Page 115 of Slapshot Baby

Not a fragment. Not even the faintest outline of a feeling attached to a trigger.

I search for the gala where we met, but I don’t recall anything about her. My recovered brain has no record of her before the accident.

But inside me, there’s a certainty that I knew this woman before the hit. I'm more sure of it now than I've ever been.

I just can't remember how.

She frowns, pulls away. “You still don’t remember me, right?”

“I’m sure we met at the gala.” I don’t add: but I don’t know which gala.

“That’s not the same thing.”

I look at her. Chestnut hair falls past her shoulders, but it’s her eyes that catch me—a raw mix of pain and subtle relief I can’t quite read.

But I don’t have the headspace to analyze what I saw; I’m too consumed by what I’m feeling myself.

The gap where the memory of her should be aches like a bone healed at the wrong angle. Something is missing. Something that matters more than everything I got back.

I just don’t know what it is yet.

19

AVA

Greedy

The key fits on the first try.

I push the door open and the smell of fresh plastic hits me before anything else.

He wasn't exaggerating about the floors. They're a warm honey oak, freshly sealed, gleaming under south-facing windows that pour light across the empty room in wide, generous strokes.

I stand in the doorway with my bag on my shoulder and the key still warm in my fist and try to remember how breathing works.

Kai bought me a studio.

Not rented or lent. Bought with my name on the deed, a key on a leather tag with the address stamped into it.

I walk the perimeter, my footsteps echoing. The reception area is just inside the entrance, separated from the main room by a half wall.

The architecture firm probably used it for blueprints and display boards. I'll use it for client mood boards. Fabric swatches pinned in rows. Paint chips fanned by palette. Material samples organized by texture and weight.

The drafting space sits deeper in, tucked near the second bank of windows. I could work here from sunrise without switching on a lamp.

The client meeting room is small, glass-walled, private enough for presentations but connected enough to feel like part of the studio. A long table would go in here, plants in the corners.

I set my bag on the floor in the center of the main room and turn a slow circle.

This is mine.

The thought cracks a deep, hungry craving in me.

I want this life.

I want to walk into this room every morning and go home to Kai every night. Where Biscuit sleeps at the foot of our bed and the baby has his brown eyes and my stubbornness.

The wanting is so specific it scares me.