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“What—your wreck?” he asked, the words exploding from him when he realized what I was asking. “Fuck, man, are you kidding?”
“You were there.”
“Yes, it was an accident,” he snapped. “No way you could’ve seen it coming or prevented it. Now, tell me what Brian said.”
“Nothing definite, but enough to let me know I fucked up.”
“Chase,” he muttered, my name nothing less than a disappointed sigh.
“Said I came into work a few days before the wreck, raging and threw my chair. Was so anxious that he and Marissa thought I was on drugs. When Brian cornered me the next night, asking if things were okay with Scarlet, he said I snapped. Punched a wall. Was cussing between saying things like ‘What am I gonna do?’ and ‘I didn’t know.’”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he said after a while. “That could’ve been about literally anything.”
“Well, was Scarlet okay during those days?”
Silence filled the phone before he uncertainly said, “I think so. She might’ve been thrown off by you at dinner because you weren’t talking, but I think we all were.”
“So, she was fine, and I wasn’t. And I remember waking up to someone in bed with me,” I reminded him. “And everyone has been showing me how my memories are really just twisted versions of my life. Tell me again that those days and what I said could’ve been about anything.”
“Shit,” he hissed before repeating his warning, “If you cheated on her...”
“I fucking get it, man.” I turned as if on instinct and felt my entire being react when I saw Scarlet making her way across the sand. Body buzzing and pulse kicking up this erratic beat in my veins, all while it felt like I was crumpling under something I didn’t understand. “I gotta go. She just got here.”
“You gonna tell her?”
“I have to.”
Silence settled over the call before he said, “Don’t hurt her more than you have to—just tell her what you know. Because you don’t know what you did yet.”
“You still think I didn’t?”
“Knowing you?” he challenged. “Knowing what she means to you? I just can’t believe youcould.”
I gripped the phone as the smallest glimmer of hope tried to break through the well of guilt in my stomach. “Gotta go.” Slipping the phone into my pocket just as Scarlet reached me, I nodded to her in greeting but let myself take in her face for long moments before I ever spoke.
The mesmerizing shape of her eyes and the unadulterated excitement there.
The tempting slant of her lips and the way I wanted to get lost in them all over again.
“How’d you know where I was?”
That excitement grew as she fought a smile. “This is a special place.”
I looked down the shoreline as my brow furrowed. “This isn’t where we surf, is it?”
“No,” she said on an amused breath. “Do you not remember anything about this place?” When I just slanted my head, she drew in a sharp breath and nodded. “Something in your memories is trying to come back. It has to. Because this place was special tous.”
“Tell me.”
“Chase—”
“Scarlet, please,” I whispered at her obvious reluctance, reaching for her without meaning to and grasping her fingers.
A line of apprehension appeared between her eyebrows as her gaze drifted from our loosely joined hands to my stare. After another beat of hesitation, she explained, “This is where we used to come before we were together. This is where you asked me to marry you.”
“Right here,” I said in confirmation.
“Not—well...”—she looked up the beach, a soft smile pulling at her mouth as she nodded in the direction we’d both come—“we weren’t standing in the water.”
