Page 12 of Forget & Forgive

“God, I’m sorry.” I held him tighter. “I don’t remember us breaking up. It doesn’t feel like we did. But… I also feel like I’ve been missing you like crazy.”

Matteo pushed out a breath and kissed the top of my head. “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t even know what he was apologizing for. I didn’t know anything anymore except that I was afraid to remember what life was like without him.

I drew back and looked up at him, meeting those familiar dark eyes. The extra shine on his lower lashes made my chest ache. “Are you—”

He quickly looked away and swiped at his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This is… I know it’s earth-shattering for you, but it’s a lot for me too. I’m not sure how to…” He trailed off into a sigh.

I couldn’t resist and touched his face, the coarse warmth of his jaw making my senses tingle as if I hadn’t caressed him just like this last night. Because I hadn’t. Because that had been a year ago. My senses remembered him the way I’d remembered my high school after years away—as something I vividly recalled and had never really grasped leaving behind, even while my mind thought we’d both slept here last night.

“I am so fucking confused right now,” I whispered unsteadily. “I can’t even get my head around us not being…”

Matteo winced, and a tear slipped free. I brushed it away, but he wouldn’t look at me.

I swallowed hard. “What happened between us—is there any going back? You said we just drifted apart or whatever, but…”

“There isn’t,” he said so softly I almost didn’t hear him. “Trust me.”

How could he be so sure? What wasn’t he telling me?

Matteo cleared his throat again and gently stepped out of my embrace. “I should go. Tomorrow, we’ll hit up the shop and figure this out.”

I wanted to reach for him. His arms had been the only place that had felt remotely right all damn day, and I didn’t want him to let go.

But maybe he was right. There was a lot I didn’t know about us, and my best bet was to follow his lead until I could remember how we got here in the first place.

“Okay,” I said. “Just, um… I guess we’ll go to the fae shop tomorrow?”

He nodded sharply. “First thing in the morning.”

A moment later, he was gone, leaving me alone in the condo he still should’ve lived in. There were still hours left in the day. Hours I could spend digging into my own past and piecing things together.

But for as much as I could apparently forget the whole last year of my life, I couldn’t forget the tears in his eyes or on his face. Or the way he’d abruptly decided he needed to go.

And I was suddenly scared to find out what I’d forgotten.

Chapter 4

Matteo

For the past year, I’d believed wholeheartedly that I could never feel worse than I had the day Owen kicked me out. I could never feel guiltier than I had ever since I’d cheated on him and ruined our relationship. From that day until now had been emotional rock bottom for me. Outside of someone close to me dying, it didn’t—and couldn’t—get worse.

Turned out I was wrong. Rock bottom had a fucking basement, and that basement was Owen’s pleading eyes and open arms, and that was why I’d had to bow out. The clinic didn’t expect me back until at least Friday. I’d just needed to get my head together.

I wanted to help him, but I needed to catch my breath. I was too much of a coward to admit that I just couldn’t be in the same room with him for a minute longer. Not while my conscience was this inflamed. And walking into that place where we’d lived, standing right there in the room where we’d reduced our relationship to ashes… I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.

Now, driving away from the condo we’d once shared, I wished the ground would open up and swallow me.

Jesus fuck, I was the worst person in the world.

I pressed my elbow beneath the window and rubbed the back of my neck as I drove on autopilot back to my apartment. All this time, I’d been sure that nothing could ever cut deeper than watching him go from concerned to angry to devastated. Watching him transform before my eyes from the man who loved me into someone who hated me and never wanted to see me again.

But today, we’d been standing on opposite ends of an awful year. I was raw and ragged from hating myself for what I did to him. He was still blissfully ignorant, looking at me with all that love I didn’t deserve. And then he’d asked if there was any going back.

“Goddammit,” I muttered at the steering wheel as I wiped my eyes. Of course I’d have taken him back in a heartbeat. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to be with Owen again. But he’d never take me back. Never in a million years. Right now, he couldn’t remember. Sooner or later, though, he’d either remember or he’d find out. He’d go through that avalanche of emotions all over again.

I wanted to fix this somehow, but I couldn’t. There was no going back and changing what I did in Toronto. There was no pretending I’d never told him about it, or that he’d never been crushed by it, or that both of our worlds hadn’t fallen apart that day. I’d made the biggest mistake of my life, hurt the man I loved more than anyone else on the planet, and there wasnothing I could doto change that.Nothing.

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