Page 79 of Zane

“I can understand that,” Kelsey said, because she could. “It also wasn’t easy for me to have the man I love and am married to wake up and be in love with someone else. In some ways, we were in similar boats. The person I love loves someone else, just like the person you love loves someone else. So I understand where you’re at. It hurts.”

Zane stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. “I know that I shouldn’t have needed to talk to her to accept what had happened. And I apologize for making a difficult situation even more challenging through my actions.”

Kelsey’s unease grew with his words. Was his apology leading up to him saying that he thought they should go their separate ways?

“What do we do now?”

It probably wasn’t a good idea to push him for a decision, because it might result in something that would devastate her. But the truth was that she was so very tired of the uncertainty in her life.

Zane gazed off towards a group who were tossing a football around. Finally, he looked back at her, his expression unreadable. “What do you want?”

There were so many things she wanted. To be back in his arms again. To have him look at her with love in his eyes. To have their life together back.

But she couldn’t say any of that, and she knew that saying she wanted his memory back was futile. That was definitely out of their control. “I guess I want whatever you want. It won’t benefit either of us if you want us to go our separate ways, and I don’t. If you do what I want, you’re just going to be unhappy.”

He was slow to answer, and Kelsey’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. It felt like they were at a crossroads, and the trajectory of her life was going to change forever.

And she wasn’t prepared for it.

When she’d woken that morning, she hadn’t had any inkling that they’d be having such an intense conversation. One that had the power to completely change the direction of her life.

It wasn’t like she’d never had moments like these before. However, this one had the potential to hurt more than all the other times she’d been rejected and sent off on her own.

Her appetite had vanished, but her mouth suddenly felt like the Sahara, so she picked up her cup and took a sip of her lemonade.

“I think we need to try.”

His words made her heart skip a beat. “Try?”

“I think we need to spend some time getting to know each other. You’re a stranger to me. To put it bluntly,” he said. “And honestly, I’m a stranger to you. The person I am now is not the person you married. I don’t know that person, and I struggle to understand how I became him.”

“In what ways do you feel you’re different?” Kelsey asked. “Aside from loving Sarah.”

Zane ate a couple of fries as he seemed to contemplate his answer. “My faith, or lack thereof. My decision to leave Chicago.”

“I don’t know anything about why your faith is different now, but I know you considered the move to Tampa to be a step forward in your career.”

“Had I talked to you about opening my own restaurant?”

Kelsey thought back over all their discussions about their careers and couldn’t remember an in-depth conversation about it. “Only in passing.”

“Really?” Kelsey nodded. “I wish I knew what changed my focus. I mean, I have a savings account with a ton of money in it, so I must have continued to save up.”

That was news to Kelsey. They hadn’t really discussed much about their finances beyond how they each would contribute to the running of the household. “I’m afraid I have no answers about that.”

Zane’s brow furrowed. “I’m beginning to think that I didn’t do a great job of sharing myself with you.”

Kelsey was beginning to think that, too.

“This is why I think it’s important that we go back to the basics of getting to know each other,” Zane said.

“And hope that we end up feeling the same way we did the first time around?” The more she discovered she didn’t know about the Zane she’d married, the more she worried that their relationship might not survive the return of his memories.

Zane nodded. “Should we put a time limit on how long we try?”

Kelsey didn’t have an answer to that. There was a part of her that wanted to try forever, but realistically, she knew that wouldn’t be a good thing. To live in a weird limbo.

“We could do that,” Kelsey agreed. “Or maybe we just need to be honest with each other. If one of us gets to the point where we just can’t go on, then we tell the other person.”

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