Page 27 of Forget Me Not

The door slams and we’re alone. Reed. And I. Alone. Together. And he smiles. Really smiles. And the room fills with the warmth of his smile. And I remember what it means to be with him. And I’m terrified all over again.

I’ve fantasized about the moment Reed would come back for me a million times over the last seven years. Thing is, I never could quite figure out where Gun would fit even once. In the end, I always told myself fate knew what it was doing. There was a reason I’d never have to choose.

Except, as it turns out, Fate doesn’t have its shit together after all.

“Do you...want anything?” I start moving. The kitchen, that’s where I’m headed next. I feel so wound up, I don’t think I’ll be able to sit still for a while. He better want something. I need him to want something so I candosomething. Something other than pass out from this anxiety.

“I’m good.”

Dammit.

“You sure?” I open the fridge. I can still smell the batch of Gun’s pancakes sitting two feet over from me, tucked away in my oven, but I can’t offer him those. It just feels...wrong. “I have leftover Chinese take-out if you’re hungry. Or I can make something.”

“You cook now?”

I let out a nervous laugh. “No.” The fridge door falls back into place and then I drop against it with my entire backside. “I’m sorry, I guess I’m a little freaked out.”

He moves toward me slowly, smiling that Reed smile I’ve missed so much. It’s beaming, showing off his bright white teeth, but even that’s nothing compared to the way it shines in his eyes. It’s magic.

His hand reaches for mine when he gets close enough.

“I’m actually kinda glad you’re freaked out, Cooper.”

“You are?”

He nods. “Yeah. Means it matters. Means, I still matter.”

I stare down at our hands. I remember the first time he held it. I was seventeen and oddly mesmerized by how perfectly they fit together. Like they were always meant to be this way. I’ve told myself it was stupid and naïve, just the sort of thing a seventeen-year-old would romanticize, but here I am, at twenty-five and it’s still true.

“Of course you matter.” The words come out so quietly I barely hear them myself. I felt my mouth move though. I know I said them.

He takes another step toward me, getting closer. “What about Gun? Is that who you’re with? Does he matter too?”

My eyelids want nothing more than to drop down and block him out, but I force them upward anyway and make myself meet his gaze. “Gun always matters.”

He frowns. He doesn’t remember. I don’t know why I thought he would. Maybe because he remembers me, and Gun, well he’s a part of me in so many ways. “More than me?” His thumb brushes softly over the back of my hand. He keeps moving it back and forth, waiting for me to answer.

“Different than you.” I bite my lip, stalling for time. I have no idea how to explain to him what I can’t begin to understand myself. “He’s been my best friend since I was nine. You’re my...”

His face loses some of its tension almost instantly, and curiosity gleams in his teal blue eyes.

“Your what?”

“My soulmate,” the words slip out in a heart aching whisper. “I’ve missed you.” The words spill from my lips simultaneously to the tears falling from my eyes. I’ve never been much for crying, but I suppose today all bets are off.

“I swear I’ve been trying to get to you,” he says under his breath, an honest desperation in his tone. I believe him. Whatever it was, keeping him from me, I know he’s been trying to find a way past it. To find me.

He rests his forehead against mine, touching the tip of my nose with his. “Now that I’ve found you, nothing is ever keeping me from you again, I promise.” His lips come in close, caressing my mouth gently before crushing into it with a sort of passion I thought was lost to me forever. And I get lost in it. In him. Reed is back. Reed. Is. Back.

The magnitude of those words sinking into my mind, into my every being, is almost enough to make me faint again. But just almost.

Chapter Five

Gun

7Years Earlier

“Yo,” Ed’s gruff voice wakes me instantly. Or maybe it’s the way he keeps kicking me in the calf.

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