Page 80 of Stealing Chances

No nothing.

I’d just finished slipping into a pair of loose sweats the next morning when I heard the guys jogging up the beach behind me. My head moving in small shakes and my chest pitching as I tried to pull myself together. Without looking back at them, I tugged off my rash guard and then hurried into a tank top before working off the top of my bikini beneath it. My movements rushed and jerky, bordering on frantic.

“You good?” Konrad asked, looking confused as he gestured to an ocean full of some of the cleanest waves we’d had in weeks.

“What’s wrong?” Brandon asked, grip tight on his board and brow furrowed as he studied me. “Something was up when you got here too.”

I paused for only a moment from where I’d been shoving my wet clothes and towel into my bag. “Chase texted when I was riding that last one in,” I said, voice strained as I unnecessarily held up my wrist to show my watch that I’d received the text on. “He’s on his way to see her. Right now. He got a car, and he’s going to see her.”

Dropping the bag to the sand, I dragged my hands over my face before meeting their edgy stares.

As if, in that vague response, I’d told them enough to begin putting pieces together. Pieces they were afraid of.

“Something happened yesterday afternoon—after the doctor appointment. We went to get coffee, and Chase lost it. Started yelling at the owner and asking what she was doing there. If she had any idea what she’d done to him.” At their shift to utter confusion, I explained, “He thinks she’s the reason he lost Harper...in hisothermemories. He thinks she’s this person who worked with him and ended up in his bed somehow.”

“Shit,” Konrad muttered as he lowered his board to the sand. “Did you explain it to her?”

“Yes—sort of. I don’t know,” I stammered. “She already knew about the coma and the life he thought he had because of it, but I didn’t tell her who Chase thought she was. That isn’t what matters,” I said quickly, sharply. “It’s that after that happened, Chase wouldn’t talk to me or look at me. When we got home, he went outside and stayed there all night. When I woke up this morning, he was—” A pained breath left me, shaking my chest with the force of it. “He was asleep in the guestroom.”

Brandon flashed a worried look Konrad’s way before hesitantly asking, “So, he’s going to see this person?”

“No,” I muttered, my heart wrenching as I snatched my bag. “He’s going to see Harper.”

“Fucking hell,” Brandon hissed as he followed suit. Grabbing his towel and other clothes, but not bothering with changing as he began stalking up the beach.

“Are we following him?” Konrad asked as he hung back with me, taking his time to gather his own things.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I picked up my board, mind miles away and weighed down with worries that were so far past this beach and Brandon.

“Just wanted to know if we were following Brandon to his house or if I needed to be following you.” He held a hand up as he bent to reach for his board again. “I know what Brandon’s going to do, but someone needs to be with you right now, and I can’t magically transport Bree here.”

A breath burst from me that edged on amused as I began walking up the path we’d been taking for years. “I have every intention of beating Brandon to his house.”

Konrad just shrugged and began following me as if he had all the time in the world. “Not if I beat both of you there.”

* * *

We all got there within a few seconds of each other. Not that it mattered because Chase wasn’t there.

Neither was Harper or her car.

When Brandon called her, she simply said, “I’ll talk to you soon,” before ending the call.

And just like Chase had the day before, Brandon exploded. All harsh reactions and pleading, terrified demands as he threw his phone against the wall.

“What is he trying to do?” he shouted as he turned to Konrad and me. “I understand he’s confused—I fucking do. I can’t imagine waking up and having an entirely new life implanted in my mind. But he was getting it. He’sbeengetting it. You can see that he knowsthatwasn’t his real life.”

“I know,” I murmured as I sank into one of their kitchen chairs, not bothering to try to calm him when that same fear of the unknown was gripping at my own chest.

“He loves you,” he went on, a harsh laugh leaving him. “Jesus, he’s in love with younow. As this person who’s struggling with his memories and didn’t even know you a month ago. So,why?” Brandon demanded. “Why is he letting this take him back to a place where he thinks he’s in love with someone who never belonged to him? Why is he letting this drive the two of you apart when you’re all he can talk about?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered and then released a weighted sigh. “At least you can be comforted knowing your wife only loves you. My fiancé has memories of someone else and has told me multiple times what he remembers of theirbeingtogether and how much he loves her.”

Konrad slowly looked at me, his wide stare matching Brandon’s. As if I was missing something so completely obvious.

“Tell me,” Brandon began, voice like grating steel, “before the accident, would it have bothered you if someone continuously told Chase she was in love with him? Not playfully—butI love you, andyou love mewith absolute certainty. If she told Chase, right in front of you, the two of them had been having an affair. If she triedconvincinghim of it, even if you knew it wasn’t true.”

My heart twisted and slowly sank as I looked at the situation from Brandon’s perspective for the first time. And I hated that I’d been so consumed in my own pain that I hadn’t once thought of how all of this had been for him.

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