Page 65 of The Billionaire Benefactor

Chapter 20

Roman pounded on the door a few more times. He knew Blake was home, though he probably was waking him up. It was nearing midnight, but this couldn’t wait.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Blake’s muffled voice grew closer. He swung the door open, his hair loose and disheveled around his shoulders. “Roman. You do realize I have to be up in like four hours.”

Roman pushed past him into the apartment. “Sorry. It couldn’t wait.”

Blake joined him on the couch, turning on just a lamp. He saw the papers in Roman’s hand. “Ohhhh. You read them?”

His face was surprisingly blank. Roman had expected a smirk. He shook the letters at Blake. “Talk to me about this. I’ve read these. Multiple times. Have you read them?”

“I sort of skimmed over one when I found them. But I didn’t want to invade. Did they help bring anything back?”

Roman shook his head, then dropped the letters and began to massage his temples. “Nothing. I don’t know how I could write these and then not remember it. How could I feel this way and then forget her?”

“Can I get you something?”

“Advil. Water. Not sure how much it will help, though.”

Blake came back a moment later with a glass of water and a bottle of Advil. “Thank you,” Roman said.

“Have you talked to your doctor about this? Are they getting worse?”

“They’re worse when I try to remember.”

“You should go back in, just to be sure.”

“I don’t want to go back in!” Roman hadn’t meant to yell. He swallowed. “Sorry. What I want is to remember feeling this way. I have to ask you—what was the bet we made?”

Blake looked wary. “I don’t know if you want to hear that right now.”

“Tell me.” Roman was practically growling. This whole thing was making him feel desperate. The feeling of something missing was driving him crazy. It was like a nagging sense of a lingering dream. He could sense it in his mind, but when he tried to focus on it, the whole thing slipped away.

The letter about the bet had been at the bottom of the pile. There were ten letters in all, each one was like reading a stranger’s words in his own handwriting. He couldn’t remember feeling anything close to what he wrote in the letters.

Blake gazed at him steadily. “I bet you that you loved her. You said you didn’t.”

Roman stared at him. That was what he thought, reading the letter. Seeing how he had signed it with the four blanks above his name. He didn’t want that to be the case, though. The idea that he could fall in love and then forget feeling that way and forget the person he loved altogether—he couldn’t wrap his brain around it.

The pain in his head began to reach a new level. Black dots swam in front of his eyes.

“Blake…” He tried to get to his feet, but somehow the carpet was rushing towards his face.

Then: darkness.

When Jenny saw Blake’s number flash on her phone screen along with the selfie he took the night of the ball, she hesitated. It rang once, twice, three times.

I’m not ready.

But will I ever be?

She slid her finger across the screen just before voicemail picked up. “Hey, Blake.”

“Jenny. It’s great to hear your voice, gorgeous.”

Jenny smiled, feeling a tightness in her chest. Blake had texted her a few times after the incident at the hospital. The only other time she had talked to him was the day she left Roman at the hospital. She only answered then because he called twenty times in a row. She’d been worried maybe Roman died. “I didn’t want to tell you in a text,” he had said, explaining that Roman’s brain injury gave him amnesia. He couldn’t remember Jenny, along with most things from the few months prior.

She couldn’t decide if this made his rejection better or worse. It should have made it better—he thought he was kicking out some stalker-fan from his hospital bed. Yet the idea that he couldn’t remember her was heartbreaking. They were already broken up, so it shouldn’t have mattered as much. But Jenny had realized the night of the game that she still held out hope. Her feelings hadn’t gone away—seeing him play and then watching him lying injured on the field showed her that. The hope died when Blake told her that doctors didn’t know if he would ever remember.

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