Page 85 of Unearthed Dreams

I grabbed Charlie’s backpack from where I’d stowed it behind the bar and set it next to Elliot on the countertop.

“So you and my sister.” He looked up from the bag and locked his eyes on mine. “How long?”

I shrugged. “Few months.”

“Since she came home?”

“Festival.”

He nodded. Didn’t know whether to take it as understand or approval, or maybe a bit of both.

Not that it mattered. I didn’t give two shits what hethought. And even if I did, Charlie had no fucking clue who I was.

“You love ’er?”

I gave him a single nod.

“Then she’ll remember.”

With that, he downed the rest of his glass, grabbed her bag, and walked out of my bar with the last little bits of my girl I had left.

Chapter Thirty-Two

CHARLIE

The Pepto-pink wallsof my childhood bedroom were giving me a headache. Or maybe that was the brain injury. Or both.

Two weeks since I’d woken up in the hospital, and nothing felt right. Not this room with its too-bright walls and stuffed animals I didn’t remember arranging on the window seat. Not the quiet house, everyone tiptoeing around me like I might break. Not even my own skin felt right—healing cuts and bruises mapping places I didn’t remember hurting.

Five months of my life, just... gone.

I shifted against the pillows, wincing as my ribs protested. My laptop sat closed on the bedside table, mocking me. I’d tried working on my manuscript earlier, but the words felt wrong. Like someone else had been in my head, rearranging everything I thought I knew about my characters.

Because someone had.

The notes in the margins were proof—detailed critiques in an unfamiliar handwriting, suggesting plot changes I’dapparently already made. Entire chapters rewritten. New scenes added.

Good changes. Better than what I’d originally written.

But I couldn’t remember making them.

Just like I couldn’t remember getting the job at Books and Crannies, or Chase buying a motorcycle, or why Kai from Callaghan’s had looked at me in the hospital like I’d ripped his heart out.

“This isn’t home anymore,” I whispered to the pink walls.

But if not here, then where? The life I remembered—finals week, my apartment with Shelby, Trevor helping me pick up dropped books—that wasn’t home anymore either.

My phone lit up with another text from Shelby, probably checking on me for the hundredth time today. I couldn’t bring myself to read it. How could I explain that the Charlie she was worried about, the one who’d been her roommate just last week as far as my brain was concerned, didn’t exist anymore?

I closed my eyes, trying to remember. Anything. Everything. The doctors said not to force it, but...

You’re asking the wrong questions.

The thought came out of nowhere, in a voice that felt familiar but wasn’t quite mine. Like something someone had said to me, something important.

But like everything else, it slipped away before I could catch it, leaving only the ache of the pink walls and the certainty that wherever “home” was supposed to be, it wasn’t here.

I reached for my manuscript again, drawn to those mysterious notes in the margins. Whoever had read this hadn’t just edited—they’dunderstood. They got what I was trying tosay about immortality and loneliness, about the way love could bridge impossible gaps.