Leah broke eye contact. The little voice in the back of her mind screamed Matty.
When she didn’t answer, he stood and looked down at her. “You have reservations?” he asked, frowning.
“No. No reservations. Just one complication.”
“Do you love this other man?” he asked, his face twisted with distress.
Leah sat up and pulled the sheet over her naked body. “I think I do.”
She watched Brennan’s jaw drop open and then the panic flit across his face.
“But it’s not how I love you, Brennan,” she said. “I will never love anyone else as much as I love you for as long as I live. But I love him enough to not want to hurt him.”
Brennan sat down again on the bed beside Leah and took a deep breath in before exhaling forcefully. “I can’t even think about anyone else being with you. It kills me to think of another man touching you—loving you.”
“Then don’t. Not yet,” she pleaded, leaning over and stroking his cheek with her finger. “For now, while it’s you and me, let’s enjoy being together again.”
He pulled the sheet down from her body, revealing her nakedness, and kissed her. Brennan ran his fingertips up and along Leah’s thigh. “You’re so incredibly beautiful,” he whispered.
Leah blushed and lowered her eyes. “I’m a little thinner than what you would remember.”
“A little,” he agreed.
“And my hair is short now.”
“I noticed that.”
She traced the pink, raised scar on her face, but couldn’t speak of it.
“A few insignificant differences are not going to change how I feel about you. You’re still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he said.
“If you had have seen me six months ago, you wouldn’t have said that. I was absolutely ghastly.”
He stroked a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “You wouldn’t have been ghastly in my eyes. I would give anything to have been with you six months ago. Absolutely anything.”
“Me too.”
Brennan stood up from the bed and pulled on a pair of shorts. “Come on. Out to the kitchen,” he said, holding his hand out to her. “I’ll make us a coffee and I think I have a lazy block of chocolate lying around somewhere.”
Leah smiled.
***
Brennan made them both a cup of coffee and they took a seat on the couch in Brennan’s lounge room. He opened a block of chocolate and handed a chunk to Leah.
“Remind you of old times?” he asked.
She laughed. “A little.”
Brennan turned towards her then, crossing his right leg under him. “What universal laws have been broken here? Two complete strangers are freakishly involved in the same motor vehicle accident and both fall into comas that last around the same amount of time?” he burst out, waving his arms. “But if all that wasn’t enough, two strangers meet, and fall in love, in some weird dream that feels completely realistic. Meanwhile our bodies are battered and unconscious in hospital beds.”
“I know, it does my head in,” said Leah. “I’ve been wrestling with it for the last nine months. I mean, even sitting in this apartment is bizarre. I’ve never physically been in here, yet every detail is familiar. You must have somehow shared those vivid details with me.”
“Yeah. Like I surrendered my thoughts and memories to you, and you to me, so we could create a sort of virtual reality together.”
Leah lifted her coffee cup to her lips and swallowed a mouthful, her mind rampant with explanations. “Let’s make sure I understand this. Do you have a mother and a father named Kerri and Jack? And a brother Alex who runs Lee Super Sports? And a sister-in-law, Joanne, and twin eight-year-old nephews who are crazy about AFL?”
Brennan smiled. “That’s exactly right. What about you? You have two sisters Cait and Sinead, a father named Ronny who is the biggest Hawthorn fan this side of Melbourne, and a mother who passed when you were four.”
Leah nodded. “And in my head you have met all these people and my dad loves you, but in reality, they don’t know who you are at all. But you know, if I went out to your parent’s property, I would be able to make cheese with your mother. I would know every step of what I was doing. I would know where the vegetable patch was and be able to confidently ride a quad bike. I could bone a leg of lamb without Kerri’s instructions.”
Brennan sat silently, chewing on his chocolate. “I know. It’s almost too bizarre isn’t it?”
“Definitely. Just when I felt as though I was getting my sanity back, you turn up and send me right back to square one.”
Brennan laughed and took another sip of his coffee before resting it on the small table in front of him. “You know I went to your apartment one day. Probably about two months ago, once I was able to drive again.”
“You did?”
Brennan nodded. “I knocked on your door, hoping with every part of me, that you would answer. Or at least Dan. This weird old woman with blue hair opened the door and I broke down in tears right on her doorstep. I was absolutely shattered. The poor old thing didn’t know what to do.”
This yanked hard on Leah’s heart. She understood what that type of disappointment felt like. She rested her hand on his leg and rubbed his knee. “I had to give up the apartment. It wasn’t financially feasible to keep it.”
“Of course you did.”
“I did the same thing myself, you know?”
“What, you came over to my apartment?” he asked.
Leah shook her head. “Not your apartment, no. Although, I did think about doing that many, many times, but my desire to be sane didn’t allow me to go through with it. One day, though, Danni drove me to one of your brother’s shops and, by sheer coincidence, Alex was there doing some promotional thing.”
Brennan’s eyes widened. “Really? You saw Alex? Did you talk to him?”
“I did. It was not one of my finest moments, let me tell you. I went up to him, convinced that he would recognise me and when I said hello, he looked at me without an ounce of recognition. I cried right there in front of him, in front of a shop full of customers like a blubbering idiot.”
“My poor Leah,” said Brennan leaning over to kiss her on the cheek.
“I know. It was so horrible.” She took another piece of chocolate for comfort. “All these products and people around me suggested that my memories of you were real, and yet none of them did anything but persuade me you didn’t exist. Not now, not ever.”
“I never gave up hope. Just last week, I drove past your dad’s hardware shop, like I have at least a dozen times before and, as much as my therapist disapproved, this time I went in. Your Dad wasn’t there, but I saw Matty.”
Leah flinched. “Matty?”
“I went up to him and said hello to him at first, just to see if he would know who I was. When he didn’t, I thought perhaps I needed to jog his memory a bit. I mean, we only met once and it was a while ago. So I told him who I was and I thought I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes, but he adamantly apologised for not being able to remember me.”
Leah’s heart sank as she listened to Brennan’s recount of that day.
“So then I thought, regardless of what a fool I looked like, I would ask him if he knew someone called Leah.”
Leah asked in a shaky voice, “What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t know anyone called Leah and for about the three hundredth time since I woke up, my heart broke. I actually cried in front of him. A grown man, crying like a baby in front of a complete stranger.”
Leah’s mind was a tangle of thoughts; her heart was fluttering in her chest. Matty knew all about Brennan. Even if he didn’t know his face, he had certainly known his name, and when Brennan mentioned Leah to him, surely he would have put two and two together. But why would Matty pretend he didn’t know who Leah was? He knew how crazy it had made Leah, feeling as though she was going mad believing in a man that everyone said didn’t exist. Why wouldn’t he have told her
that she was right and he had actually seen Brennan?
Leah drained of colour and she felt like she might throw up.
Brennan turned further towards Leah, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay? You don’t look good.”
“I just can’t believe he’d do that to me.”
Brennan narrowed his eyes. “Who? What’s going on?”
Leah stood up off the couch and started to pace back and forth across the timber floor in front of Brennan. “I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“You know how I said I’m currently in a relationship with someone?”
Brennan nodded, his eyebrows crumpled with confusion then cleared. “It’s Matty, isn’t it?”
Leah nodded. “Yes.”
“I guess that makes sense. I mean he’s a nice guy, you’ve been friends for ages, he was obviously infatuated with you…”
“Brennan,” said Leah. “Matty knew all about you. He knew your name. He knows me. I mean, we’re in a relationship for Christ’s sake! But he lied and said he didn’t know who I was.”
Brennan rubbed the bridge of nose with his finger and thumb tensely.
“Why would he do that? He knows how much you mean to me…” She stopped mid-sentence as she answered her own question. Matty lied because he didn’t want to lose her. He knew exactly what would happen—was happening—with Brennan back.
Leah flopped down on the couch beside Brennan and cried. “He doesn’t want to lose me,” she wailed.
Brennan threw his arm around her and pulled her to him, resting her head on his chest. “Of course he wouldn’t. I would’ve done the same thing myself.”
“Oh, God. What am I going to do? He knew tonight when I called from the hospital. He knew. He knew I had run into you and he let me go without saying a word.”
Brennan took a deep breath in. “You need to talk to him. Tonight.”
Leah raised her head and peered at him, her eyes damp with tears. She nodded. “Of course I do. I need to talk to him.” She stood, looking down at Brennan. “We shouldn’t have slept together. That was not the right thing to do, at least not while Matty doesn’t know about… fuck!” she screamed suddenly to the ceiling. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Brennan didn’t answer for a while. “Go talk to him. You need to sort it out.”
Leah felt for her keys in her pocket and strode out the door and down to her car. She turned the engine over and drove off, heading towards Matty’s house, fumbling with her mobile, steering with her one hand, intermittently looking at the road as she dialled his number. It rang once before he answered.
“Leah,” he said.
“I’m on my way over. Are you at home?”
“Yes,” he said, quickly.
“Good. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Are you okay?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Matty hesitated a moment. “I’ll see you soon.”
She hung up and turned up the radio, trying to muffle the incessant thoughts that rocketed through her mind.
Leah soon arrived at Matty’s old post-war house, which he had completely renovated himself. She cut the ignition and sat for a while, trying to decide what she was going to say when she saw him. But before she could come to any firm decision, Matty opened the front door and came down to meet her at the car. He looked his usual warm and compassionate self, and an intense guilt built in the pit of Leah’s stomach.
Matty opened Leah’s car door and she reluctantly hopped out.
“Hey,” said Matty as she stood on the sidewalk beside him.
“Hey.”
They remained silent until they were in the house and sitting together on his lounge.
Before Leah could open her mouth, Matty spoke. “You saw him?”
Leah nodded, but couldn’t speak just yet.
“So that’s it then. It’s over between us?”
He was trying to appear brave, but his voice shook as he spoke. Leah closed her eyes and let fresh tears escape and roll down her cheeks. “This isn’t easy, Matty,” she said softly as she opened her eyes to look at him again.
He shrugged, still forcing that brave veneer, but the cracks were growing bigger by the second. “What’s not easy? He’s back, you got what you wanted.”
Leah sighed. “You should’ve told me you saw him.”
“Why? So I could lose you sooner? Why would I do that? I love you.”
“It’s not your choice to decide something so important!”
“Why isn’t it my choice?” he said, slamming his palm on the coffee table. “Why don’t I get the choice in whether I can continue being with you? Why don’t I get the choice of whether or not I want to continue loving you? Why don’t I get a fucking choice?” He shook his head suddenly and let out a low, anguished sigh. “What does it matter now anyway?”
Leah placed her hand on his thigh, half expecting him to recoil from her touch, but he accepted the comfort. “I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. I love you, and my mind is a mess right now. On one hand I have rediscovered a man I have been grieving for, and once loved so intensely. And then there is you. My saviour. So understanding, and caring, and kind. I have never felt more torn in my entire life.”
Matty looked away. “Do you love me?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. I love you, Matty.”
“But not in the way you love Brennan.”
Leah lowered her eyes and nodded. “I will never be able to love another person like I love him.”
Matty drew in a deep breath and a lone tear fell from his eye. He wiped his cheek with his hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Brennan. I know it was the wrong thing to do. But I couldn’t do it. You were doing so well, getting your life back together. I couldn’t intentionally inflict that much pain on myself.”
Leah nodded slowly. “I can see it from your side. I just wish you had told me so I could’ve decided for myself. Having Brennan thrust back into my life without any warning has been… crazy.”
“I know. Like I said, I’m sorry.”
“Well, there’s nothing that can be done now. It is what it is.”
Matty’s shoulders slumped. “As much as it kills me to say this, it’s the truth and it needs to be said.” He raised his eyes to her. “I won’t stand in the way of you and Brennan.”
Leah’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“I’ve seen the illumination on your face when you speak about Brennan. I heard you talk about him while you were asleep. I notice when you close your eyes and wish he was the one making love to you. Not me. You love me in one way, and I have been fooling myself that that love will be enough. But in the long run it won’t be. Brennan’s the one that holds your candle. I’m just the poor sucker who helped relight it.”
“You’re giving me up?” she whispered.
“I don’t have a choice. I will never make you happy like he can. I love you too much to keep you from having that happiness.”
Leah kissed Matty softly on the lips. “You’re the most incredible, most selfless man I have ever met.”
“Yeah, well. I wish I wasn’t.”
Leah sat there silently beside him on the couch, not knowing what to say or what to do. Matty’s were eyes moist with tears. “Please. Can you leave?”
Leah nodded. “Will you be alright?”
“I’ll be fine, eventually. But right now, I can’t have you near me or I’ll change my mind and take back everything I’ve said.”
“I do love you, Matty.”
He nodded his head sombrely. “And I have always loved you.”
Leah stood, taking Matty by the hands and urging him up off the couch. She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. “Thank you so much for understanding.”
He kissed her on her cheek and breathed in her scent one final time. “It’s not easy.”
“I know. You’ll always be a part of my life.”
“I hope so.”
<
br /> Leah smiled sympathetically at him. “Bye.”
“Bye, Leah.”
As Leah walked down the front pathway to her car she heard Matty give an anguished yell and a loud crash. An intense guilt wrenched her body, and she nearly turned to tell him she would stay. But she knew what he had said to her had been right. Her heart did belong to Brennan. Matty would never be able to give her what Brennan could. Matty had helped put the fire back into her candle, but the only person who could ever hold it was Brennan.
Chapter 24
Leah and Brennan made their way up the familiar country road to Kerri and Jack’s hinterland home.
“Do you think they will like me?” asked Leah, fidgeting with the buttons on her shirt.
Brennan looked at her and smiled, his beautiful blue eyes flashing. “Don’t forget, they’ve already met you and loved you. So I think you can be assured that they’ll feel the same meeting you this time around.”
Leah nodded. “Do you think Joanne is going to do the whole psycho act in real life when she meets me?”
Brennan shrugged. “That I can’t guarantee. But at least you know now why, if she does, and how to put her onside again.”
“I guess so.”
There was a silence before Leah asked, “Do you think that Alex is going to think I’m a little off-tap, considering I cried in front of him at his store?”
Brennan laughed heartily this time. “I talked to him about that and he understands completely. In fact, he feels guilty that he didn’t put two and two together and realise that you were the Leah I had been going to therapy over.”
“Okay.”
“Now please stop worrying. Before you know it, it will be just like old times.”
They pulled into the driveway of Brennan’s parent’s property and Leah took in the beautiful view as they drove down and parked out the front of the house.
Kerri and Jack, along with Alex and Joanne and the two boys, Jeremy and Jordan, came out to meet them. Leah’s heart was beating frantically as she waited for Brennan to join her at her door.
“Don’t worry,” Brennan whispered as he took her by the hand and helped her out the car. “They’ll love you.”
She smiled at him. “I think you’ve said that before.”
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