Page 107 of Prince of the Northwest Forest
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“None of this is your fault. They took so much from us.”
“All these memories are rushing in,” I say. “I’m remembering sorting out my feelings for you and wondering how it was I didn’t know I wasn’t straight. Kind of like what happened these past few weeks.”
Justice kisses me, then kisses my scar. “I was your sexual awakening, twice.”
I blink. “You really were. I must’ve suppressed anything that the fae didn’t take. But I knew that you were important to me the moment I saw you on the trail last month. I just didn’t know how important.”
“Same. I thought you were some fantasy out of my role-playing game, and I couldn’t stop looking at you. But you also seemed so familiar.”
I kiss his eyelids, left and then right, and we kiss some more, my fingers in his hair, holding him to me. “I can’t believe that, all this time, it was you.”
My mind fills with images of a fae—Keithen—coming into the Northwest Forest and flirting with Justice. Keithen becoming angry when Justice rebuffed his advances.
“I got this scar trying to keep them from taking the memory of our first kiss away from you,” I say.
He blinks, and a tear falls from his eye. “I’m so sorry you were hurt because of me.”
“No wonder you think that my scar is beautiful. I got it trying to save you from Keithen taking your memory,” I whisper. “Ourmemories.”
“You got the scar because of me,” he whispers back. “You saved me. Keithen must’ve implanted a false memory in your brain—that you were fighting for a girl. And he must’ve befriended me to take back the letters.”
“I don’t remember, but it’s coming back to me bit by bit.”
I see myself accosted by several fae. Battling them in an attempt to protect Justice. In the end, Keithen bested me, slicing my face.
I swore I would never fail that way again, so I not only devoted myself to honing my skills with the sword, I started carrying it with me everywhere—apparently out of a subconscious commitment to be ready to protect Justice if I needed to.
I glance at Justice, and his expression tells me he’s remembering the same thing.
“All this time, the only thing I remembered was that I failed,” I tell him.
“You didn’t fail.” He squeezes my hand.
“I did, though. I didn’t keep them from taking your memory.”
“It was hardly a fair fight. Weren’t there three of them? And I didn’t have any weapons. As usual.”
Like Linus said, the memories are coming back one after another. A rush of them, but they aren’t jumbled on top of each other … more like a story unfolding in chronological order.
One look at Justice tells me it’s happening to him, too.
Chapter Thirty
JUSTICE
Four years ago
“There,” I say. I yank on the rope fashioned of twisted willow bark and stripped blackberry vines that I’ve just knotted around the trunk of a pine tree. I glance over at Kalle, who’s tying his end to a second tree about twenty feet away. Even though the line is fairly taut, suspended about three feet off the ground, the warm June breeze makes it sway gently. I set my booted foot on it to test its strength, and it dips down but doesn’t collapse. “Seems sturdy. I think it will hold us.”
Squinting into the hazy forest sunshine, Kalle chirps something to a nearby squirrel. The sound should be funny, coming out of the mouth of a fully-grown, twenty-year-old man. It’s most definitely not. Instead, my dick stirs.
Don’t lust after him.Kalle’s a friend, nothing more.
The squirrel scampers nimbly along our makeshift slackline and stops in the middle to chitter at Kalle, gesturing with the fluffy gray tail that curls up along its back.
Kalle rolls his eyes.
