Page 105 of Forget Me Not

“I told you, little bird, I’m far from finished with you.”

Scars.

Reid has scars covering his back I’ve never noticed before.

We both fell asleep, but now, I lay awake in the early evening, listening to the sounds of frogs and crickets outside the window. It stopped raining an hour ago, but the breeze that blows through the room, coming off the sea, feels like heaven on my skin.

It’s cool after the rain. Calm. Everything is calm.

My finger traces the line of one of the scars, so light in color, but at one point, it would have been red and bloody, a mark in the perfect flesh over his muscles.

Who is this man? Where did he come from?

Perhaps we aren’t that different, at the end of the day.

Maybe we’re meant to be something akin to twin flames. So alike, but so different at the same time that the magnetic pull between us is impossible to ignore.

Part of me craves to be all-encompassed by him, while the other part fights back, pushing him away so he can’t get too close because every time he does, I’m forced to look down at the bare bones of who I am and decide if I can keep living the way I’ve grown accustomed to in the last four years.

Reid forces me to accept my own raw emotions and vulnerabilities in ways I’ve never known.

And that may be the most terrifying thing of all.

I know he’s leaving. I know this won’t be forever. I know he’ll move on, go to Alaska, and find everything he’s been searching for because I know, deep down, he’s lonely. He deserves someone to love him. Someone to show him there’s a better life for him. Someone who will make him open up.

I’m not that person. Not when I can’t even fix myself.

And . . . the truth is . . . little by little, I know he’ll forget about me once he leaves. He may think back to our summer with fondness, but it won’t have changed him like it has me.

He’s burrowed into my heart, my veins and now, I’m afraid like the moon and sun, we’ll be tethered for eternity. Just two beings bound by a connection, but millions of miles apart.

I’ll never see him again.

It’s almost poetic, isn’t it?

My hand slips over the scar, remembering what he’d said about bad memories. In my head, he was a broken and scared little boy, screaming for help when no one would listen. I wish I could go back in time and stop the scars, but I can’t. They’re there, even if they fade, and no amount of time or salve will erase them.

He stirs in his sleep, and I pause my perusing of his body until his breathing evens out again. He really is the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. Dark hair curling around his forehead, a firm set to his jaw. Those chocolate-colored eyes that make me feel like the world starts and ends in their depths . . . he’s a masterpiece, wrapped up in rugged jeans, a flannel shirt, and dirty boots.

My hand slips lower over his back and his fingers cover mine, bringing my hand around to his front and pressing my knuckles to his lips.

“What are you doing, little bird?” I don’t miss the bite in his voice, but instead of instigating it, I soften for him.

“Admiring your muscles.”

He presses his lips to my fingers again, only this time, he nips the pad of my thumb. I gasp, jerking against him from the sharp sting of pain he quickly erases with a lash of his tongue.

This Reid is not the scared boy in my head, but the broken man that grew from that turmoil. The man that makes my stomach feel like butterflies are beating at my insides to be let out. Like I’m the most divine thing to ever walk the planet.

Reid flips over, keeping my hand to him and watching me with a guarded expression. In the fading light outside the window, he almost looks like he’s made of stone. Carefully, I lean up, pressing my lips to his softly, so as not to spook him. He doesn’t kiss me back for a moment, instead breathing me in like he’s trying to steal the breath from my lungs.

“Nova,” he murmurs, voice quiet and dark. “What’s on your mind?”

You. Us. How this will end. What will happen when that twin flame is snuffed out and it’s just the two of us against separate sides of the world.

“I know you don’t like to speak about it,” I start, really working to keep my voice even, as unhostile as possible, so he can see I just genuinely want to know more about him. “But will you tell me something about you?”

I know so much about him, but so little at the same time. The thought that I’ll never get to see him again after September first sends a shot of panic like lightning down my spine. Like I need to memorize everything I can now, before he’s just a memory.

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