Page 72 of Forget Me Not

His attention turns from me to the window behind me. “I came here trying to figure out the same thing.” He nods at the glass. “I brought you here that day because I wanted you to see that everything you wanted for yourself was real, that it was still out there for you to have.” His gaze drifts far beyond the nursery. He’s not standing here now, he’s traveling seven years back in time. “But then, I stood here. And what I was looking at wasn’t just what I wanted for you anymore. It’s what I wanted for us. For myself.”

He’s quiet for a long time, leaving my mind reeling with all the things I want to say, all the things I need to say, and so many more which somehow seem impossible to put into words now.

“If you saw a future for us, a real future, why were you so willing to give it up?” I ask, equally desperate for the answer and terrified of what it might be.

He scoffs. “Because the future I saw was only ever available to me after Reed vacated his spot. When he showed back up again, to reclaim it, what choice did I have but to give it back?”

“You really believe that? You really thought, all those years, all we had was nothing more than you filling in for someone else? Like I had a vacant spot in my heart I was subletting to you? Like I couldn’t tell the difference between what I felt for Reed and what I felt for you?”

I can see anger building inside him. His stance. The way his hands are balled into fists. The flicker above his jaw as he clenches his teeth and grinds them back and forth ever so subtly.

“Of course, you could tell the difference. And you would always be able to tell the difference. He was the boy you fell in love with in an instant. Me? I’m the man you spent a lifetimetryingto love.”

His words destroy what little hope I had left for keeping it even remotely together. Anger and hurt funnel together, rising up through my chest in a painful twist and turn of emotions so physical, every breath in and out aches with the pressure.

“Yes, I fell in love with him in an instant. I fell in love with him fast and beautifully and without fear. I fell in love with Reed. Not because he was everything I always wanted, or because it was fate or even because we were soulmates. I fell in love with him, becausehe let me.” My hands fly up and pummel him hard in the chest, pounding into him as if it will somehow help me break through and reach the one part of him he’s always kept out of my reach. His heart. “Ihavespent a lifetimetryingto love you.” I break down, gasping and stammering and barely forming audible words anymore. “Why. Won’t. You. Let. Me?”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t fight me. Just wraps his arms around my body, steadying me because it’s all he’s ever known how to do. Hold me up. Keep me standing. Be my rock.

My stare is glued to him, searching, waiting for the moment he can no longer avoid my gaze. Finally, his chin rises, and his fiery glare has nowhere to go but meet mine.

Gun’s eyes claim me like the current of the sea. Pulling me in so deep and so far, all I see is the endless ocean of his soul, and then, just like that, pushing me right back out, until all I have left of him is the sand running through my fingers.

Then, he makes a heart shattering confession. “I wanted you to love Reed.”

“Why?” I press on.

“Because he makes you forget all the things I make you remember,” he growls. I’m shaking. He’s shaking. I don’t know which one of us is causing it. I don’t care.

“I never wanted to forget!” My hands curl around the collar of his shirt, gripping it tight and forcing him to focus all of his attention on me. “For every bad memory I’ve ever made, I have a good one to go with it. Because of you.” My chest is pressed to his, the thunder of our joint emotions vibrating between us. It’s an intensity beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s like I can feel everything he’s feeling. All of his emotions are running through me, physically leaving their mark as they race through me in a rampage for my heart. “I always want to remember,” I push out through chattering teeth. This adrenaline is all consuming. “All of it.”

The fierceness in his eyes breaks, and everything inside them spills out, pouring all over me. He doesn’t speak, but I don’t need him to. His wall is gone. The invisible barrier I thought I’d never get passed has melted away, allowing me in. Showing me every thought, every word he’s ever kept to himself. And the words I came here to say to him have no choice but to spill out.

“I’m pregnant.” Breathless, I wait.

He blinks and for a second it seems the wall returns. Then, it crumbles and the flood of feelings surges through.

“Choose me.” His hands move up along my waist, along my back and around my neck until they’re cupping my face with a tender force. “Choose me, Cooper. I should have asked you to a million times over. I was stupid. And scared. But I’m not now. Please, I don’t care about blood or DNA or any of that stupid shit. You and I know that’s not what makes a family. You have to know I can love this baby better than any father has ever loved their child because I love its mother more than any man has ever loved a woman. I swear to you, Cooper, I can do this. I want to do this. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.” He kisses me, softly. Desperately. “Please. Choose me.”

“Don’t you get it yet?” I ask, gently brushing the hair out of his tragically dark and beautiful eyes. “I already did.”

Relief washes over him in a way I can visibly see, and then profoundly feel as he wraps me up in his tall frame, folding me into his chest, close to his heart, where I’ve always belonged.

“And,” I add quietly, still crying from sheer overwhelm, “you better love this baby.”

“I will,” he promises, “I will.”

“Good.” I smile as a new, almost excruciating happiness swells within me. “Because it’s yours.”

Epilogue

Cooper

“Good God, woman...put that down, you don't know where it's been!” Mags yells at me from across the room and I nearly drop the pearl earring I was about to put in my lobe.

“I just now took it out of the little velvet box it came in. Between here and the jewelers, how many places could it have been?” I ask, more amused than curious.

She shakes her head and holds out her hand, adamant I release the earrings to her. “That’s better.” She slides them into her purse and I can’t help but wonder how I’m going to explain their disappearance to Gun who spent a pretty penny on them. Before I can voice my concerns however, she’s holding out her other hand, turning it over and revealing the most stunning sapphire studs I’ve ever laid eyes on. “Wear these instead,” she says, smiling a Mags smile I’ve only ever seen on three other occasions in my life. The day I woke up at the hospital after the accident. The moment she first held my daughter, Daphne, and then again when she was there to see Gun drop down on one knee and ask me to be his. Forever. Officially.Legally. She saves these smiles up, she does.

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