Page 59 of When We Meet Again

“Would you like a coffee? Or a whiskey? Tea…” I ramble, scared of the silence between us. Do I hug him? I don’t feel the closeness we once had. Or maybe because it would feel like cheating on Roman. I never had a problem with hugging Roman when Patrick was around. The mental anguish of all of this is too much.

His gaze follows me to the kitchen.I’m in the same room as Patrick.“I’ll have some more water.” His voice is deeper, less intense than it once was. I get him a bottle of water as if he is a guest in the apartment we once paid for together.

He takes a seat at the kitchen table, and I place the bottle down in front of him. “Waverly, can you sit down?”

I obey, sitting across from him at the kitchen table, my nail absentmindedly tracing over the light oak pattern. His hair is much shorter than when we were together. It’s buzzed close to his head. His skin is tan, and he has lost a lot of weight. He’s no longer the bulky man I knew, but leaner. Like Roman.

Just the thought of him triggers a nagging in my mind that refuses to be stilled. “Come home with me.”

One Huxley brother at a time.Patrick and I need to get things out in the open. Put an end to it all.

“How are you here?” I whisper.

“I was swept away by the wave.”Fucking, duh.“I was knocked unconscious and woke up in this little village off the coast. It was filled with eastern medicine doctors.” Patrick clears his throat. “I suffered from amnesia for about six or seven months. Slowly bits and pieces started to come back to me, but it wasn’t my current life that came back.”

Those words were like a knife to my heart. I know he had no control over what he remembered and when, but it still hurts. I didn’t come first when we were together, and I didn’t come first when we weren’t.

“I was having memories of my late teens—early twenties. Moving to California to be close to my family. Joining the Coast Guard, stuff like that.”

“We had a funeral for you.” Your mother was drugged for the better half of a year. “Have you seen your parents yet? Do they know?”

“I spent the day with them. Mom hugged me for an hour and Dad…well, you know him. He welcomed me back, hugged me, shed a tear or two, then made a sandwich.” I laugh. I would love nothing more than to be as unaffected as Harold.

The fact that he saw his parents before his fiancée...I’m rendered speechless. If it were me, I would run straight to my man, even if my mom had to wait an hour longer to find out.

Patrick sits up straighter in his chair and leans his elbows against the table, bringing himself closer to me. He’s still handsome.

“It was just a lot.”

I try to engage. “So you became a part of the village that took care of you? You’ve been gone for over a year now. And you said you had amnesia for six or seven months…what did you do after you started remembering?” Surely, he could have gotten in touch with his parents, or his brother, even if he didn’t remember me.

“Let me home in on what happened…really quick.” My resolve is dwindling the more I’m in his presence. He nods. “You get washed away. End up in a village with amnesia.”This is like a bad fucking movie that won’t end.“You start remembering your…childhood, essentially. But not me.”

Another nod.

“THEN! Youdoremember me, but even though you remember your family and me, you choose to live there and not get in touch with any of us…” The Italian in me has my hands flying around. “Just to let us know you are, in fact, alive?” This. Is. Insane. He has no excuse. Why am I giving him my time again?

“I…I…It was a lot to move from day to day.” He rubs his hands over his face. “I think I was sad. They would bring me food, involve me in their rituals. I had some acupuncture done.”

“Wow! Acupuncture, hm?” I snap, sounding like a bitch. I try to tamp down my frustration, but I’m failing miserably. “You used to tell me ‘That woo-woo stuff doesn’t work and that it’s all in my head.’”

This is outrageous, right? I’m sitting here in front of my once-dead fiancé. I should be stoked he’s alive, well, and here with me, but everything in me just feels dread. Guilt?Why the hell should I feel guilty?He was gone. He was never supposed to come back. I had to live my life and move on, and I did so with his brother. Which is kind of messed up… But you can’t help who Cupid’s arrow shoots. I’ve made my peace with it. And I’ll be damned if I retreat on that progress.

But it would also make me an absolutely terrible person if I didn’t hear him out. Even if it’s really hard to do right now.

“I neededsomething. I was falling into a massive state of depression.” His eyes fall to his lap like he’s recalling the dark moments.

“I’m sorry that happened to you, but I had a lot of dark moments myself over the past year…” There I go, sounding like he used to. Lacking any sort of empathy. He regards me quizzically for a moment.

His hands rub over his face that’s no longer clean shaven. Old Patrick thought beards were for the lazy. From the look of it, old Patrick really did die. Like me, he’s beenreborn.

“Waverly, I know you have a thing with my brother.” The knot in my stomach twists, making me feel like I’m going to puke. “Have you slept together?”

No, but it was supposed to happen tonight. Hell, it may have happened against his truck if Patrick hadn’t shown up. I shake my head, trying to hide the disappointment.

Does Patrick even have a right to ask that? Such a murky moral line here. I could tell him that it’s none of his business. Butisit? I guess we are technically still engaged. Nobody really gives you a rule book for when your fiancé comes back from the dead, but you’re into his brother.

Patrick closes the space between us and grabs my hand. “I won’t ask to pick up where we left off because that will be nearly impossible. But could I stay here?”In my space? Excuse me?A space that I sage daily and smoked it out with Palo Santo to release the negativity that was built up between these walls? Patrick’s eyes widen like he’s had an epiphany.

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