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“Chase!” I shouted over him. Grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back, only to stagger a few feet away when he shoved from the counter and raked his hands through his hair as he seethed.
“The hell did I ever do to you?”
“Chase,stop,” I demanded as I reached for him again. Gripping his arm tightly and putting myself in his line of sight. “What is wrong with you?”
His wild stare snapped from me to Erin repeatedly before something like understanding and dread seemed to fall over his expression.
Blinking quickly, he studied me longer and longer before focusing fully on Erin and demanding, “Who are you?” Before she had the chance to respond, he met my stare again as he pointed at her, voice dropping to a rough whisper. “That’s Trish.”
“Who—oh God,” I breathed as the story Chase had told me—thememorythat had never really happened—rushed through my mind and made my heart ache for him. “No. No, no, no.”
“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.
“She isn’t—” I roughly shook my head and looked at Erin and the other baristas, who were watching us with varied expressions of shock and alarm. “Erin, I’m sorry. He thinks—he thinks you’re someone else.”
She nodded as she glanced between us, having already heard about the entire thing when I’d broken down during one of my visits when Chase was still in the hospital and furiously angry that I was claiming to be his fiancée.
“From the coma,” she said slowly, a little uncertainly, then gave a soft laugh as she looked at Chase. “Not sure what to think if you hate me, but I guess it’s something to have been in those memories.”
“Yeah.” The word broke from me on a huff, but my brow furrowed as I wondered why she had.
This shop had opened after Chase and I met, and he didn’t remember it. And yet, Erin had played such a crucial role in Chase’s memories when I hadn’t been in them at all.
At least, not physically.
Chase’s body vibrated beneath my hand, all pent-up anger he was trying to suppress as he studied the woman on the opposite side of the counter. Clearly seeing things that weren’t happening. That hadneverhappened.
“I don’t know you?” he finally asked, voice like gravel.
Erin’s eyes met mine as a smile pulled at her painted lips. “I mean, you do...” she began, drawing out the last word and trailing off for a moment. “Sometimes I take your order. Sometimes I make your coffee. Sometimes I just sayheyas I walk around, checking on things. But I see you a few times a week.”
Icy blue eyes flashed my way, hard and shamed and so, so confused, before they drifted away again. “I don’t work with you?” he asked her, trying to cover every base as if he was struggling to trust anything.
Anything he knew. Anything he saw. Anything he was told.
“Do you want to work here?” Erin’s smile turned mischievous as she glanced at me again. “Been trying to get Scarlet to come work for me for years now.”
“No.” The response came hard and fast and dripped with the loathing he still felt for the person hethoughtshe was.
“Got it,” she murmured, then leaned closer, expression scrunching up in mock hesitation. “Do I want to know what I supposedly did?”
“No,” I said quickly, pleading with my touch alone for Chase to let this go. “No, can we just—can we just order, please?”
“Of course,” she said, popping back up and nodding to the awaiting barista as she reached for a marker. “I got this one.”
Erin continued trying to make small talk while we ordered and waited on the drinks as if nothing had happened. As if it could wash away Chase’s tension or the heaviness that had filled the shop.
I wasn’t sure what all I offered to the conversation, if anything. I was too focused on the man beside me.
The way he was holding himself as if he was afraid to move. The rigid set of his jaw. The way his hardened stare stayed locked on some obscure spot and the way his thoughts seemed to be somewhere else entirely.
When we left, there was a heart on my cup.
Something we didn’t joke about, the way we always had before. Something I’d been sure we still would’ve in this new, uncertain life, considering I’d explained about Erin and the hearts.
But Chase still wasn’t speaking or looking at me, even after we got home. He just grabbed one of his sketchbooks and headed to the back patio without a word, staying out there long after I finally went to sleep that night.
No physical therapy. No Chinese food.
