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Theo watches me with leery eyes as I get up from the chair. I say nothing as I walk toward the kitchen doorway.
“Son,” Dad calls, and I stop to look back at him. His eyes look pained. “Don’t leave. Stay and talk to your mom and me.”
I shake my head. “I need time. Tell Mom I’ll call her in a few days.”
I can tell he wants to insist, but he gives me a slight nod in understanding. I have a hard time holding Theo’s eyes when I look at him.
“I have no idea what would make me do what I did to you and her, but it fucking guts me that I did. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but right now, I’m so fucking sorry, Theo. It makes it worse because I can’t remember it. I deserve for those memories to haunt me forever. I deserve the pain I know they would cause.”
And with that, I walk through the house, closing the front door quietly behind me, get in my truck, and leave.
CHAPTER NINE
Luca
I’M BACK IN THE dark room with the floating twinkling lights. I spin in place, searching through the tiny specks, looking for one that’s brighter than the others. They all look the same, no matter how hard I will my eyes to tell me differently.
A sudden hollowness forms in my chest when I realize she’s not here with me. I feel like all the air in my lungs has been stolen from me. My pulse beats heavily on the side of my neck and my stomach twists into knots.
Loss, unequivocal and indisputable. That’s what I feel. Jules was never mine, but I still feel the loss of her as if she was.
“NOOOO!” a tortured scream comes, and I recognize it’s hers.
“Jules!” I spin around looking for her and see nothing but black space and tiny sparkles.
“Oh, God, no, please!” she sobs brokenly.
I turn back the other way, still looking through the darkness, and don’t see a damn thing. Where the fuck is she?
“Jules! Where are you?”
“Help me,” she yells. “Please, someone help!”
A roar leaves my lips at her agonizing cries. I have no fucking clue where I’m going, but I start running, yelling Jules’s name over and over again.
“Luca! No! Oh, God, please don’t hurt me! NOO! Luca!”
“Goddammit,” I bellow. “Tell me where you are!”
“You don’t have to do this.” She’s crying now with hiccupping sobs, and it’s just as crushing. “No, no. Don’t do this. Please, oh, God, Luca, please!”
Her pleas pierce my ears and slice through my heart, leaving the life-giving organ dead. It still beats, but it’s pointless. I come to a stop and drop to my knees when I realize Jules isn’t screaming for me to save her, she’s crying for me to not hurt her.
Pain, brutal and unforgiving, has me falling to my hands. Remorse, shame, guilt, and grief paralyze me in my hunched position.
Jules isn’t with me right now, but her memories of that day are. The pain she went through, the terror of the unknown, and the despair of being alone. All that angst because of me. I put her through those things. I made her feel helpless and afraid.
I may not have access to my own memories of that day, but having Jules’s are enough to know they’ll haunt me for the rest of my life.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I whisper to no one.
CHAPTER TEN
Jules
I SIT STIFFLY IN THE hospital bed, the blanket pulled up to just below my chin, and warily watch the man seated in a chair close by. His eyes are just as cautious. My body is poised and ready to jump out of bed if I feel threatened. I’m still debating if I already do feel threatened. His eyes turn watchful, as if he’s trying to climb inside my mind to see what’s within. He wouldn’t find much, as there’s just a bunch of darkness, except for a few fuzzy clips that I’m not even sure are real.
I don’t know who the man is, except what he’s told me. He says we’re married, that we met a little over seven years ago, fell in love, and were married only weeks later. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know him, but even so, he seems familiar.
