by Fleur Smith
I picked up Ava and, despite a look of protest from Aiden, Willow gave our son to Clay, who held him securely in just one arm. When I gave Aiden a sharp glare to silence any further arguments he might try to make against Clay, he bowed his head.
“Please accept my apology, Lynnie,” Aiden murmured as I passed him. “I am truly only concerned with watching over your well-being and acting in the best interests of the court.”
With a glance at his concerned face a little bit of sympathy returned to me. Maybe he did deserve for me to give him the benefit of the doubt and try to see things from his side.
Ethan was right after all, everything Aiden had done was to look after his family, and that included me. After all, he had saved my life when Clay attacked the first time and he hadn’t witnessed the transition Clay went through to help deliver our son. I could understand why it was so hard for him to trust Clay, but equally, he needed to learn to trust me and my judgment.
I decided that Clay and I would just have to prove it to him. We’d prove to everyone that things were back to the way they were supposed to be, that we were a family again.
Willow reached for my arm just before we turned to leave. “Make sure you keep up with the healing water I gave you, it will help bring your milk in and speed things along so that you can make love sooner,” she whispered quietly so that only I could hear.
I almost choked on my tongue at how casually she’d said it, but then curiosity got the better of me and I had to know. Even though it had been the furthest thing from my mind all morning, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before that changed. “How long exactly?”
“Two to three weeks at the most.” She winked.
I thanked her and then turned to Clay, ready to head toward our room. I tried to hide the blush as I met his eyes and thought of how soon we might be able to spend some alone time together again. As sore as I was, the thought of having a proper reunion with him after so many weeks of worry and stress was already playing on my mind.
“Thank you for standing up for me in there,” Clay said as he followed me from the healing rooms.
“That’s what you do for the person you love,” I said, shuffling Ava in my arms and reaching forward to grasp his free hand in mine. My fingers entwined with his in the way they always had, the feeling of his palm flush against mine and the way his fingers curled to give me a reassuring squeeze proved to me that I was right in my assessment. He wasn’t the dangerous man who’d attacked the guards and then me just a few hours earlier. He was the man I loved. Against all odds, he’d come back to me.
I only wished I knew how. I considered every moment during the fight and realized the change seemed to happen almost immediately after I’d broken down. I wondered whether it had something to do with my tears. I vaguely recalled something about phoenix tears having a healing quality, but I couldn’t remember where I’d read it or whether it might be true.
Holding Clay’s hand tightly in my own, I led the way to the part of the court that housed our bedroom. Beyond all hope, we’d been reunited and now we had two beautiful children who would be blessed with both a mother and a father—something that had seemed impossible for so long for so many reasons. I had always assumed I would be the one to miss out on seeing our child, but that had almost been Clay’s fate.
It doesn’t matter now, I thought. We’re together again and we have the rest of our lives together.
There were still a myriad of unanswered questions about everything, but they could wait until after Clay’s acquittal. And I would do everything in my power to ensure that he was exonerated.
Ava began to fuss and wiggle against my hold. It was all so new to me that I worried I would drop her if she kept moving, so I released Clay’s hand and shifted her into a more secure hold in my arms. While I was stopped, Clay took the lead. When we reached a point where the hallway ended in a T junction, he turned left when he should have turned right.
“It’s this way,” I said, pointing in the correct direction.
“That’s right,” he said in an uncertain voice.
“I know we’ve been gone from the court for a few months, but you haven’t forgotten the way to our room so quickly have you?” The words reminded me that he had indeed forgotten a great deal, even if he did have his memories back now. Maybe his returned memory isn’t quite complete. If it isn’t, what else is he missing?
I ignored the thought, not wanting to allow in any extra negativity after the day I’d had. I needed another shower, rest, and then some time alone with my new little family.
“I guess some things are still a little muddled.” He smiled ruefully at me before following me down the hall.
“That’s probably to be expected,” I justified for both of us. “After all, Aiden said most people never get their memory back, so I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth if all that’s missing is your sense of direction.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything further as we walked to our room. When I entered the room, I realized that there had been some changes made since we’d last visited. I couldn’t say how long ago it had been placed there, but there was a crib along one wall—underneath the mural of the notes Clay had made about my true nature during our second separation.
Clay walked almost immediately to the crib and gently laid our son onto the mattress. He almost seemed reluctant to hold him for a moment more. It had gone from one extreme to another. He lifted his gaze and appeared to read the words printed on the mural for a few moments before turning away. He explored the space with a sadness I didn’t understand.
Holding Ava in my arms, I followed him as he walked slowly around the room, pausing in front of the giant portrait of the two of us—the one Ethan had snapped at the Gansevoort Hotel while we were making “goo-goo” eyes at each other.
“I have a confession to make,” he whispered as his eyes explored the canvass. “I don’t actually remember you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I DON’T REMEMBER any of this.”
I spun toward him with our daughter in my arms. The warmth of her stopped the chill in my blood from flooding through my body, but only just. “What do you mean you don’t remember?”
He turned to me. “I don’t remember the life these pictures show. It means nothing to me.”
“Why would you let me think you had?” I asked, backing away from him slowly just in case this was part of a bigger plan to catch me off guard. He could have done that a minute ago while your back was turned. Without the pain of labor racing through me, my body’s first reaction to the renewed fear he inspired in me was anger, only I didn’t have the fire of the sunbird for protection any longer.
He simply shrugged.
“I stood up for you,” I shouted. “I went out on a limb for you! I believed that I had my husband back. You let me believe that!”
Ava seemed to sense my fear and her skin warmed in my hold. I panicked for a moment about what that might mean, but as worrying as the implications to it were, it wasn’t the immediate concern. I tried to calm my breathing and release the anger and anxiety that battled in me. If my fears were right, I needed to calm down for Ava’s sake.
The blue ring of Clay’s eyes appeared even more vivid than usual as he assessed me cautiously. “I didn’t want to frighten you.”
“Are you freaking kidding me? You didn’t mind that at all a few seconds before your miraculous turnaround. You know, when you were trying to kill me.”
I should raise the alarm.
He’d been confined to quarters and that, combined with Aiden’s obvious distrust, made me certain a shout of help from me would have the room flooded with guards relatively quickly. I just wasn’t certain whether or not I needed to be afraid.
He’s had multiple chances to hurt you since he turned around, and he hasn’t.
I needed to hear him out. “Why didn’t you want to scare me? What made you stop?”
“You didn’t kill me,” he said simply. “Then your pain wa
s so apparent that it made me think maybe you weren’t lying. I witnessed the raw emotions of your tears and your anger. They were both so real that I realized you had to be telling the truth. Based on what I’d seen, I couldn’t justify your death any longer. I thought you were evil. A seductress willing to tempt me back to your side with the power of your spell, but I could see I was wrong. Everything I saw with my own eyes contradicted what I’d been told about you. At that time, you needed help, and I was willing to offer it. I never claimed to have remembered anything about you.”
“Told about me?” I asked, seizing on the moment to find out more about what had happened to him. My mouth was dry, and I worried I sounded too eager when I added, “By who?”
“By Dad.” He shrugged as he moved around the space again, taking in the details of our life together. He paused in front of the frame with three photos—two, one from my youth and one of Mom and Dad, which had been in the room after I’d woken from my near-death experience after the attack on Bayview, and a third, a more recently added wedding photo.
“Dad?” I asked as his words confirmed what I’d feared since he’d left. If his father was involved, would he continue to be a threat? Was he aware of where Clay was right now?
I shifted closer to the crib and placed Ava next to her brother because between my racing heart and trembling body I was beginning to worry about my ability to hold her securely. I also didn’t want her to sense my fear because that seemed to warm her skin further, which only served to add another layer to my stress. Once I’d laid her gently alongside our son, I shifted so that I formed a barrier between my babies and their father, just in case he moved to hurt them.
“He found me in Alaska,” Clay said, turning back away from the photos to finally look at me before his eyes flicked away again almost as quickly. “I had absolutely no memory of anything and the ability to see things I shouldn’t have been able to. Dad cornered me near the edge of a rock face. Just as I went to attack, he told me who he was. He showed me a mirror so that I could see the similarities between us.”
The casualness of his glance as he moved around the highly personal area again made me feel almost violated. The horrific realization that I’d fed my children for the first time in front of him followed—it was something that I’d thought was private, and I’d done it in front of a practical stranger. Even though it was too late to protect my modesty, I tugged the ends of my shirt against each other to ensure it was completely closed.
“I should have known he was involved in this somehow,” I growled. “Why would he do this to you? To us?”
“Why do you assume that he did anything?” Clay said, his voice defensive and sharp.
I rolled my eyes but then reminded myself that Clay didn’t know the history of his family and me. “For starters because it’s too much of a coincidence that out of anyone in the world who could have possibly found you in the Alaskan wilderness, it was your dad. Why was he even there?”
“He was there with me before I lost my memory.”
Clay’s words confirmed that his memory loss was part of a grand plan on his father’s part.
“No, you went there with Ethan. No one’s heard from your Dad in months—not since he almost killed me.” The memory of waking to Clay’s confession that he’d pulled me from the fire that was set to consume my body made tears prick at my eyes. The love he’d shown then was a far cry from the detached man in front of me now.
“Ethan,” he murmured. “My brother.”
Even as he said the name, there was no emotion in his tone, and I wondered whether he even realized that he’d attacked his own brother at our house.
I doubted whether he even cared, but then he glanced up at me. “He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?”
I nodded as I took in the concern in his eyes. “Apparently he will.”
“Good.”
“Ethan said it was almost as if you’d both been led to that place,” I said, recalling the conversation I’d had before Clay had reappeared. “I think maybe your Dad knew about the waters of Lethe and deliberately wiped your memory,”
“That’s a pretty big accusation,” he growled. “Especially coming from—”
“A freak?” I challenged, selecting the one word that my Clay would have vehemently fought against, if only because he knew the pain it held for me.
Clay just shrugged. “Exactly.”
I pushed aside the pain of Clay’s uncaring attitude and tried to think through the possibilities of Troy’s plan. “I wonder if he was behind the púca as well. Ethan said it was acting strange.”
I wondered again whether the púca that had gone to the fae and potentially saved Ethan’s life was the same one they’d been tracking in Alaska. It was another unanswered mystery, but hopefully one I would get answers about soon enough. After all, Aiden wanted me to talk to the púca.
Except going there means leaving our babies alone with Clay.
Despite what I’d said to Aiden when I’d thought Clay was back, the idea of leaving this new Clay alone with our children made my heart race and my palms sweaty. He’d attacked his brother, tried to kill me, and allowed me to believe he had his memory back. What else was he capable of? Would he hurt them?
“Why would he do something like that?” Clay asked, repeating my own questioning thoughts back at me but with a slightly unkind tone to his voice. “He’s not a monster.”
I closed my eyes at the word, wondering whether Clay had thought of me as a monster again when he’d hunted me in our home. “No, but he thinks I’m one.”
Troy most likely didn’t know that the sunbird was resting—and had in fact now passed on to the next generation. He would have thought I was still something other, something only worthy of study or destruction. And I knew he had no longer had any desire to study my capabilities—not considering he blamed me for his split from his family.
“But if I cared about you as much as these photos seem to illustrate, if that wasn’t just some trick, wouldn’t he want me to be happy?”
“I wish it was that simple.” The twisted logic of Troy began to make some strange sense in my mind. “He probably thought it was a way to get at least one of his children on his side,” I guessed as my anger subsided into sorrow and self-preservation. “He probably even thought that if you were working with him, you’d turn Louise and Ethan to his viewpoint.”
“Why?”
“Because in his mind, you turned them to my side.”
As my words washed over Clay, he frowned and his mouth twisted.
I shook my hand, trying to get him to disregard the statement because it was easier than trying to explain it all. “Regardless of everything that happened between all of you, I do think he loves you three . . . in his own messed up way that is.”
Clay stared at me as if trying to figure out the meaning behind my words, but without the knowledge of our past, it would have been impossible for him to understand. How could anyone understand seven years of both pain and euphoria without having experienced it first hand?
“So if you were mistaken about your belief that I wanted to hurt you and you are no longer obsessed with hunting me, what are you going to do now?” I asked. I wasn’t sure that I knew what I wanted him to do. I didn’t want him to stay with me against his will, but neither was I entirely willing to let him go. Despite all of his admissions, he was still Clay. Plus, he’d helped deliver our children.
And he’d paused long enough to save my life. Again.
I didn’t want to say goodbye to him forever so soon after getting him back. At least, not until I’d tried absolutely everything possible to bring my real husband back to me. It was a confusing situation where the man I loved was no longer the man I loved.
I don’t want this. I just want my Clay back.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said, sounding so lost that all I wanted to do was comfort him. Considering how instinctive that was to me, I actually had to force my arms to stay by my side and my feet to stay
stationary.
Watching his confusion, I gained a greater appreciation of the fact that when he’d been forced under the waters of the river he’d lost everything I had and more. At least I had a family and support group that had helped me deal with my loss. I had the memories of all of the happy times we’d had together to use as a light to guide my way through the darkness. He’d had his father filling his mind with lies and propaganda against me and the fae.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to Dad just yet, at least not until I know the truth about a few things. I think I need a little time to work out what’s real and what’s not.” Sighing, he turned his back on me and stared at the picture of the two of us again. “We look really happy,” he murmured.
“We were.” Tears pricked at my eyes and stole my voice. Even though there didn’t appear to be any malice in his deception, it hurt more than I could admit to myself. I was a fool for being so willing to believe his turnaround. There was more to it than that though.
The tiny fissures that covered my heart had repaired when I thought my husband had returned. After his admission, each one of them had ruptured into gaping chasms. Regardless of whether his intention had been good or not, the result was that I’d just lost Clay for the second time in as many months.
“I wish I remembered what it felt like to be that happy,” he said wistfully. “It would be nice to feel something other than hate and confusion.”
My heart broke for him. How could I even start to fix him, though, when I didn’t know how to fix myself. My tears fell in earnest. “You really don’t remember anything?”
He spun toward the sound of my tear-strained voice. His eyes narrowed and his face reddened as he watched my tears fall. Despite the obvious anger contorting his features, I didn’t feel in danger. It was clear his rage wasn’t directed at me, my tears just brought it to the surface.
“I really don’t. And I really hate that because I can see so much love in these photos and I just helped deliver a child who looks exactly like me. It’s clear that we were happy at some point, and somehow I did something to ruin that. You said so yourself. Now I’m left to deal with the fallout of the mistakes of another man, and I hate it.” His hands clenched into fists by his side.