Dare

by Glenna Sinclair

  “A mural?”

  “It was part of the reason you moved to Los Angeles.”

  I couldn’t remember. It was so frustrating because I knew it was right there, but I couldn’t remember it.

  The woman took a long swallow of her wine and set the glass down on the narrow bar.

  “I should go,” she said.

  “No, please. Don’t let me interrupt.”

  She looked at me, her face suddenly very pale.

  “We’re we friends?”

  She nodded slowly. “We were. I was to be one of your bridesmaids.”

  I nodded slowly. “Did we go look at dresses together?”

  If it was possible for her face to get paler, it did then.

  “Once,” she said so quietly I almost missed it.

  She seemed so…guilty. What did she have to be guilty about?

  I had so many questions, but she turned to Xander and kissed his cheek lightly, whispering something near his ear as she did. Then she turned to me, a forced smile on her lips. “I have to go. But I’ll come back sometime to see you.”

  And then she was gone in a puff, leaving even Xander staring at her wake.

  “Did I do something to her?”

  Xander shook his head. “Margaret is something of a character. She’s always acting oddly.”

  “The two of you are close?”

  A sudden caution came into his expression.

  “We’ve known each other most of our lives.”

  “Were you ever romantically involved?”

  Now it was his turn to pale. He came over to me and slipped behind my wheelchair, pushing me toward the kitchen. “It’s time for your medication.”

  “It won’t upset me if you talk to me about your romantic past.”

  “You always said you didn’t want to know about it.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. You told me you would rather just start from the beginning of us and pretend like the past no longer existed.”

  “That’s an odd thing for me to say.”

  “Yes, well, Philip’s betrayal really scarred you. You didn’t want to know anything about my past that might change the way you felt about me, I guess.”

  “I suppose that makes sense. But wouldn’t it have been better for me to know so that there wouldn’t be any surprises?”

  “Yeah, well, I guess that never occurred to either of us.”

  There was something in his voice when he said that; it caused me to wonder if there was something in his past that could have, or did, change the way I felt about him. But he changed the subject before I could push it any further.

  ***

  I was having that dream again. It was odd because I knew it was a dream. But it also felt like a memory—even though I don’t remember it actually happening.

  That woman was there. We were in the bridal shop and I was wearing that hideous dress. This time we were laughing, as though it was some great joke. She said something, but I didn’t quite hear what it was she said. And then the dream shifted.

  We were in a cavernous room that was so large our voices were echoing off the walls.

  “I can’t believe you would betray me that way! Why wouldn’t you tell me something like that? I thought we were friends. You were supposed to be a part of my wedding for God’s sake!”

  “It wasn’t my place to tell you. Xander should have done it.”

  “But we worked together all this time—”

  “I thought he’d already told you. I thought you were okay with it.”

  “Well, you thought too much.”

  “It was a lifetime ago, Harley. It’s been over so long that it doesn’t even feel like it was part of this life.”

  “But it was. And neither of you felt the need to tell me.”

  I had no idea what we were arguing over; yet, the emotions roaring through my body were very real. There were tears streaming down my face, and my fists were clutched at my side—tight enough that I could feel the ache in my fingers. And the rage in my chest…it wasn’t just anger. It was rage. I don’t think I’d ever felt emotion quite like that ever before.

  It was so intense that it pulled me out of the dream, out of sleep all together. I sat up, my breath coming in small, awkward puffs.

  “Xander.”

  His name was on my lips before I even realized he was on my mind. But the moment I spoke it, my body began to ache for him in a way I couldn’t remember ever feeling. My body remembered him. My heart remembered him. And that scared me.

  How could somebody love someone so much that even when the individual couldn’t remember that person, the body—the soul—could?

  Chapter 11

  Harley

  “This is from a weekend we spent in Malibu,” Xander said, as he scrolled to a new picture on his phone. “We stayed at a friend’s house and spent most of the weekend walking on the beach.”

  I stared at my own face smiling at me, Xander’s cheek pressed against mine with an even wider grin. It was one of those selfies that sickeningly adorable couples took to rub in the faces of all their single friends on Facebook or Twitter. I couldn’t get over how happy I looked—even with the first hints of a sunburn on my shoulders.

  “That was after I moved to Los Angeles?”

  “Yes. About two or three months after. I remember it was still a little cold outside, so we had to wear sweaters when we walked in the evenings.”

  I nodded, still staring at the picture.

  I’d been here—I still couldn’t quite bring myself to call it home—for almost a week. Xander tried to give me space, but we kept having these conversations where he would talk about people I didn’t know, places I didn’t remember going, and things I couldn’t even imagine doing, let alone remember doing. So he thought showing me a few pictures of our life together might help.

  But I didn’t recognize that girl in those pictures.

  “This was a dinner party we attended at my mother’s boss’s house.”

  I studied the picture, admiring the black shoes the girl who looked like me was wearing.

  “It that your mother?”

  “Yeah. That’s her.”

  I studied the woman with the dark hair and blue eyes that were so much like Xander’s. There was no doubt that they were related. She was a little shorter—more petite than I would have imagined such a large man’s mother would be—but I could see him in the lines of her face and the shape of her nose. She was a beautiful woman.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Bonnie.”

  I nodded, even though it didn’t ring any bells. “She looks like a nice person.”

  “She is. One of the nicest women I know.” He moved the phone, swiping his finger over it to find another photo. “She really liked you.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. What do you say to a statement like that?

  Great. I’m sure I loved her, too?

  “This is us about a week after you moved here. We were hiking up in one of the canyons.”

  I tilted my head slightly as I looked at the picture. I was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, a red and black fanny pack around my waist. I thought I recognized the shorts, but that was about it.

  “And this was our engagement party.”

  The picture he showed me then was of the two of us standing with a group of strangers. A dark-haired woman. His mother. Margaret. Another dark-haired woman. A thin, squirrely looking man. A couple with their arms wrapped around one another.

  This was just confusing me more than it was helping.

  I sat back and rubbed my hand over my head, the feel of the thin stubble that now covered my head as disconcerting and foreign as the faces in these photos. My leg ached, and the skin under the plaster itched like crazy. My shoulder ached; my arm was cramped from the sling where it was constantly stuck. And my head felt like I had the world’s worst headache.

  I wanted to be anywhere but here. I wanted to go home, to surround myself with people I knew, p
eople who knew me. I wanted my life to go back to some sort of normal.

  And when I looked at Xander, I wished I could give him back the woman he was clearly missing.

  He wasn’t looking at me. He was scrolling through the pictures, clearly lost in his own memories of those moments. I felt bad because I felt like I was letting him down. I was trying. Really, I was trying to remember who I was. I wanted to remember. But it just wasn’t happening.

  “What happened to the ring?”

  He looked up, tilting his phone slightly so that I could see that he was looking at yet another of those ridiculous selfies of the two of us. Only in this one I was smiling at the camera and he was looking at me, an adoring look in his eyes.

  How could I forget a man who would look at me that way?

  “The ring?”

  “You said we were engaged. We were already planning the wedding. So what happened to the ring?”

  He set his phone on the coffee table and stood, walking over to the entryway. He stepped just out of sight and was back in a second, a small black box in his hands.

  “They took all your jewelry off at the hospital.”

  He handed me the box and sat beside me again, a look of expectation on his face.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the ring. Would it bring back memories? Or would it just be a ring, another part of my past I couldn’t remember?

  I popped open the box and gasped a little as I stared at the impressive ring inside. It was a large, heart-shaped diamond set in platinum. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. The diamond itself was so clear…I didn’t know anything about diamonds, but even I could tell he’d spent a great deal of money on this ring. Not that money really mattered, but still…it was impressive.

  I slid it out of the box and had a suddenly flash of memory:

  “I think four would be the perfect number. Two boys. Two girls.”

  “Four? Are you sure we could handle that many?”

  “If you can handle me, you can handle a whole houseful of kids.”

  He laughed. “Then why stop at four. We could have eight or nine. A whole baseball team!”

  My hands started to shake. I thought for a moment that I might drop the ring.

  “Hey…you okay?”

  I looked at Xander, and I could see the laughter dancing in his eyes as it had the night we became engaged.

  “We were supposed to have dinner with one of your clients. But when we got to the restaurant, you had rented the whole place for the night. There was a violinist and roses everywhere…red and yellow and that odd blue color that you said was twice as expensive so it must be the best.”

  His eyes widened. “You remember?”

  “You got down on your knee as soon as we walked inside because you said you were so nervous you were afraid you’d lose your courage if you didn’t do it immediately. And I told you that you should have waited because if I’d said no, it would have spoiled the dinner you arranged.”

  He nodded. “And I said that if you’d said no, I wouldn’t have wanted to have food in my stomach anyway because I would have been as sick as a dog.”

  “But we ended up not eating because you just wanted to come home.”

  He nodded again, the excitement in his eyes bringing more and more of the memory back to me.

  I remembered the feel of his hand on my thigh as we drove back to the house. The taste of his lips as he kissed me while he fumbled with the front door. We didn’t make it up the stairs. We…a blush burned my cheeks when I realized I was sitting where we made love that night. The first time, anyway. And then we lay in bed, our fingers intertwined, planning our future.

  “You wanted to go to the justice of the peace the next morning, but I told you my parents would kill us if we didn’t get married in a proper church.”

  He touched my cheek, his fingers moving over my jaw with a gentleness that felt so familiar. “And I agreed because I knew it would make you happy.”

  “It did.” I sighed. “I can remember how it felt when I opened that box. I remember the things you said to me, the way that felt. I just…it’s like someone took my life and cut it into little pieces and scattered the pieces in the wind.”

  “It’ll come back.”

  “I was happy,” I said. “So very happy.”

  “We both were.”

  His hand moved around my jaw, and his fingers buried themselves in my hair. I knew he was going to kiss me. And I knew what it was going to feel like. But when his lips brushed mine, I wasn’t prepared for the fireworks that seemed to explode inside of me. He tasted like caramels and salt, like a day at the beach, a lazy afternoon in the sun. He felt familiar, but new all at the same time. His kiss was nothing like the wet, invasive kisses I’d shared with Philip.

  How could I forget this? I could I forget a man who was so romantic, so kind, that he would rent out an entire restaurant for me? How could I forget the man I’d planned my entire future around, the man whose children I so desperately wanted to have? And I did want them. I could feel it in that memory. I could feel the need that burned inside of me, the yearning for something that only he could provide.

  I slid closer to him, maneuvering my plaster-covered leg with a little difficulty. I hated that I only had one hand with which to touch him, but I was so glad to be able to touch him at all. I ran my hand along his chest, sliding my fingers over his throat to feel his pulse pounding just under his warm flesh. And then I buried my fingers in his hair, tugging him closer to me. I wanted him closer. I felt so safe with him close to me.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” he whispered against my lips.

  And that threatened to make my heart burst.

  His hand found its way to my hip, as he kissed my throat, my heart pounding as tingles of pleasure chased themselves up and down my spine. Then his fingers were under the bottom hem of my shirt, dancing up along my ribs, teasing me as they brushed the bottom of my bra and then danced back down. My nipples tightened, my body aching to feel his touch. As far as I knew, I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted his mouth on my throat, his hand on my breasts.

  His mouth found mine again, and I wanted nothing more than to explore his deepest secrets. A little voice at the back of my head warned me that this might be too fast. I barely knew this man. But, then again, I’d spent a little more than a year loving this man. I was engaged to him, planning a wedding, a life together. How could this be moving too fast?

  His fingers had just begun to tug at the back of my bra, searching for a way to get it open, when the doorbell rang.

  I groaned. “Ignore it.”

  He ran his fingers over my skull, playing with the fuzz that was slowly turning into something like hair.

  “It might be the physical therapist. He said he was going to stop by sometime today to introduce himself and explain what he was going to be doing for you.”

  “He can come back.”

  Xander smiled, even as he slowly untangled his limbs from those of mine that still worked properly.

  “That’s the Harley I know,” he said somewhat flippantly.

  I liked it. I didn’t want him to censor himself anymore. I wanted him to treat me the way he would have the old Harley. And this was definitely a good start.

  He disappeared into the entryway again. I heard the door open and a man’s voice demand, “Where is she?”

  And then chaos exploded.

  Chapter 12

  Xander

  I couldn’t believe she remembered the day I proposed!

  For a minute there, the old Harley was back. I could see it in her eyes, the way she looked at me as she remembered that night. My Harley.

  I knew it would work. I knew bringing her home and surrounding her with familiar things would bring her back. It took longer than I expected, but she was finally coming back. And soon, we could get back to the way things were. We could get on with the rest of our lives.

  And then the doorbell rang.

  I shoul
d have listened to her. I should have ignored it.

  “Where is she?”

  It was Harley’s parents.

  “Dr. Alistair—”

  “Get out of my way!”

  He barged past me, Amanda looking at me with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. I just stepped back.

  What would have been the point of trying to stop them?

  “Harley?”

  “Dr. Alistair yelled up the stairs before continuing on to the sitting room. I followed, somewhat reluctantly. Amanda did the same, brushing past me when she caught sight of Harley on the couch.

  “Harley,” she said, sitting beside her, her hands running over Harley’s head as though looking for physical evidence of the fractured skull.

  “What have you done?” Dr. Alistair demanded, spinning around to confront me rather than go to his daughter as his wife had done. “Why didn’t you call us? Why did we have to hear secondhand about this?”

  “I tried. But you were on your cruise and I didn’t want to upset Shelly and Charlie.”

  “You could have contacted the cruise line. You could have called our attorney. You know he always knows how to contact us in an emergency.”

  I shook my head, watching as Harley accepted a hug from her mother.

  “You should have called.”

  “I called the house and spoke to Shelly.”

  Dr. Alistair slammed a finger into my chest. “And bringing her here? What the hell were you thinking? You had no right!”

  “He’s my fiancé, Daddy,” Harley said.

  “Is that what he told you?” Dr. Alistair asked, not bothering to look at his daughter. He was too busy staring at me. “Is that the lie he chose to tell?”

  Confusion immediately blossomed on Harley’s face.

  “But I remembered the day he proposed. It was really romantic. He rented out a restaurant—”

  “We know, dear,” her mother said soothingly—in the same voice I imagined she used with the big animals in their veterinarian practice.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He’s lying to you, Harley,” Dr. Alistair said. “He’s using your accident to take advantage of you. If you could remember everything that’s happened over the last couple of months—”