I can’t even begin to explain the high that I was on. Vander filled a void I never knew I had, and I was proud of my sister for the young man he was. Polite and happy, just like I expected. And Paxton, oh my God, Vander loved Paxton. They ate their nasty lobster and I enjoyed my cream pasta with asparagus and a garden salad, feeling happier than I think I ever had in my life. We walked around a park after lunch hand in hand while Vander ran up ahead, happy and as energetic as a little boy should be.

We sat by a pond and called Mi to tell her the good news and that we couldn’t get a flight back out until the next afternoon. Mi didn’t mind at all, Nick was there and they were going to build a moat on the beach, then build a fire and roast marshmallows. Paxton tried to protest the dangerous fire, only because he needed to be there to supervise. I elbowed him to get him to stop talking over my shoulder while I FaceTimed with Mi, and then the girls.

“Did you go see that little boy?” Ophelia asked when Mi handed over her phone.

“Yes, and guess what?”

“What?”

“He looks like you.”

“No he doesn’t. He’s a boy.”

“But he has the same eyes as you, the same skin, and the same hair. Do you want to say hi to him?”

“Okay.”

Rowan popped her face in, too, causing an instant fight.

“She said me,” Ophelia whined while shoving her away.

“I want to see him, too.”

Vander looked at me with wide eyes and a grin when Mi whistled, stopping the fight as quickly as it started.

“Hi, Vander, I’m Mi. How are you?” Mi said in the phone, her face too close to the screen.

“Good,” Vander shyly replied into the phone.

“This is your cousin, Ophelia. Say hi, Phi.”

“Hi, Phi,” Ophelia said through her crackly laugh.

Van laughed, too, but didn’t say hi. I guess it was a little awkward for all of them. We didn’t really expect things to roll this fast. I thought I had a few weeks, not days. Nonetheless, they were about to be roommates, and I was about to be the mother of three. Holy smokes.

Paxton left us alone at the hotel pool later that evening, telling me he had something to do, I didn’t even care what. Vander told me more about his mommy than I would have ever known. He loved her, he missed her, and the way he kept staring at me, made me feel sad for him. I knew what his little eyes were seeing. His mommy, that wasn’t his mommy. Poor little guy.

Had I not been exhausted from lack of sleep, I could have stared at him the entire night. His little arms moved below his body, and he slept on his tummy. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

“Let’s go in the bathroom,” Paxton whispered from behind me.

Okay, maybe that was the perfect ending. Paxton made love to me with my ass on the sink, and his hand over my mouth. Just a quickie, no foreplay involved, not really. I lay in his arms, staring over to Vander, feeling safe and content.

“I thought Ophelia looked like me until I met this kid. She’s definitely got more Delgardo than Pierce.”

“I know. It’s crazy. I think it’s a twin thing,” I said and then shifted my focus with the shift in thoughts. “Where did you go, Paxton?” I questioned as my eyes closed, finding peace.

“When?”

“You know when. When you left. Don’t do that.”

“I went to the home Izzy grew up in. I wanted to take you there, but she said no. She said she didn’t want to be a part of Izzy’s life anymore, that she tried to help her, but she wouldn’t let her. Izzy stole a lot of money from her, and a necklace that was family heirloom. She’s not letting that go.”

“She was sick.”

“I know, but she did give me a box of her things, pictures and stuff. She said she didn’t have any need for them.”

“Where are they?”

“I dropped it off at the UPS store with Van’s things. I went by her place, too, hoping someone saved something. They didn’t. It was rented to someone else a couple months ago. They sold what she had to pay her back rent.”

I turned to Paxton and placed a hand on his cheek. “Thank you for trying. Thank you for all of this.”

“Tell me you love me.”

“What?” I asked with a frown.

“You never say it back. I tell you I love you all the time and you never say it back.”

“I do, too. I just said it today.”

“No, that was a, yeah, yeah, love you, too.”

“Same thing.”

“No it’s not, Gabriella. Tell me you love me. Look into my eyes and tell me you forgive me, and you’ll be here to keep pushing me to be a better person.”

“I don’t push you to do that.”

“You do. You make me want to be a better person. Tell me you love me, Gabriella.”

I took a deep breath and shifted my eyes to my hand on his chest, pondering the simple gesture. “I didn’t know that I did until today.”

“You didn’t know if you loved me?”

“No, I mean, I knew I did, but not enough to put it out there like you do so freely.”

“What does that mean? You think I’m bluffing?”

“Not anymore. Not since you pulled me into the men’s bathroom and let me cry all over your shirt for ten minutes without a word. I love you Pax, I am so madly in love with you, our life, and our family. I’m so stoked to make new memories.”

Paxton lifted my chin and kissed my nose, and then my lips. “I promise to make them better than the ones you forgot.”

I grinned and kissed his lips, snuggled into his chest, and slept. I’m not sure I moved the entire night. I rested better than I had in weeks with my sister’s Clyde right next to me.

~~

I knew by the time we landed back in Tampa that Paxton would no doubt love another man’s child, because he was already falling. Vander was extremely interested in the pool graphics that Paxton worked on. Paxton was more than eager to tell him about it. Vander wanted a waterslide like that with a secret tunnel. I don’t think my smile left the entire flight home, and then I cried. I literally had to get up and walk to the bathroom.

“Look what I got for you,” Paxton said when he remembered his gift from Mi.

“I already gots one. My mommy has one, too. You have one, too, Gabby. My mommy said so. A Indian with big feathers gave it to my mommy, and your mommy, and you. Like me,” Vander said as his black rock clicked with Paxton’s, creating an instant smile across his little face.

I didn’t remember that, and I wanted to. How ironic was it that my mom believed in the same magical stones that Mi believed in? I went to the bathroom and cried. Where was my stone?

Paxton never mentioned the incident, not once all the way home. He asked me if I was okay, and that was it. We never discussed it again.

Vander fit into our family like an old glove, joining Rowan and Phi like he’d been there from the beginning. Even their first encounter was like they were old cousins who’d known each other for years. Phi showed him his dinosaurs and they spent hours in the pool. Rowan and Phi even played in it more because Van loved it so much.

It wasn’t all peaches and cream though, far from it. It was either Vander and Ophelia fighting, or Rowan and Ophelia. Never Rowan and Vander. Ophelia kept calling him Mini-Van, thanks to Paxton. I swear that girl didn’t forget anything. Vander hated it. Of course that made her do it more.

I spent three full days tangled up in love. Only one thing could have made me happier, and that was my sister. If Izzy would walk through that door and claim her son, I would have been the happiest girl alive. I thought about her all the time, and I continued to search every missing profile site out there, but I never had a lead worth pursuing. She was just gone, vanished into thin air.

Everything moved along just as it should have, an entire week of getting used to Vander, of Vander getting used to us and his new surroundings. Even Paxton seemed happier, more playful, and somewhat less stressed. He didn’t even get upset the way I thought he would the next night when I decided to watch the video that Nick wanted me to watch alone. Two more, and I would never get another hint of my memory again. I guess I was grateful for having them. They weren’t the best memories to recollect, but they were all I had.

Paxton told me to go at nine when we were still trying to get the kids to settle down. He wasn’t really invited anyway, and I was sure from the sounds of the giggling, it would be a while. Why they loved wrestling him to the ground so much was beyond me. They had fun and filled the house full of laughter, so I guess that’s all that really mattered in the end.

I made myself a drink and walked up with Paxton’s laptop under my arm. Everything had pretty much been laid out there. What more could there be? I could handle it and we would get through it, just like the other times.

The air was cooler than I expected it to be, but I covered up and stayed outside. Once I was set up and ready, I hit the download link like Paxton always did.

“Hey, Nick. Thanks for hanging out with my cubs the other day. They love you. Where’s Mi? What’s wrong?”

“I feel like you’re moving in the right direction, like you’re going to be okay. We can stop now, Gabby. It’s okay to stop.”

“Is it bad?”

“Yes, it’s a game changer.”

“But I have a right to know.”

Nick nodded with a deep breath. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve been arguing with myself about this all day, trying to talk myself into getting rid of it before anyone else can see it.”

“It can’t be that bad, Nick.”

“It is, Gabby.”

“Well, I want to hear it.”

“Do you want me to stay on?”

“No, you can go.”

“Okay, I’m a phone call away.”

“I’m fine,” I said with an assuring tone. My words sounded more confident than I felt. I was strong on the outside, but felt like a bowl of Jell-O on the inside, waiting with anticipation.

“Gabby, can you hear me?”

“Yes, I can hear you Lane.”

“We’re going to pick up where we left off, and Nick is going to attempt to erase part of your memory today, but first I need to ask if you if you’ve ever been with anyone else, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Have you ever been with any other men, Gabby?”

“You mean sex? I kissed someone once. On the lips.”

“Before or after Paxton?”

“Oh, it was way after. Ophelia had just turned three.”

“You did? Who was it?”

“His name was Chip. Paxton hired him to teach me to cook because I didn’t cook a roast the way he liked it. He called them in front of me, signed me up for a cooking lesson, and made me go every Saturday for two whole months. Only the joke was on him. Chip was an amazing chef, but he was also a bartender. I had fun with him. A lot of fun. He taught me how to make so many drinks, I could run a row of shots without spilling a drop. He said I was a natural. It sort of made me wish I could get a job, be around people, and have friends.”

“You could have that, Gabby. There is a man out there that would love you like you deserve to be loved,” Lane said while clearing his throat.

“I want Paxton to love me like that.”

“Well, he doesn’t. Never mind. You said you watched Paxton with his wife that night. What happened after that?”

I laughed a short puffy giggle. “You know, Lane. You caught me, remember? You wanted to know what I was up to. I lied and said I didn’t know he had company, and I left.”

“And I followed you.”

“Yes, you gave me fifty dollars.”

“I swear I was just going to get a hand job and get out of there, Gabby. I didn’t plan that. Candace wasn’t there yet, I was lonely, and I, I’m sorry, Gabby.”

“It’s okay, Lane. At least it made Paxton want me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, the baby.”

“What baby?”

“My baby, Ophelia. You made her.”

“No I didn’t. That’s not my kid.”

“No, of course not. Paxton is her daddy. He loves her very much. She belongs to him, for sure.”

“Does he hurt her?”

“No way. He loves Rowan, too. Paxton is a great father.”

“But Rowan belongs to him. You don’t think Ophelia does, right? I mean she could be his.”

“I don’t think so. Rowan isn’t his either.”

“Of course she is. What do you mean?”

“She came to my house once. Tatiana. She was shocked that I had Ophelia. She asked me if she belonged to Paxton, and I got mad at her. I told her of course she was his, and she apologized. She said she was with him for eight months and they never used anything, and the first time she spent a weekend with the quarterback of some football team, she got pregnant. She just assumed she belonged to him. That’s when Paxton put the cameras in the house. He was mad at me for letting her in, for letting her near Rowan.”

“He put cameras in your house?”

“Yes, at all the entrances and my bedroom.”

“Why did he put one there?”

“So I knew he was always watching me.”

“You know you could have gotten pregnant by one of those guys from the gang. It could have been one of those.”

I laughed a sleepy laugh. “Except they were all black, and the timing was wrong. You paid to have sex with me three weeks later, and you didn’t pull it out. I remember.”

“Jesus Christ, Gabby. Are you serious right now? You think Ophelia is my daughter?”

“Yes, Paxton can’t have kids.”

“What do you mean? Sure he can.”

“No, I don’t think so. We’ve never used anything, and when we went to the doctor to try for a boy, he told me he couldn’t. He said his sperm count was almost nonexistent. He thinks it’s from the mumps when he was a little boy.”

“Fuck, Gabby. Does Paxton know this?”

“No, I lied to him. I told him the doctor found something wrong with my uterus, something from having Ophelia. He thinks it’s me.”

The ruffling noises were from Lane, standing and walking around the room. No doubt, going crazy.

“I was going to make Nick erase your memory of us ever having sex, not a fucking kid. Fuck.”

“Are you mad?”

“No, no, I’m not mad, Gabby. I’m, fuck. I don’t know what I am.”

“You told me to keep trying with Paxton. You told me that he liked me. You said that, Lane.”

“Yes, because I knew I wouldn’t touch you if you were his. Not because I thought you were having my kid. Jesus, God. I don’t know what to do now.”

I wasn’t sure if the audio stopped on the laptop or my ears. I wanted it to stop. I wanted a redo. I didn’t want to know this. This would devastate Paxton. I listened with my hand over my mouth, holding an empty drink, and wishing for another one. Paxton had three kids and not one of them was his. I swallowed and listened to the noise as Lane entered the room with Nick.

You have to make her forget that we ever had sex. Make her forget that I am Ophelia’s dad. Do it, Nick. You have to. If Candace ever found out she’d leave me in a heartbeat. They’re friends. It’s going to come out. You gotta do this, man.”

“You don’t want your child?”

“She’s four. She knows Paxton as her dad. Erase that shit, Nick. Do it.”

Someone took a deep breath and Nick’s voice made the suggestions. I didn’t get to hear what they were, but I did hear it when it was over.

“I’m going to wake you now, Gabby. I’m going to count backward from ten. Every time I say a number your mind will remember the suggestions I already gave you. You’ll recall them just like any other memory by the time I reach one, okay?”

“Yes, okay.”

Nick counted from ten, slowly, all the way to one. “Wake up. How do you feel?”

“Um, fine. How did I do? Is it gone?”

“How many kids do you have, Gabby?”

“Um, two. You already know that. Why?”

“What are their father’s names?”

“Names? Their dad is Paxton Pierce. What do you mean?”

“Nothing, Gabby, that’s great. Next week, I promise when you wake up, the rape will be out of your mind, and this will all be over with.”

The audio stopped with that right there. I waited for the black box to disappear and closed the laptop. “Good, God, gravy.”

“What? Tell me,” Paxton said from the door, sliding it closed behind him.

I looked up to him speechless for a brief second. I couldn’t tell him that. It would shatter him into tiny little pieces. He would take a boat out to the middle of the ocean and tie a block to his ankle.

“Tell me, Gabriella. What was it all about? What did you learn?”

I took a long breath of sea salt air and spit it out. “I kissed another man.”

Paxton sat beside me and frowned. “What? When?”

“Remember when you made me take that cooking class? The chef owned a bar. He taught me how to make drinks. I liked him. We laughed and had fun,” I said while explaining what I’d just learned. It wasn’t a lie, I did hear that. I just wasn’t about to tell him the rest. I would never tell him that. That secret would follow me to my grave.

“Well, I guess I deserve that. You didn’t mix drinks before your accident. That’s one of the things that convinced me that you were Izzy.”

“I am Izzy.”

“You know what I mean.”

I tried to speak to him like I hadn’t just gotten the most fucked up piece of puzzle there was. “You should probably spank me for kissing another guy.”

“I can definitely do that,” he agreed with a hand already moving below the covers.

I let everything go with Paxton that night. I had to, I couldn’t stand knowing that information, yet in my heart, I always knew there was something. I just didn’t know what. We fucked like wild animals in every thinkable position. We fucked, sucked, licked, clawed, and kissed while my brain held onto what I wanted it to let go of. I shouldn’t have listened. I should have let Nick delete it.

Paxton collapsed first, breathing heavy breaths to the back of my neck.

“You’re squishing me,” I mumbled from below.

He shifted his weight, but only a little. He was still half on top of me. “Jesus, babe.”

I twisted my body, pulling my arm from being under me, and kissed his lips. “I don’t want to see the last video, I don’t want to know what’s in the envelope, and I don’t care about my stone. I love you. Let’s stop.”

“We’re down to one video, and you want to stop?”

“Yes, I don’t care about that anymore. You’re right. Let’s just make better memories, and try to make Vander feel as loved as possible.”

Paxton rolled to his stomach and closed his eyes. “You know you’re not going to do that.”

I touched the welts going down his back from my nails and he hissed. “Yes I am.”

“Liar. It’s one more, Gabriella. Do you want to spend the rest of your life wondering?”

A deep breath escaped my lungs and I knew without a doubt. He was right.

“Pax?”

“Hmm?”

“Where would my stone be? The one the Indian gave my mom and me and Izzy?”

Paxton took a deep breath and rolled over. “You never told me it was something sacred. I didn’t even know you had a sister.”

“Where is it?”

“I threw it out into the ocean.”

“Why?”

“Being a dick, because I could. I asked you what it was, and you told me some scientific name for it. You might have even said hematite. I don’t remember.”

“You threw it in the ocean? I’m sure it meant a lot to me.”

“I’m sure it did, too. You walked the beach every morning, hoping it washed up. You never told me that’s what you were doing, but now it makes sense. I’m sorry.”

I smiled and let it go with a deep breath. “Good thing Mi gave me a new one.”

“Agreed. I love you.”

“I love you too, Paxton. We’re the perfect storm of two kinds of crazy.”

Paxton smiled again with closed eyes, no doubt agreeing with that, too.”

The perfect storm of two kinds of crazy. That was us.