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Chapter 15
Owen
“So you didn’t remember anything?” My sister Shiloh stared at me from the other end of my couch. “Like, the whole year?”
“Yep.” I jabbed a spoon into the pint of chocolate Häagen-Dazs she’d brought over. “Woke up, and it was all just…” I gestured like something flying away. “Gone.”
“Wow.” She sat back against the armrest, eyes unfocused as she absently poked her spoon at the mango ice cream she was eating. “That’s… Man, I can’t even imagine.”
“It sucked.” I took a bite of ice cream because I was fully indulging in being pathetic right now. After I’d swallowed it, I admitted, “The worst part is, I can’t decide now if I hate Matteo’s guts or if I want him to move back in.”
Shiloh choked on her ice cream, nearly spitting it on me. “Youwhat?You want that pathetic excuse for a meat sack with a penis to park his slutty carcass in your house—why?”
I actually laughed at that. “Jesus, Shi. Tell me how you really feel.” She took a breath like she was about to do exactly that, but I put up a hand, deflating a little. “I’m kidding. I get it.”
She cocked a brow. “Okay, but you’re still even thinking about—holy shit, what else was in that potion?”
I sagged back against the cushion. “It was… The thing is, I had like two days of being with him without being able to remember everything that happened. And…” I stared into my ice cream. “I saw him obviously regretting what he did. Like, now I can remember how much it fucking hurt, and how much it wrecked me for a whole goddamned year, but I also saw how much it affected him, and…” I blew out a breath. What could I even say? Were there words that came close to explaining what I felt or what I’d seen in Matteo’s expression? Because I hadn’t found them.
Maybe they were at the bottom of my ice cream container.
Well, it was worth a look…
As I dug furiously into the ice cream, Shiloh said, “Question.”
I looked at her through my lashes. “Hmm?”
She pointed at me with her spoon. “Did you fuck him?”
I sputtered even though I hadn’t been trying to eat anything. This was not something I wanted to discuss with my sister, for God’s sake. “What? What does that have to do with—”
“Ugh.” Shiloh rolled her eyes and stabbed the spoon into her ice cream. “You fucked him.”
I snapped my teeth shut. Then I sheepishly said, “Yeah. I did.”
“Of course you did.” She tilted her head. “So, now that you’ve had another taste of the good stuff, you want him back.”
“It’s…” I tapped my fingers on the side of the ice cream container. “I mean, yeah. It was—I’m not going to talk about this with you, except to say that it was amazing.” My face burned as my sister giggled. “Anyway. The thing is that everything he did a year ago—I literally forgot. When I woke up that morning, as far as I knew, we were still together. Things were still good. I still—” I had to stop to collect myself. “I still love him.”
I thought she’d toss a pillow at my head or at least roll her eyes. Instead, she sighed. “Of course you still love him. You have all along. That’s why it’s taken you so damn long to move on.”
“What?” I scoffed. “That’s bullshit. I hated Matteo. Hate him.”
“Mmhmm. Except you also loved him. A lot. That’s why the last year hurt so much.”
I blinked.
“Honey.” She dug out another spoonful of ice cream. “I’ve seen you through breakups before. Including ugly ones. If you’d truly hated Matteo—genuinely wished he could step in front of a bus or piss off a dragon—then it would’ve been a hell of a lot easier to move on. You’d have had to install a revolving door on the condo just to accommodate all the revenge sex you’d be having before finally landing yourself the boyfriend of your dreams.”
Just the thought of doing any of that made my stomach knot. I didn’t want revenge sex or a steady stream of hookups or a perfect new boyfriend. To Shiloh, I said, “I don’t want any of that.”
“Of course you don’t. You wanted Matteo. You’ve wanted him back all this time.” She ate some ice cream before she looked at me again and sighed. “Honestly, I’ve been afraid for a long time you would go back to him.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You obviously still love him.”
“I… maybe. But like, I don’t want a cheater.”
