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Because I’m losing my mind. Obviously.
We stepped into the clinic, and I locked the front door behind us. Then I took him into my office. There wasn’t anyone else here, but there were security cameras in the lobby and hallways. I didn’t imagine anyone would care one way or the other about us being here—everyone knew Owen—but I was struggling hard enough to relax without a camera lens peering over our shoulders.
In my office, I leaned against my desk and Owen leaned against the door, his arms loosely folded across his chest. Silence hung in the air for a long, long time. Owen didn’t look at me. I watched him uneasily. Apologies gathered at the tip of my tongue, but I held them back; he’d heard them all before, and he’d come here to talk, so I needed to wait for him to decide how to proceed.
After ages had passed, he took a breath and met my gaze. “I don’t know what to do.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” His eyes flicked away from mine, and he stared at the floor. Then he slumped against the door, tilted his head back, and shifted his gaze to the ceiling. “I remember everything. From that day until… Well, until now. How much it fucking destroyed me.”
I winced and let one of those apologies tumble out: “I’m sorry.”
Closing his eyes, he whispered, “I know you are. And like, I keep thinking, I can’t be with someone who would hurt me that badly. I just…” He looked at me finally, his expression full of pain and fatigue. “It was a red line for a reason, you know?”
I nodded but didn’t speak. There was nothing I could say—not even another apology—to smooth that over.
He pushed out a long breath and deflated a little more. “The problem is that I also remember the last couple of days.”
I stilled, staring at him as my heart pounded and I waited for him to continue.
Owen took a deep breath, and he sounded on the edge of breaking down. “It hurts like it happened yesterday. Right now, I wish I could hate you like I have for the last year.” He swallowed. “But I can’t—” His voice broke, and he wiped away a couple of tears that were sliding down his cheeks. “I can’t hate you after I spent two days remembering how much I love you.”
My lips parted. Had I… Had I heard him right? “You can’t?”
“No,” he said shakily. “The most disorienting thing about this whole shitshow was when I realized you were gone. I went to bed with you, and I woke up alone in a condo that looked like you’d never set foot in it. And even after I found out why…” He exhaled hard. “Breaking up hurt so bad I paid someone to make me forget it. Waking up without you in my life?” He shook his head. “That was a million times worse.”
“God, I’m sorry,” I whispered. Amazing how those words just sounded more and more useless every time I said them. “I’m sorry I put you through all that.”
“I know.” He wiped his eyes with an unsteady hand, and he kept talking, speaking fast as if he thought he might lose his nerve if he didn’t get it all out there. “It’s… I guess it’s like being there all over again, but with some distance too. It’s a little different because when I drank the potion, I knew it was coming. Didn’t know exactly what I’d feel or remember, just that the breakup—the cheating—that would all be there. And like, it still hurts the second time around. In the moment, it really was like living through it all over again. The whole year all at once. But at the same time, I knew you regretted it and that you’d been miserable too. It was… It was hard to see you as a mustache-twirling villain who cheated on me and didn’t care.”
“Ididcare.” My voice came out ragged. “A lot.”
“I know you did.” He swept his tongue across his lips. “I guess what it comes down to is that all last year—the whole time I hated you—I’d forgotten what it was like to love you. But now I can remember both.” He met my gaze, determination in those beautiful, tear-filled eyes. “And I don’t want to stop loving you this time.”
It was a good thing I was leaning on my desk just then, or my knees would’ve buckled out from under me. “Owen…”
“I love you, Matteo. And I miss you. Can we… Can we try this again?”
Those words almost had me sobbing at his feet. Somehow, though, I held on to my composure, pushed myself off the desk, and threw my arms around him. Squeezing my eyes shut, I buried my face against his neck. I could barely breathe, and not just because Owen was holding me tighter than I ever remembered.
“I love you too,” I murmured into his shoulder. “God, I… Of course we can do this again.” Stroking his hair, I added, “I can’t promise I won’t fuck up again, but it won’t be like that. No way in hell.”
“I know,” he said softly. “If I’ve taken anything away from the last couple of days, it’s that you’re not a cheater.”
I really had to fight back tears now, and he wasn’t done yet.
“You cheated once,” he said, carding his fingers through my hair. “But I have a feeling you’d eat glass before you did it again.”
“Absolutely,” I breathed. “That was easily the biggest mistake of my life.”
He actually laughed at that. “Even over making eye contact with a basilisk?”
“Biggest by a mile.” I drew back to look in his eyes, finding humor and vulnerability and fear and…
Jesus. Yes.Love.
He remembered everything now, vividly and viscerally, but he was still looking at me like that. I was almost speechless.
