“Don’t,” I snap, cutting him off. I take a deep breath in to get myself under control so I don’t yell and wake Jax up. “You say I ran. Fine. Maybe I did. I don’t know what the truth is there. What I do know is that there had to be a reason that a person that’s so in love would run. They would have to have been scared or truly unhappy to take off without a trace. So you think that you have questions, well so do I. Beginning with why did I run from you, Jonas?” I turn my head to look back up at him. He looks shocked as he takes a step back as if I’d hit him. “You may not believe that I don’t remember you, but it doesn't matter. If I ran, I was running from something. If I’m going off the man I’ve met today, I’m starting to see why I would have.” I shake my head.

“I never once thought I ran away from someone. It never even crossed my mind. I didn't know who I was when I woke up in that hospital room but I didn't think for one second that I ran from something. I wasn't scared someone was going to find me. I was scared that no one was looking.”

“Darby-”

I keep going, ignoring him. Realizing that I’m pretty terrible at this not talking to him thing. “No one did.” I turn away from him. “For years.” I lie back down next to Jax, putting my arm around him and closing my eyes, willing myself not to cry. “I’m tired. Please let me sleep before Jax wakes up soon,” I tell him, hoping that he leaves before I start crying. The room goes quiet. I don’t know if he stays or goes. I don’t hear anything as I drift off to sleep.

Chapter 11

Jonas

A half hour later, Melody bursts through the door of my suite. “What is it? You made it sound like a huge emergency on the phone,” she says. Her hair’s a mess and it looks like she dressed in the dark.

“Are you wearing a different tennis shoe on each foot?” I ask from my seat on the sofa.

“Yes because you texted that I needed to get my ass over to the estate pronto and that if I didn’t something terrible might happen. So I got out of bed, grabbed the first thing I could find and drove over here only to find you sitting on your ass drinking what appears to be your fourth glass of scotch.”

“It’s only my third.” I pat the cushion next to me. “Come sit by your baby brother.”

Melody throws her coat onto a chair and trudges over. She’s not happy but since she loves me, she does as I ask.

“You’re lucky you’re my only brother or I wouldn’t feel so indulgent.” She throws herself onto the cushion, grabs my drink and downs half of it. Her face curls up. “I hate that you drink your booze neat. Scotch is better with ice.”

“Ice waters it down.”

“Exactly. It needs to be watered down. It has about eighty years of sediment in it. But enough about that. I didn’t come all the way over here in the middle of the night to argue with you about liquor. What’s going on?”

“Darby’s back.”

Her jaw drops and it takes her a couple of seconds to compose herself. “Darby? As in your Darby? Oh, Jonas.” She puts her hand on my forehead as if I’m sick. “I thought you were starting to move on. That’s why I sent you up to the Wards, but instead of finding a new woman, you’re sitting in the dark dreaming about Darby. Honey, she’s not coming back. I miss her, too, but this isn’t good for you.”

I nod my head toward the set of double doors leading into the bedroom. “Go and look for yourself. She’s really back. Be quiet, though. They’re sleeping.”

“They’re?”

“She has a son. My son.”

“What?” The one word flies out of her mouth so loud and high, I fear she’s going to wake them. I clamp a hand across her face and hold a finger to my mouth.

“They’re sleeping.”

Wide-eyed, all she can do is blink at me for a while. Finally, she collects herself and walks over to the doors. She stops in front of them, takes a deep breath, and then slowly opens one door just wide enough to slip through. After a minute, she returns. Her face is creased with shock—eyes wide, eyebrows raised, mouth slack.

She stumbles back to me and collapses against the cushions.

“That’s Darby. I thought she was dead.”

“Me too.” I gulp the rest of the liquor and pour myself another serving. Before I can take a sip, Melody steals my glass and downs half of it.

“Sorry,” she says, pounding her chest with a fist.

“I know. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut, too.”

“What happened? Where has she been? Where did you find her?”

“She was living over the Wards’ garage. I’m not sure what she was doing there or why she ran away. She says that she survived the accident but had amnesia. She hadn’t taken a fall off the cliff into the ocean like everyone presumed.”

“Amnesia?” Melody whisper-shrieks, her voice full of the same disbelief that I’m feeling.

“I don’t believe it either.”

“Yikes. I hope you didn’t tell her that.”

“Why not?”

Melody makes a face. “Is that really how you want to start your reunion? You still love her. You haven’t stopped pining over her since the day you lost her and now, against all odds, she is lying in your bed with your son.”

I drag a hand down my face as that small feeling of guilt that pierced my shell earlier starts unraveling inside of me. “She ran from me,” I say defensively. “Like you said, I love her. I gave her the world and she ran from me.”

“You were working a ton of hours and traveling a lot. She was alone and didn’t have anyone in her life. I was busy with Ronnie and my husband and you were trying to fulfill every demand of Gran’s.”

“You’re saying I should’ve taken her on trips where I couldn’t spend any time with her because I’d be in meetings all day?” That seemed like a quick way to break up.

“I’m saying that’s all in the past. You have a couple of options, Jonas. You can either treat her like crap and try to extract as much pain from her as possible in hopes of lessening your own pain, or you can let it go and try to live a new life together.”

“I want to know what happened.”

“What if you don’t like what happened? Do you throw her out then? If you plan on staying together, then the past doesn’t matter.”

She’s making too much sense and I don’t like it. I don’t want to get over being angry. I’m not ready to forgive and move on. Darby kept my son from me. At least I thought she had. But I hear what Melody is saying. I could lose the two of them again, just when I found them. Melody pats me on the head and takes her leave. I stare at the fire until the flames become embers and the embers become ashes and the room grows cold. When the last light flickers out, I drag my sorry ass into the bedroom. Darby’s body is curled around our son. The two of them look small and fragile in my big bed. When I met Darby, she was a struggling preschool teacher. At first, she couldn’t believe that I’d fallen for her. She thought it was some kind of elaborate prank that her not very nice coworkers had set up.