Page 37 of From West, With Regret

“You know,” she says, with her chin still pressed to her arm. “Seeing the ocean like this reminds me of my favorite artist.”

I look out at the rippling water. The warm sun beats down on my back.

“Who is that?”

“Emily Rapture.” Three lines crease the corners of her eyes. “She mostly paints landscapes, and almost all of them are of the forest. The detail she puts in to the dirt and the trees has always captivated me.” She sighs. “But she has this one painting of the ocean. It’s stunning.”

She rolls her head back to me again, and I swallow the bile coming up from my throat. Not because I have any clue who Emily Rapture is—I don’t—but the idea that London is drawn to an artist known for painting forests.

I wonder if London’s inadvertent pull to those paintings has to do with our beginning. The one she doesn’t remember.

The sickness subsides when she elaborates on the single ocean painting. “I always marveled at how she used watercolor to capture the glistening water.” She picks up her phone and opens the search engine before typing Emily Rapture’s nameinto the bar. When she finds the image she’s searching for, she passes me her phone.

“This is the one. Isn’t it incredible?”

I study the painting, focusing in on the water and the highlights London is talking about. In the upper right, there is a large, red-brick lighthouse.

“Beautiful,” I say, handing her phone back to her. Our fingers brush, and I’m taken a back when she doesn’t immediately pull away.

She lifts her eyes from our joined hands holding her phone. Inhaling a shaky breath, she blinks then pulls away, clearing her throat. “Anyway, Emily has this new gallery opening soon in upstate New York. I’m dying to see it.”

“Upstate New York?” I ask, and fuck me, the bile comes back like a torrential storm.

I ignore the prickling sensation creeping along the back of my neck. What are the fucking odds London’s favorite artist is from the same fucking state as her and me?

“Yeah,” she says, but when she looks back at me, her eyebrows dip in concern, and her hand is on my arm. “Are you okay? Looks like you might be the one who needs the bucket.”

“Um.” My mind is overcome with reality, silencing me.

“On the bright side,” London adds. “If you throw up over the railing, you won’t have hair for me to hold back. But I would if you had. Then there’s the matter of your beard, but I’ll leave that one up to you.” She laughs under her breath, but when I don’t laugh back, her smile falls.

“I’m fine,” I force out, chalking all of this up to coincidence. I don’t know a fucking thing about amnesia. At least I didn’t until it all made sense to me. My mother telling me Heath’s new wife had amnesia. Then finding out that wife was London at Julianna’s birthday party.

It took a few days for the shock to wear offand reality to set in. I did some research, and nothing I found put me at ease. Every case is different. Some have only short-term memory loss. Some only remember certain aspects. Some never regain their memories.

It’s been fourteen years since London’s accident, and she has yet to regain hers, only receiving snapshots she can’t make sense of.

Nodding, she accepts my answer and turns her attention back to the water.

Watching her now, staring out at the ocean, I’m not certain she ever will, and that reality tears me in two. I place my hand to my chest, willing the pain to disappear.

The wind picks up, and her hair flies from her face, revealing the shape of her cheekbones and the curl of her black lashes framing her gorgeous gray eyes.

“I’m almost done working on another piece,” she confesses.

“That’s great.” I clear my throat and focus on the spot where my knee meets her thigh. London hasn’t moved. If anything, she’s leaned farther into me, and I’ve done the same.

“I should be finishing it up in a few days, so I can show you.” She sits up, straightening her back as she twists on the bench to turn her back on the ocean. “Only if you planned on being at The Veiled Door, of course. I know you have other bars to run.”

I crack a smile. “I think I can make the time.”

“Okay.” She sighs, gently slapping her bare thighs. Her black cover up has fallen to either side of her, revealing her smooth skin and the bottom of her bikini. My cock twitches, waking from a deep fucking sleep. I curl my fingers into a tight fist.

London falls back against the bench, and my eyes travel up her body, over her bare stomach and the small diamond piercing in her belly button, to the swell of her breasts peeking out fromthe top of the thin, gold top. Breasts I could easily sink my teeth into.

Fuuuuuck.

My dick jumps at the thought.

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