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“Did you?” He leans forward, drums his fingers along the edge of his desk.
I don’t pull any punches. “I found Lucas Wilde. He’s very much alive. But only because the person who tried to kill him failed.”
He leans forward in his leather chair and stares at me like I’ve just told him I saw the Loch Ness Monster.
“Remi. Listen, my brother Beau… he spends a few months in the desert doing some very weird shit and he’s had hallucinations, too. Were you eating the cactus out there?”
“Hayes, shut the fuck up, please. I have never taken a drug in my life.” I lean forward and press my hands to his desk. “I found him. I brought him back with me. He’s been in the hospital. He was severely dehydrated. He has pneumonia, a slew of infections and he had to have almost all of his teeth extracted. He’s a mess. And he doesn’t know who he is.
He only has memories after what happened to land him in a ditch.”
His expression flattens. His face pales.
“You’re serious?” His voice is gruff and thick with surprise.
“Very. And that’s not all.”
“What the fuck else could there be?” He huffs.
“I think my mother’s known where he’s been all the time. And that she knows exactly how he got in that ditch. He doesn’t remember anything. But get this. I found a dog, wrapped in some wire, tail cut off, lying in a ditch. I rescued her, and she was with me for the last six months. She’s kind of a guard dog.”
“That’s nice, Remi. But random.”
I spear him a with withering glare. “She was his dog. His. Of all of the stray dogs in Texas’ Hill Country, I found his.”
“No fucking way? What are the fucking chances of that?” He shakes his head incredulously.
“I would think next to none, but that’s how we found him. And guess what he named her?”
“Tina?” He laughs.
“Might have been more fitting. But, no. Gigi.”
“No shit.” Hayes slaps the table and laughs. “She’ll get a kick out of that,” he says.
“He has no memory of her.”
His smile sobers and his eyes get sad. “She has very vivid ones of him. The way her eyes light up when she talks about him.”
“Yeah, I figure there’s something strong there if he gave his dog that same weird-ass name.”
“Hey, don’t talk shit about Gigi.”
“Look, kid. I know she’s your mom or whatever. But she’s the reason my dad left us. And I don’t understand how she could live with herself.”
He drums his fingers on his desk and eyes me skeptically.
“Let me ask you something—about this woman. You telling me that if you loved her and she was with someone else, you wouldn’t have tried to win her back.”
“She was with someone else.” I hate saying those words. They offend me and stir memories that never sit well with me. “For almost ten fucking years. I kept my distance and respected her marriage.”
“You sure she’s the one? Confidence couldn’t be married to anyone else and me not at least try.”
“I respect marriage, Hayes. That doesn’t mean…” The memory of Regan’s wedding to Marcel pops up. I meant it when I asked her to leave him. If she’d said yes, I would have walked out of there with her in my arms and not given a damn what happened.
“I did ask her to leave him. She said no. She has a kid. She didn’t want to break up her home.”
“What changed?”
