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Feeling all those emotions for a year had been awful. Getting them all in one go was…
Too much.
It was one thing to find out something had happened and process it after the fact. Even when it had been a shock, there’d still been some distance. It had been another thing entirely to feelallthe emotions from the past year, fresh and fierce, like they were all hitting me for the first time. It was like remembering how painful a serious injury was, and then experiencing it all over again, from the very beginning all through the excruciating aftermath of treatment, healing, and rehab… all at once.
Too. Fucking. Much.
“Owen?” Matteo’s soft voice had my teeth clenching. When his hand landed on my shoulder, I recoiled from his touch and glared at him. I had to blink my tear-blurred eyes into focus to see him. He drew back, hands upraised as he regarded me like an angry, venomous animal on his exam table.
A fresh cascade of emotions and memories tumbled through my mind. How could he do this to us? How could he fuck another guy and just… ruin everything? Did he not understand the hell I’d been through because he couldn’t be trusted to keep his dick in his pants? The day he’d told me, I’d been ripped apart with hurt and betrayal.
Today? I was fuckingpissed.
Little by little, Matteo’s shoulders sank, and he swallowed hard. “You remember, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I do.” I set my jaw. “All of it.”
Matteo flinched and lowered his gaze. “Okay. I, um…” He tipped his head toward the door. “Should I—”
“Please do,” I gritted out.
Apparently I didn’t have to tell him twice. He grabbed his jacket off the back of a barstool and made sure he had his phone and keys. I was glad he did that—God knew I didn’t want him to have to come back here and retrieve something.
As he stepped away from the island, he murmured, “I’m sorry. About everything.”
“Get the fuck out,” I said through clenched teeth. “Now.”
He got the fuck out.
As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, I covered my face.
And I fucking lost it.
Chapter 14
Matteo
“Oh, wow.” Lia stepped aside and gestured for me to come into her apartment. “You look like shit.”
I grunted in acknowledgment as I trudged inside. She wasn’t even joking either, and I had no doubt she was right. My eyes had to be red as hell right now, and there was no convincing this woman I’d just had an allergic reaction to something.
Especially since the whole point of coming over here had been to get her advice.
I took off my shoes and we went into her kitchen. She offered me a beer, which I declined, but then she cracked open one of her own, and I decided, what the hell? So, bottles in hand, we sat down at her kitchen table.
There were some people who thought it was weird that we were this close. I was technically her superior (though I wasn’t her employer—we were both employed by the clinic), but our clinic ran a lot like doctor’s offices and human hospitals. Most people thought the doctors were in charge, but everyone in the know understood it was the nurses—or in our case, the vet techs—who ran the show.
Lia had been working at that clinic since before I started pre-veterinary school. She knew more than I did about a lot of things, even if she wasn’t trained or licensed to perform surgery. I was the one who made official diagnoses, but I often consulted her out of an owner’s earshot just in case she’d seen something I didn’t (which happened sometimes). I respected her tremendously, and we’d been good friends ever since I’d rotated through the clinic in school, back before I’d developed a healthy fear of basilisks.
We’d also been there for the greatest hits of each other’s love lives. She’d spent two months in the spare room of my old apartment while she and her ex went through a messy divorce. I’d come to her for advice when things had started getting serious with Owen. And she’d duly let me know what an absolute fucking moron I was for cheating on him, and then let me cry on her shoulder while she told me I’d get through it.
There was no one else I could be so candid with, knowing she’d offer me a bittersweet mix of unvarnished truth and gentle compassion.
“So.” She watched me across the table. “What happened?”
I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my face. “Owen got his memory back.”
Lia grimaced. “Oh. And that didn’t go well, did it?”
