Page 46

Well, fuck.?

Seeing Regan like this here in our home, so damn alive, so unshakably beautiful, it rocks me to the core. It’s not soft nor tender, it’s brutal. Like something’s trying to claw its way out of me, and I’m too far gone to stop it.

I’ve seen her every single night since the accident.

Sat beside her in that stiff-ass hospital chair, watching her sleep when no one else was allowed in.

Counting her breaths. Memorizing the way her fingers twitched when the dreams came, studying her vitals to be sure she was okay.

I spent hours beside her, afraid to blink too long in case she woke up and I wasn’t the first one there to witness it.

Some nights, I’d pass out in that chair with my hand wrapped around hers like I could anchor her to this world if I just held on tight enough. Like I could bring her back to me and tell her while she rested all the ways that I was sorry.

But this?

This is different.

She’s up now. Walking. Laughing. Her hair’s tied up the way she used to do it when she was working around the house—like muscle memory kicked in even if the rest of her didn’t.

There’s this flush to her cheeks that wasn’t there before.

A light in her eyes that doesn’t know me anymore and is directed at another man.

And it’s killing me.

Because she looks like the dream that I used to wake up next to.

One I can’t touch anymore. One I fucked up.

I want to reach for her. Pull her into my arms. Press my face into her neck and breathe her in until the ache in my chest stops.

I want to remind her who she belongs to, who she came home to, who kissed her on her wedding day and told her she was it for me.

I want to tell her all the ways I regret the way we ended.

How I let her slip away because I was too proud, too stuck in my own damn head, too focused on letting my dad’s cutting words impact me, too scared of loving her the way she deserved.

Too much like my dad and I’ll never be that way again.

That she’s changed me. That I’m man enough to let the bullshit of the past go and realize I don’t have to let my childhood define me anymore.

But I let her go. Let her walk out of the house we built together. Out of my life. Back into the arms of a man who got to love her before I ever did.

And now?

Her ring finger is bare.

Not because she took off a wedding ring, but because I never gave her a real one.

Not the first time and not the second. You’d think I’d have figured it out by then—that pretending wasn’t enough.

But I didn’t. Thought we had time. Thought we’d get to the real thing eventually after the second wedding.

Now?

Now she’s probably sitting across from him in some dive bar in town. Smiling at him. Letting him drive her around in his fancy-ass truck, probably telling stories about their past like it meant something more than it did.

I wonder if he’ll tell her the truth about turning down his proposal.

She doesn’t remember the way she turned him down.

Doesn’t remember the fights, the way she told me he prioritized his career over spending time with her.

The way he treated her more like a household employee than a woman that deserved to be cherished and loved.

She only remembers the good. That they were together. That they used to fuck.

My stomach twists in knots, trying not to imagine her slipping back into his bed because the last few months are just... gone.

Gone.

The accident might’ve taken her memories, but it didn’t take mine.

I remember every second that we spent together in our short time.

Every laugh, every fight, every kiss. Every moment that I got to hold her at night and pretend we were something permanent.

And I’m still stuck in that pretending, even now.

After finishing up with the horses, I head toward the house. The sun’s dropped low, casting long shadows across the field, and the sky’s bleeding orange and gold. It’s quiet. Still.

Too damn still.

I make it halfway across the lawn before I stop cold. Can’t do it. I can’t be in there while she’s getting ready to impress some other guy.

Can’t watch her pull on a dress that’ll wreck me, spritz on perfume that’ll linger in the air of our home.

Can’t listen to her hum while she curls her hair or see her glance at her reflection with that soft, unsure look she always had when she thought she didn’t look good enough—even though she always has to me.

Can’t fucking watch her walk out of my life again.

Dammit it.

I spin on my heel, jaw clenched, and tug my shirt off the fencepost where I tossed it earlier.

It’s the same fence that I leaned against when Rae’s car rolled up from the hospital, when I knew Regan would see me—shirtless, working on these horses like my life depended on it, desperate for her attention.

Because if all she remembers is who I was seven years ago, then fine.

I’ll start there. I’ll work every angle I’ve got.

I’ll make her feel it in her gut. I’ll make her remember how it felt to spend that one wild night together with me and then show her that what we had was more than just chemistry.

I throw the saddle and the rest of the tack on Marie, a chestnut mare with a fiery streak that reminds me of Regan in every single way. Named her after her, not that Regan knows that yet.

Regan Marie Marshall .

Thought maybe she’d heal the horse. Thought maybe the horse would heal her. And if it works, then I’ll keep this horse until I die.

I guide Marie out of the stall and swing up into the saddle.

Her hooves clop steadily across the packed dirt, then soften as we break into the fields, cutting toward the far edge of the property.

This is the part that meets her father and brother’s land and it’s nothing but open pastures and creeks slicing through the hills like veins.

I ride the perimeter once. Then again. Then I slow her to a stop by the bubbling water and let her drink while I drop my head into my hands and sink to my knees.

Scarlett left this morning.

She packed her bags and hugged me goodbye and told me I could handle this. That it’d be better for it to be just the two of us. Said it’d be easier for Regan, less confusing if she wasn’t still living in the cottages. So now it’s just me.

Me and the woman I love, in the house we were supposed to build a future in. She doesn’t remember. I can’t forget. And my heart? It feels like it’s folding in on itself. But it’s up to me to fix this because I broke it.

“Be patient ,” Scarlett had told me. Over and over again like a mantra.

I’m trying.

But it’s hard not to scream when the woman you love looks at you like a stranger. It’s hard not to break when she smiles at another man like she used to smile at you.

I’m still going to wait.

I’m going to court her this time. Show up for her in every way I failed to do that before. I’ll stop being selfish if that’s what it takes to win her back. I’ll do it. No matter how long it takes. No matter how many times she looks through me like I’m no one.

Because once upon a time, I was her whole world.

And I’ll be damned if I don’t find a way to be that again.