Page 10 of Fire Island (Fire Island #2)

Nine

EVIE

“ H e has no recollection of the last three years.” Iris’s words repeat on a loop.

I’d sat in that hospital room, so grateful to be safe and off the island and out of Timothy’s grip.

“He’s alive,” Iris had whispered through a sob.

I shook where I sat on the examination bed. And the only words that stuck were the ones where Iris said Cal doesn’t remember me .

I thought I lost him.

I thought he was dead.

I guess, to me, now he is.

I curl up on Iris’s bed, my body starting to shake all over again.

He’s only down the hall, and I can’t see him. Can’t talk to him. Can’t fly into his arms, touch his face, drown in those blue eyes I’ve kept front of mind for over two weeks. They were my lifeline.

I mean, I could see him, but I’d have to come up with some story about how I’m Iris’s friend. I had an accident. I’m recuperating here. Separate from his life.

Just Iris’s old friend.

Nothing to him.

Oh god. That hurts.

I wail into the pillow, hands turning to claws around the blanket.

They tingle, cramping up as I fail to pull a useful breath in.

After all I went through on the island, this small detail shouldn’t raze me the way it does.

But my heart and soul measure the damage of losing Callum McCreary the same as they do my freedom, my will to live.

The sun has well and truly gone down by the time I have no tears left. My head thumps, and my throat is raw. It’s then Iris pads into the room, a tray in hand. She sets it on the bed and closes the door.

I push to sit up, and Iris’s face breaks when her gaze finds mine.

“Oh god, sweetheart.”

She’s wrapped around me a heartbeat later. I want to push and pull and scream and slam my fists into the drywall.

What if . . .

Wha—

Urgh .

“Listen, you have something to eat and drink, and then take a nice long, hot shower. Then we can snuggle up and watch Netflix. What do you say?” Iris looks hopeful.

“Sure, sounds nice.” I give her a sad smile.

She rubs my arm before walking to her dresser and fishing out some pajamas.

The same ones I wore last time. The boat-neck top and cotton shorts.

I gather my few things from the hospital, walk into the hall, and head down to the bathroom.

Closing the door, I set my things on the vanity and turn on the water.

Stripping down, I step into the warm water.

It feels like forever since I had a hot shower.

I wash twice with Iris’s lavender soap and wash my hair and condition it before toweling off and dressing in the clothes she gave me.

I towel my hair again, trying to remove a little more moisture.

I wring it into a long length, twisting it around to pull it over one shoulder.

It dampens the one side of the shirt. Hunting in her drawers, I find a new toothbrush and clean my teeth before rolling up my filthy clothes to take back to the room.

The doorknob rattles.

I stand rooted to the spot as the door opens. Hugging the clothes to my body, I step back in the small space as it widens to reveal Callum McCreary.

Alive and well.

Standing, staring at me.

The love and adoration usually filling his eyes is gone. In its place is confusion and something like curiosity.

Nothing registers.

Realizing I’m staring at him, I clear my throat and wave tentatively. “H-hi.”

He frowns, leaning on the doorjamb. “Hi.” He folds his arms over his chest. His bare chest. “You done?” He nods at the sink.

“I—” I swallow and will the lightning shooting through my nerves to fade. “Yeah. S-sorry.”

I move toward the door.

He pushes off the frame. I slip past him, my shoulder grazing his chest. I can’t look up at him.

My heart will surely shatter if I do. How he doesn’t see the heartbreak etched all over my face, I have no idea.

His scent fences me in for a heartbeat, and I hover over the threshold, not willing to leave.

“Eve?” he utters.

Hope flares, swelling with a flutter that makes my eyes raise to his.

“Yes?”

“So, you’re a writer, hey?” Small talk is painful for him, if the expression on his face is anything to go by.

My hope deflates, devastatingly so.

The awkwardness is palpable. This is him trying to be nice. Stuck in close proximity with a stranger his sister’s taken in. Not the boarder who took his home from him for months. That version of Callum was not as nice. I’m torn between laughing hysterically and sobbing where I stand.

“Something like that,” I manage.

I slip from the doorway and make a beeline for Iris’s room. The instant the door clicks at my back, it hits me like a ton of bricks. The fact that the man I love has no idea who I am...

We are strangers.

Strangers.

I collapse to the floor. The carpet burns my knees on impact. The clothes tumble to the floor, expelled from my hold as I sink my hands into my hair. I tug at the roots as a raw, wounded sound spills out.

The door opens, hitting my legs. I don’t bother moving. Someone drops to my side as it closes again.

Fine hands brush the hair from my face.

“Hush, sweetheart. Come now, tuck into bed.”

I don’t have the will to move.

My heart is bleeding through my skin, the remaining shards in my chest liquefied, soaking into the carpet. The inhuman groans leaving my body sound foreign. The agony of losing him, finding him alive and well, only to lose him all over again.

It’s too much.

Iris hauls me to my feet, and I stagger to the bed and fall into it.

I rock on my side, gripping at my arms, nails sinking into my skin. My old bedfellow grief slides in beside me.

Iris climbs in on the other side, tugging me into her embrace.

She rubs a hand over my head. Her shushing noises tangle with my erratic wails.

Her hands smooth my hair repeatedly, her hold on me firm.

I let go in her arms. The pain of the past two weeks chokes its way out, burning me alive as it goes.

The days I truly thought Cal was dead.

The pain of thinking I would never see him again.

The air in my lungs evaporates on a cruel, searing blow.

The fear that had me terrified for days, with the threat of unthinkable things hanging between me and Timothy. The dread of realizing I was on the boat with two predators.

The fact that they both got away.

The moments I floated, suspended in time, it seemed, waiting for Emmett to find me. The millions of thoughts that he wouldn’t, and it would be too late. That I would sink to the dark depths of the ocean, another soul snuffed out and never found.

That I would never see Cal again . . .

Then him just now, leaning against the doorframe. Bare chest. Blue eyes curiously studying the woman in his sister’s bathroom.

The way simply seeing him leveled me. Like nothing else has before. Not even losing Joshua was as obliterating as loving and losing Callum McCreary.

Nothing compares.

I chug through a string of erratic breaths and choke.

Iris sits me up, rubbing my back. “Breathe, mo nighean.”

Mo nighean.

I look up at her, face broken to pieces with one phrase.

“Oh shit, Evie.”

As if realizing what she’s said to me and who called me that for the last six months.

She swaddles me into her arms, and I bury my face in her shoulder. I grip her arms like the lifelines they are right now.

“Dammit, Cal,” Iris mutters.

Every breath burns. My head is pounding. And I finally put space between us.

“What if he never gets the last year back?” I rasp.

Iris holds me at arm’s length. “You know, it’s been playing on my mind all stinking day. He loved you once. I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t again.”

I huff a strained sound.

A second second chance.

The memories he’s lost... Could I spend days recreating them?

Would it be deceptive? I couldn’t do that to him. It would be like telling him his truth without him getting a say in it.

“You can’t make Callum McCreary do anything he doesn’t want to.” I pick at the hem of my shirt, sniffing back the snot and tears that have swollen and reddened my face.

Iris chuckles. “No, you cannot. But what if I can give you the chance to find what you two had? He needs to go home. He also can’t be alone. And I can’t think of anyone I trust more with my brother’s heart, his head, and his health than his caileag luachmhor.”

I tamp down the emotion swelling with the phrase. I wish she would stop saying things like that. Hell, it’s like she’s testing me. Seeing how deep this thing between Cal and me goes.

Went .

I snap my gaze up to hers. “How?”

She smiles, palming my cheek. “Oh Evie, you two may have been holed up on that little island for months, but we’re talking about my big brother.

The only other person I know better than myself.

He loved you and still he let you go. He broke his own heart to make sure yours was happy and free.

Stupid dunderheid should have gone with you, if you ask me.

But he’s too stubborn for his own good.” She sucks in a long breath.

“You can travel out in a few days, after Em’s cleaned up a little. Look after him for me, will you?”

I don’t know what to say.

Em’s going out to clean... He’ll find the devastation I caused. The trashed house. The garden that’s probably half dead. The remains of the lamp. The queen who took the fall.

The everlasting evidence of the fact that this maiden saved herself.

At a cost to the man she loves.