my arms and passed him to Clay. The sight of Clay holding our child gently, cradling his head in the nook of his elbow, made my throat constrict tightly as tears threatened to overtake me again.

“What’s his name?” Clay asked, glancing quickly between our baby boy and me.

“We hadn’t picked one,” I said. “We both assumed I would have a girl. Only a girl.”

“What names do you like?”

“I really haven’t given it much thought, but I guess David, after my father. Or maybe Luke.”

“Luke?” Clay asked.

I shook my head because I didn’t want to go into all of the details of the poor boy who’d unwittingly given his life for me. “Just some kid I knew once.”

“Well, what about David Luke . . .” he trailed off. “I’m sorry I don’t know your last name.”

Another bout of tears threatened, but, with some difficulty, I held them at bay. Just. “Jacobs. We’re married.”

His eyes fell onto my left hand, and he nodded as he saw the simple gold band there. I noticed his own finger was bare.

“I took it off,” he said when he caught the direction of my gaze. “I’m sorry, it . . . It just didn’t mean anything to me.”

I nodded as I swallowed down the lump in my throat. Each time I started to forget that things weren’t what they’d been, something offered up a painful reminder. Each one hit harder than the bullet I took months earlier. That had only been a physical pain, this echoed through my whole soul.

“I left it at Dad’s house,” he murmured.

“Maybe you could send it back to me when all of this is over,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. “It may not mean anything to you, but it means a lot to me.”

“Of course.” A sorrowful expression crossed his features as he nodded. “You really loved me, didn’t you?”

“I would have died to save your life.” I didn’t add that I almost had—multiple times. “And you felt the same about me.”

“I’m sorry for attacking you,” he whispered. “It must be impossible to understand. I was told you were responsible for my memories and my . . . vision.”

I chuckled darkly. “Depending on how you look at it, I guess I am.”

“What do you mean?” He walked over to the crib and placed a now-sleeping David—the name was definitely growing on me—beside his sister.

“How can I explain everything about us in a few minutes?” I asked the room before giving him a very brief rundown of the history of his family, our meeting, our reunions and partings, and finished up with our wedding.

“Huh,” he said when I finished before scrubbing his neck once more. Some things never change. “We’ve really been through a lot, haven’t we?”

I gave him my best “you think” look and bit my lip to stop myself from crying as I considered just how much we really had been through. For it to end this way, well, it was fair to say I felt cheated.

“Why didn’t we just give up?” he asked. There wasn’t any malice in his tone, but he seemed genuinely confused why we’d go through so much just to be together.

“Because it wasn’t an option for me,” I said. “You were worth fighting for.”

“Am I still?” he asked. There was an unknown intensity in his eyes that called out to me.

“Is that something you want?” I asked, my heart in my throat as I considered that maybe he wasn’t entirely lost to me. Maybe his heart remembered what his mind had forgotten.

He sighed and turned away from me. “If you want your plan to succeed, you’re going to have to convince everyone that you think I still am. You can’t stop and pause like that.”

Any hope that he was asking because he felt even a semblance of his past emotions faded away instantly, and I had to choke back my tears as I explained my pause to him. “It’s hard. You look like the man I love, you sound like him, and in every physical way, you are him. Everything about you should make it easy for me to be around you, but it’s just so hard because you’re not him. Not anymore.”

“I understand what you’re saying, I really do, but you’re the one who came up with this plan.”

“I was, and I still think it’s the best option. You’re right. I do need to work on it, and you need to do the same. You need to act like you still love me.” Cold hands squeezed at my chest in an icy death grip as I said the words. I would have to let him caress me like he always had, all while knowing that he felt nothing for me. I was setting myself up for massive heartbreak, but I couldn’t just abandon him to the punishment he’d face. “Can you do that?”

“I can try.” He smiled sadly. “I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to look at you like that though.” He indicated toward the photo of us from the night before the Bayview attack. “It’s strange, I can clearly see the devotion there, but I just . . . I don’t feel that way.”

Hearing him confirm the words I already knew hurt more than it probably should have.

“I understand,” I whispered, not trusting my voice with any more volume.

His eyes tracked a path across my face, and he mirrored my sorrowful expression. “I wish I could, if only to take away the pain this causes you. I just, well, I don’t know you. I’m willing to try to emulate that though, to convince everyone, if you still think that’s the best idea?”

I didn’t miss the irony that the one person who had gone to the ends of the Earth to research my heritage, who had found answers about my true nature that no one else—not even my parents—could provide, now had no recollection of me.

I nodded. “It’s the best plan I can think of. But we’re going to have to learn to be close again if we’re going to convince everyone you’ve got your memory back,” I said quietly.

“I agree, Lynnie.” He smiled suitably proud of himself for remembering my nickname, but that name off those lips was just wrong.

A fresh sob broke free from me. “It’s Evie,” I whispered.

“What?”

“My name . . . you always called me Evie. Aiden is the only one who calls me Lynnie.”

“Why’s that?”

“He met me during a time in my life when I didn’t want to be me.”

“But I knew the real you?”

I smiled at the memories his words brought to my mind, until it served as a reminder that those same memories were lost to him forever.

“Yeah, you did,” I said. “Better than anyone else ever could.”

“Tell me something about you that only I would know.”

“I still wake most nights to dreams of smoke and fire. You’re the only one who can help me back to sleep when the nightmares come.”

He frowned and the silence between us grew awkward. I couldn’t continue, and he huffed out a breath and turned away. Both of us seemed unwilling to play the game any longer. I thought briefly about going to get something to eat, but I couldn’t. Even though I was trying my hardest to trust him, I wasn’t willing to leave him alone with Ava and David just yet. I still wasn’t sure how I was going to leave them in his care to see Aiden and talk to the púca.

The minutes ticked into hours with very little additional conversation between us. Neither of us knew what to say to the other. It would have been awkward enough to share this intimate space with a stranger, but sharing it with one who used to be my husband was almost impossible.

After almost two hours, the babies woke from their nap at about the same time, and both cried out loudly to be fed. Almost instantly, I rushed across the room to pick them up. It was only when I saw another pair of hands reach into the crib that I realized Clay had acted just as instinctively as me.

“You feed Ava,” he said. “I’ll take this one and keep him happy while you do. He fed most recently.”

My heart ached for Clay. The man I loved was missing out on these precious moments with our children, and instead I had to contend with a stranger who seemed like such a natural father but hadn’t been offered a choice in becoming one. He’d had a family forced onto him without his consent, at least until we had a chance to clear his name. Then he could choose to be free of them, and of me.