Nina let out a long, low, and horrified groan. Her shoulders shook. Ewan tried to put his arms around her, but she stepped neatly out of his embrace.

“I’m sorry.” He knew it wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough.

Al stood, pushing her chair back from the table. “Katrinka Dev was trying to outrun Donahue’s team to get patches made for all of us, and it looks like she made it first.”

“She was unethical,” Ewan spat.

Al sneered. “Like that matters? Her team came up with something that seems to have worked, at least for that crazy fuck Jordie. So far nothing’s been released, but eventually everyone’s going to get called in to have their heads messed with. Again. So I came to get you, before something could happen to you.”

“You could have called first,” Ewan told her. “At the least I’d have given you access codes.”

Al’s eyebrows flew up. “Really? You’re going to scold me about that? Did it occur to you that I tried and got no answer? I thought something excremental might be going down here in your little island paradise, Donahue. Forgive me for being concerned. It’s not like nobody’s ever tried to hammer your ass in the past, or Nina’s.”

“Both of you, stop bickering.” Nina turned from the counter. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not going to jump off a cliff. Or anything like that. I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to rush to the mainland to get your head messed with, either,” Ewan said. “Especially with something Katrinka Dev came up with. There’s no way of knowing if it’s going to work, or if it’s just going to set off another round of problems. We have to be sure before we do anything.”

Al snorted rough, derisive laughter. “That’s rich, coming from the bro who kept insisting I get the upgrades even when I said I didn’t want to.”

“I don’t trust Katrinka Dev,” Ewan said flatly. “You shouldn’t, either. I wouldn’t put it past her to have an ulterior motive.”

Nina shook her head. “What motive could she have?”

Ewan thought of Katrinka’s threats. “Revenge for getting her son arrested and thrown in a prison for the insane.”

“That has nothing to do with the rest of us,” Nina said.

“That doesn’t necessarily matter.”

“Yeah, well, all I know is that I’ve been watching my fellow enhanced go off the deep end, and I don’t want there to be any more. I don’t want to be one of them,” Al retorted. “I told you, Donahue, if and when I go, I want it to be my damned choice, not because some bunch of sphincters decided long ago they had the right to decide for me. I’ll take the upgrades and whatever Katrinka’s team came up with.”

“Just because it worked on Jordie doesn’t mean it could work on you!” Ewan shouted. “He didn’t have a standard install, there hasn’t been any real testing, he was barking mad before—”

Nina stepped forward. “Enough. Both of you.”

Al waved a dismissive hand and went back to her chair to finish eating. Ewan waited for Nina to say something. She was quiet for a long time.

“I don’t remember everything, but there’s enough there for me to know I’m on the way back. All the way back,” she added with a glance at Ewan. “But right now, all of this is overwhelming. I’m not sure what to think about any of it.”

Al scraped her fork along her plate and pushed back once more from the table with a low belch and a pat of her lean belly. She approached Nina, who went into a defensive stance. Al tilted her head to look her over.

“We already beat each other to a pulp. I’m not trying to do that again,” she said. Her ice-green gaze pierced Nina’s own. “You and I have been friends a long time. Been through a bunch of stuff nobody else could really understand, not anyone else in this room anyway. I came here to make sure you were taken care of, because I care. Yeah, I know. Gross.”

Nina’s smile was small but sincere. “Yuck.”

“I want you to leave with me, Nina. And I aim to do that as soon as the airtranspo recharges and Mr. Big Bucks over there agrees to make sure his security systems don’t try to scramble the signals and put it into the water.”

Ewan had considered Al a friend, of sorts, and wasn’t offended by her assessment of him. “Of course. Nina, I always told you that if you wanted to leave, you were free to go whenever you wanted.”

“Because you knew I wasn’t going to,” she said.

At that, Al backed away with her hands in the air. “This has the smell of a lovers’ quarrel. I’m out. I’ll be wandering around, looking in your closets and finding the stuff you don’t want anyone else to see.”

Nina waited until Al had left the kitchen before she turned to go, too. Ewan stopped her with a hand on her elbow, barely brushing her sleeve instead of grabbing. She stopped, but did not turn.

“I love you,” Ewan told her. “If nothing else, please believe that.”

* * *

The memories had not come rocketing back to her all at once, the way she’d always thought they would. Nina couldn’t quite describe them as returning in bits and pieces, either. Her past seemed to be finding its way back to her the way the ocean will push and pull at a wall of stones, plucking some away and bringing back others with its returning waves, until there was nothing left but a pile of rubble. Each rock was another piece of her memory, but while they’d once made a towering wall, now they all lay scattered. All she could do was lift them, one at a time, and try to put them back into place.

She had loved him. She remembered all of it now. Flashes of Ewan’s flavor. His scent. The way his hands felt as they tangled in her hair, which had been longer then. Past her shoulders. Each of these memories was overlaid by more recent ones, but they melded and blended together until there seemed little difference between them. She had loved him then, just as she loved him in this moment.

“Did I even have a choice?” Nina ground out the words. Her fists clenched at her sides. She didn’t want to look at him, but forced herself to stare straight into his eyes. “This time around, Ewan. Did I fall in love with you because I wanted to? Or did you manipulate me into it?”

Ewan’s expression turned bleak. Shadows hollowed his cheeks and shaded beneath his eyes. He shook his head. Defeated. “I don’t know.”

It was not the answer she wanted from him. She wanted him to tell her the truth—that he’d somehow influenced her into falling for him again. That he’d used the past he’d known and she had not. Watching his face, though, Nina couldn’t convince herself that Ewan had deliberately tried to harm her. So why, then, did her heart hurt so onedamned much?

“I’m sorry,” Ewan said when Nina didn’t speak.

Nina took a few more steps back away from him, her hands up in front of her as though to ward him off even though Ewan hadn’t made a single move to touch her. She fought for breath. Fought to swallow the rising sting of bitterness burning in her throat and on her tongue.

“It’s not enough,” she told him. “Sorry is not enough.”

“It’s the best I have,” he said.

She forced away the tears, lifting her chin. “You lied to me. For months and months, Ewan. And I might not remember everything, but I do remember that it’s not the first time you’ve lied to me. You think you’re protecting me, you say you love me, but that’s not love.”

He looked stricken. “Nina . . .”

“No.” She held up a hand. “I can’t. Not again. Not anymore. I cannot love you any longer, Ewan. Not when I can’t trust you.”

“You’re going to leave.” His voice was low and rough and rasping and he didn’t look at her anymore. “I understand.”

Nina nodded.

Ewan didn’t answer.

At the doorway, hating herself for it, she turned. “I just have to know. Why all of this? Why, Ewan?”

“Because I love you more than anything in this world. Because I wanted you to get well. Even if I knew that when you did remember, you would want to leave me.”

She didn’t want to. It wasn’t about desire. It was about loss and grief and betrayal, and she didn’t want to walk out the door and leave him behind, but couldn’t see any other choice.

“I can’t think straight around you,” she said. “I have to go.”