Page 49 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

My smile widened.

“Deal.”

Chapter 8

Contrary to what my wife believed, I did love her.

What I felt for her was fiercer than anything I had ever known, deeper than I had ever believed my heart could hold. My eyes searched for her the moment I entered a room, drawn to her without thought. In a crowd, her voice was the one that found me through the noise, reaching something inside me no other voice ever could. Even in sleep, when my mind was beyond my control, my arms still reached for her, seeking her before I was even awake enough to know what I was missing.

She had reached places inside me I had spent my entire life keeping locked away and filled them with a warmth I had never known I was missing. Parts of me I had long ago abandoned to numbness had begun to breathe again beneath her touch.

There wasn’t a part of her I didn’t know by heart. I could recognize her footsteps from down the hall, the little sigh she let out when exhaustion finally won, the way the corner of her mouth lifted whenever she fought back a laugh. I knew the habits she thought no one noticed, the expressions that crossed her face before she even realized she was making them, the subtle shifts in her voice that told me when she was happy, irritated, nervous, or hiding hurt behind a smile.

My life was hers in every way that mattered. Every breath, every tomorrow, every piece of myself belonged with her.

There was no part of me I held back from her.

Except the one thing she needed most.

The words.

I had always been at war with words. I learned that young, long before I realized what that war would eventually cost me. Back then, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. I simply believed some words were harder for me to say than they were for everyone else.

I remember the first time it dawned on me that there were words I could feel with my entire heart and still couldn’t bring myself to say.

Whenever my mother used to say, “I love you,” smiling brightly at me in the dark, I would freeze.

Three simple words.

She said them so easily. So naturally. They came from her without hesitation, without fear, without any struggle. She never had to fight her own throat just to tell someone they mattered.

I would stare at her, my chest painfully full, desperate to give her the same three words she had given me so freely. But every time I tried, my throat would close. My lips would part, then stop. The words would die somewhere between my heart and my mouth, leaving me with only the one pathetic response I could force out.

“Yeah.”

For years, I thought that was the problem.

Her.

I thought there was something about my mother, something about us, that made those words impossible for me.

Then high school proved me wrong.

When my girlfriend looked me in the eye and said, “I love you,” my entire body simply locked.

My mind went completely blank. My chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe, while my throat closed around the words I was supposed to say. I knew exactly what should have come out. I could form the sentence perfectly in my head, every word clear and ready, but the moment I tried to push them past my lips, my body turned against me.

I tried anyway.

I parted my lips, searched desperately for my voice, begged myself to just say something—anything—but my throat refused to cooperate. I pushed harder, willing the words forward, but they remained trapped somewhere between my mind and my mouth. No matter how desperately I tried to force them out, they simply wouldn’t come.

Not a stammer. Not a whisper. Not even a broken attempt.

Just silence.

I stood there with my heart hammering against my ribs, my jaw clenched so tightly it ached, fighting to force three simple words past the invisible grip around my throat. The harder I tried, the more I shut down. Panic tightened around my chest. My fingers curled helplessly at my sides as my pulse thundered in my ears. Every second that passed made the silence heavier, more unbearable, until I could barely stand the weight of my own inability to speak.

I wanted to speak.