To Have and to Hold (3 page)

What had he done? He’d been so damn careful, since Dee, not to lead anyone on. Not to create expectations he couldn’t meet.

“Hunter?”

She stood behind him, her posture tentative. With those big blue eyes, heart-shaped face, and simple, straight blond hair, she looked barely out of girlhood.

There was something painful and intimate about her presence there in the doorway of his bedroom, as if she belonged there, as if she’d stood there many times before.

“I know you need time. I don’t want to push. I just— When you left—”

He felt like he was on the edge of a cliff. That if she kept talking, he would plunge over it.

“You said—”

But he didn’t want to know what he’d said. He didn’t want to know what he’d promised or what she expected. He didn’t want to know anything at all. If she wasn’t a stranger to him, she was the very next best thing, and he didn’t want her confessions or her fear, the open rawness of her expression. He wanted her to close herself up and take herself away, because he was
not
who she thought he was. He didn’t know that man.

He was someone else now.

“I guess I just wondered. If you thought it still could be true.” She looked like she might be trying not to cry, and he cursed his lost self for whatever expectations he’d set up in her.

There was nothing for it but the truth.

“I don’t remember,” he admitted. “I don’t remember what I said, or what we did—”

He took a deep breath.

“I don’t remember any of it.”

“What do you mean, you don’t remember?”

But even as she asked the question, she understood. She’d heard stories about soldiers with traumatic brain injuries, ones who had trouble remembering what had happened before a shock, or who couldn’t code new memories of what had happened since.

She felt a sudden, unwanted sense of relief. His feelings hadn’t changed. He hadn’t changed his mind. His mind had changed.

“I didn’t think—I didn’t think you hurt your head.”

“I didn’t think I did, either. But maybe I did. I knew I didn’t remember the battle. But I thought I remembered everything before. And now—everything’s wrong. Ever since I got off the plane, it’s like I’ve stumbled into an alternate reality where I’m out of sync. I think I lost a year.”

He sounded like Hunter and he looked like Hunter, and there was so much fear in his voice that all she wanted to do was to put her arms around him and comfort him. But everything about his body language was a gigantic back-the-fuck-off. And as quickly as it had come, the relief vanished and she was overtaken by panic. It was one thing to imagine that something during the late part of his deployment had killed his feelings for her. It was another thing entirely to imagine that those feelings, as far as he was concerned, had never existed.

“Okay,” she said. Trying to be calm. “So you’re telling me that you don’t have a known brain injury, right?”

“Right.”

“But you think you have amnesia?”

“Well, you tell me,” he said. “The last thing I remember for sure was leaving Clara with my mom on an autumn day.”

She stared at him. He’d left Clara with
her
, on a midsummer day.

“I know,” he said.

“But—how do you lose a year? More? Without realizing it?”

“I’m not completely sure,” he admitted. “But it’s all been total chaos since I was wounded, and my team is still in the middle of nowhere, and so—I guess with no one to corroborate it seemed like I had all the pieces, and it didn’t become obvious till I got home that I don’t.”

“So you—you don’t remember anything?”

“I don’t remember you,” he said, in a low tone of confession. “I mean, I remember you. Phoebe’s mom. But—”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence. A horror was beginning to descend over her.
This isn’t the same man who left me
. Grief gripped her.

But that made no sense. He was here, not dead. And he was the same man she’d fallen for.

Except it didn’t work like that. The man she’d known before had fallen as hard for her as she had for him. And this man was looking at her—

Well, he was looking at her dispassionately, the way you’d look at someone who held information you wanted, but nothing more.

All those emotions, everything they’d grown to feel together, all those weeks of sliding, slowly, toward each other, so gradually that they hadn’t even been able to admit it at first…

All those conversations, the “No, we shouldn’t; it would be too awkward and we can’t endanger the girls’ friendship over a passing lust frenzy…”

All his confessions about what held him back.

All hers.

They hadn’t happened to him.

It was—

It was as if she’d been alone, as if she’d dreamt those eight amazing weeks, as if she’d invented a fantasy
him
…

As if
they’d
never happened at all.

Standing there with the man she’d been planning to spend the rest of her life with, she felt an overwhelming, suffocating loneliness.

She gave herself a moment to wallow in it, then pushed it aside. She didn’t like to feel sorry for herself. She never had. If there was a solution to be found, if research or hard work or pure stubbornness could yield results, she would
not
dwell on the downside.

“You have to go to the doctor.”

“Yeah. I’d figured that much out.”

“They’ll know more. They’ll be able to tell you if it’s permanent. I mean, people recover from amnesia, right? That’s what happens in the movies. There’s a big a-ha moment, right when there’s some major crisis and he has to remember his past in order to avoid making the same mistake twice, or to apprehend the killer, or whatever.”

He laughed, but it was a humorless laugh. “Yeah, but don’t they also always have a doctor saying, ‘I don’t know. You could remember in a day, a week, a month, a year, or possibly never’?”

“Yes,” she admitted, and they were both quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Let’s not borrow trouble. Let’s see what they say.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wondered if they were presumptuous.
Let’s. Let us. Us.

Once before in her life, she’d let herself get used to the idea of
us
. Let herself get used to the comfort of
knowing
someone felt the same way about her as she felt about him. And once before, her life had been terribly altered by the discovery that she’d been wrong.

This was why she’d resisted falling for Hunter in the first place. This was why she’d kept their relationship a secret from the girls all this time. Because you couldn’t count on
us
.

Hunter had convinced her you could. He’d made her believe it. But he’d been wrong.

“So we were…?” He inclined his head questioningly.

“Involved. Yes.”

“How involved?”

There was something charmingly male and guileless about the question that made her half smile, despite how lost she felt. Of course, like the thirteen-year-old boy trapped inside him, he wanted to know first off whether they’d slept together. Next, he’d want to know whether he’d been good at it.

“Very,” she said, remembering their last night together and then wishing she hadn’t as a wave of sadness washed over her.

For a moment there was something in his eyes. A dark glimmer. And she waited, breathless, for him to say what she hoped to hear.
We could try again.
Or, better yet,
There is something so familiar about the way I feel right now. As if I’m falling all over again.

But then the look was gone. And all she saw in his rugged, handsome face was regret and guilt.

Maybe if he weren’t so tired, maybe then he’d have been able to give her what her eyes were pleading for. But ever since he’d been ripped open, he’d felt a thousand years old. It was harder to catch his breath. His blood seemed to surge pell-mell through his veins and arteries, a feeling like an adrenaline rush but for no good reason.

“Do you believe me?” she whispered.

Maybe he should have been more cynical, more suspicious, but it hadn’t actually occurred to him that she might be lying. She’d never seemed deceitful. He wasn’t rolling in dough, and he didn’t own anything worth committing fraud over. She wasn’t asking him for anything anyway. And there was the matter of all the other missing pieces, such as Clara’s giant leap forward developmentally and his mother’s mysterious relationship with the motorcycle-loving Ray. No, there was a year missing from his life, and it was at least remotely plausible that during that year he might have found his way into Trina’s pants.

After all…

He tried to assess her without appearing to ogle. He’d always thought of her as Phoebe’s “pretty mom,” without any designs on her. There had always been a good reason not to look too closely or too hungrily. He was married. She was his wife’s friend. She was his daughter’s best friend’s mother. She was a mom in a small community where word got around, a mom who appeared to have enough of a struggle to keep her head above water that she didn’t need anyone tomcatting around.

And, of course, he’d had very strict rules for himself about casual sex. As in, he didn’t do it. Or, he didn’t do it anymore. You only had to have one incident where K-I-S-S-I-N-G led to marriage and a baby in a baby carriage before you realized that skipping the
love
part of the equation could only lead to trouble.

So, yeah, if he’d admired the flare of Trina’s ass or the generous curves swelling her clingy T-shirt, he’d kept those thoughts dead and buried.

But when he looked at her more closely now…

Her big eyes and delicious mouth gave her a sex-kitten appeal that he’d somehow overlooked.

Although, of course, he hadn’t overlooked it. He’d apparently sampled it.

And what else?

Damn, it was frustrating. Had they been good together? What had she been like?

He knew so little about her. She’d gotten pregnant young, but he didn’t actually know how young. She’d never married Phoebe’s dad, who was an actor on a well-known TV show (something Phoebe brought up as frequently as possible in conversation). Phoebe’s dad had periodically sent extravagant gifts to her—he knew because Dee had told him—but didn’t pay regular child support. Trina worked long hours, sometimes more than one job, to hang onto their small apartment in the highly ranked district where Phoebe and Clara went to school.

She had to be a good mom, because Phoebe was a sweet kid. Funny, thoughtful, polite, good in school, an unfailingly loyal friend to Clara.

But that was about it. That was about all he could say he knew about Trina Levine.

And yet he’d apparently had sex with her.

Very
, she’d said, when he’d asked how serious they’d been.

He wondered what that meant.

Screaming passion and mutual orgasms? Or just—compatibility?

Sex that was by turns tender, fun, and wild? Or just—sex?

Imagining Trina in the throes had brought on a half-mast state of arousal and the beginnings of one of those headaches that had been his intermittent companion since he’d woken up at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany.
Loss of blood, dehydration, shock
, they’d said.

Now he wondered what they’d missed.

“I could show you the letters you sent me,” she said. “They must be somewhere. And emails. We sent each other loads of emails. You could read them…”

Damn, he’d never answered her question. She’d asked if he believed her.

“No,” he said. It came out shorter than he meant it to. “I mean, yes. I believe you. But no—not the letters and emails. Not now. Maybe another day.”

To have to read through a year of correspondence with her watching him with that hopeful, expectant look. He didn’t think he could take it.

“So—what happens now?”

With a shock, he realized that mixed in with all the uncertainty, there was invitation in her eyes and voice. Of course. As far as she was concerned, they had a history.

He could have her if he wanted. That’s what she seemed to be trying to tell him.

He was human. He was male. The pleasing visuals and the note of willingness, even eagerness—they worked on him. Half-mast obediently swelled to downright—or, erm, upright—enthusiastic.

Twelve years ago, give or take, he’d followed his dick into bed with Dee. They’d been in basic together, and she’d pursued him, and he’d been flattered. They hadn’t been the only pair to ignore the absolute injunction against fraternization.

If a little part of him had known that he didn’t feel about Dee the way Dee felt about him, that part had been a whisper drowned by the fun and ease of regular, ready sex, the drama of doing the forbidden, and the appeal of being one of the few men he knew who was actually getting laid.

Then Dee had gotten pregnant—

And they’d had to get married. No choice, not in the army.

Slowly he’d realized. He’d sorted out what was sex and what was love. His emotions caught up to his libido. And it turned out his libido had been overeager and misguided, egged on by circumstance. But by then, he was married with a kid, committed to a lifetime. He’d accepted that—embraced his reality. He had vowed to be the best husband and father he could possibly be.

But it had niggled at him, the constant sense that there was something missing, that there was more to life, something he might never have a shot at. He’d wanted to be a better, more generous, more loving spouse and parent, but he’d often found himself wondering what the road not taken looked like.

And despite his best intentions, he and Dee had failed each other in tiny ways every day—death by a thousand cuts—until they were both worn down.

Since then, he’d been wary of moments like these, when the balance of power was all wrong, all in his hands. When a woman was willing, even eager, even though they both knew he couldn’t give her what she ultimately wanted. When she was interested in more, and he wasn’t.

But he’d been interested in Trina once.

Could it happen again?

He searched his soul for a sign, but all he got back were the demands of his body.

Maybe if he hadn’t been so tired. Maybe if his head hadn’t begun to pound. Maybe if he felt some faint tingle of
real
recognition, some sparking synapses, alerting dormant emotions.

But all he had was the sense that maybe another man in a better state of mind, at a different place, in a different time, might have made a different decision. And all he had to offer were two words that he knew, absolutely knew, weren’t the words she needed to hear.

“I’m sorry.”