Accidentally Yours

by Ames, Ilsa

  “Go see our lost lamb, Tiago. Then get some rest. You deserve it.” She ended the call after that and I drove into the hospital parking lot with a sigh of relief.

  I’d almost expected fate to be cruel to us again and stop me from my reunion with June. She might not want to see me, she might refuse to see me, but I didn’t care. As long as I knew she was alright and alive, I’d leave her in peace. That’s all I’d wanted since the moment we all realized she was missing.

  I went into the reception area and found the desk I needed. “Hi, I’m Tiago Morrison. I need to speak to whoever is in charge of my wife’s case.”

  The man with a bored expression on his face typed on his keyboard, looked at the screen as if it had told a really bad joke, rolled his eyes, then looked back at me with the same bored expression. “Wait here please, someone will come for you.”

  I waited for five minutes before a woman came down on the elevator to collect me. “Hi, there, Tiago is it?”

  I nodded my head and shook her hand. “I’m April Stone, I’m handling your wife’s case. If you can follow me, please?”

  She took me to a small office and there I found a doctor and a nurse waited for us. April made the introductions and we all sat down together.

  “Mr. Morrison, can you tell us any identifying marks your wife might have?” April asked politely. “Photos can be deceptive, and we don’t want to raise the young woman’s hopes if we’re all wrong.”

  “She has a brown birth mark on her stomach, just to the right of her navel. It’s a splotch and several dots of skin that’s darker than the rest. Not really brown, kind of peach more than brown.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Morrison. She does have that mark, April.” The nurse spoke up, and I could have sworn she was so excited she was about to clap. “I’m so glad we’ve found you, at last. And she has a name now! June.” The nurse smiled. “That’s a really nice one too.”

  “It is. When can I see her?”

  “Could I see the documents please? Also, there’s no rush, but we will need her insurance information if there is any.” April took the documents I handed her and wrote some things down on a form. A full minute ticked by like an eternity, and I was about to go out of my goddamn mind when she smiled, put her pen down, and looked up at me.

  “Would you like to see your wife now, Tiago?”

  “Uh, a moment, first?” The doctor interrupted. Dr. Edwards April had called her.

  “Sure, go ahead.” April sat back down.

  “Tiago, your wife has been in a pretty serious accident. Now, before you see her, don’t worry, the baby is fine—”

  “Baby?!” I interrupted with wide eyes and shock. “What baby?”

  Dr. Edwards smiled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you weren’t aware. But yes, she’s pregnant, Tiago. Not that far along, but pregnant, and the baby is fine. June’s suffered through quite a lot. She’s got a very nasty fracture in her leg that requires traction, several cracked ribs, and a head wound. We have to assume she was in a car accident. There’s no other explanation for her injuries. Do you have any information on that?”

  “No, but I’m sure the police can help us piece it together. Or June. Hasn’t she said anything?” I was still kind of stuck on the pregnant part but tried to keep up.

  “She’s said quite a lot, Tiago, but as you saw on the news, she has amnesia. I expect it’s only temporary, but,” Dr. Edwards smiled thinly. “You should know that it may not be temporary. She has no idea who she is, you see, and no memory of anything about her past or what brought her to us.”

  I sat back in my chair, stunned. What had happened to her? She was pregnant? Why hadn’t she said? Had she even known?

  “I think, fuck, I think I need just a second. Shit, sorry,” I swore, while trying to apologize for swearing.

  “Don’t apologize, Tiago. It’s a lot to take on board. Take your time.” Dr. Edwards smiled. “If you two can handle the rest, I need to get back to my rounds.”

  “Of course, doctor, thank you.” April guided him out of the office and turned to the nurse. “Can you take him to see his wife, Veronica? I need to fill out a few more forms.”

  “Sure, April. Do you want to follow me, Tiago? I can take you to see June.”

  I stood up, numb as I nodded.

  June was pregnant, and she had amnesia. Would she remember me? It was all a swirling mix in my head and I felt a little dizzy.

  “It’s a lot to take in, I know.” Veronica led me down a hall, to an elevator, and up to the fifth floor. “We keep our surgical patients up here. She’s going to be with us until her leg has healed, but she’s fine otherwise.”

  “How long do you think that will take?” I wanted to bring her home, where I could love her memory back into her.

  “Around four to five more weeks, I expect. It’s going to take some time. It was a nasty break.”

  I followed the nurse quietly after that. I felt nervous, would she remember me and tell me to fuck off? Or would she have no idea who I was and turn away? I looked down at my wedding band, plain gold but with a very tiny impression of two joined circles on the top. Hers matched mine. Would that help, if she saw how our rings matched?

  “Here we are. If you’ll give me just a moment? I don’t want to shock her.” The nurse held a hand out to me before I shook my head. She walked through the open door and I heard her greet a very anxious June.

  “Has someone found me?” I heard June’s voice. She was nervous, afraid, but excited.

  “They have. Does the name June Morrison ring any bells?” I heard a pause and then the nurse spoke again. “No matter. It’ll all come. What about Tiago Morrison?”

  “No, is he my husband?” I heard her quiet voice, always so husky and sensual, but now with a note of worry in it.

  “He is and he’s here to see you. Do you want to see him, sweetie?”

  “I suppose I do. He’s my husband, right?” She took a deep breath, one I heard all the way in the hallway. “I might remember him, maybe that’s all I need?”

  “Don’t worry if you don’t, swee—I’m sorry, I’m so used to not knowing your name. If you don’t remember him, June, don’t stress and worry won’t help.

  “Alright. Can you tell him to come in please?” She was so full of anxiety her voice shook.

  “I’ll send him right in.” The nurse’s shoes squeaked on the floor as she left the room and came close to me. “Don’t force contact, unless she asks for it, okay? Just greet her and let her do whatever she needs to do. As I’ve just told her, stress won’t help anything. I’ll be at my desk if you need me.”

  “I promise, I won’t do anything to upset her.” I just wanted to see my wife. That was all.

  “Thank you” Veronica patted my shoulder, and then she walked away.

  I stood there, gathered up my confidence, and then took a step into the room.

  …It really was her. The voice was right, the swollen face was hers. It was all her.

  “June.”

  I breathed her name and stopped. She was so tiny in that bed, with that frame that held her leg up in the air. Her headwound had scabbed up, and her bruises had started to fade, but they were in that ugly stage of yellow and green with a few areas that were still a deep purple. It was all her, though. My beautiful wife.

  “Hello. You must be Tiago.” She sat up as best she could, brushed her hair behind her ear in that familiar way, and smiled at me. It was the smile she had only for me, the one that lit up her whole face because it was full of love. Her brain might have locked away the memory of who I was, but her body knew me, her muscle memory did.

  “I am. I’m your husband.” I’d started out as her fake husband, become a real husband, and lost her within the space of a year. This was a second chance to make her love me all over again, I thought, to make right all the things I’d got wrong. “How do you feel? May I sit?”

  “Of course. I suppose they told you I don’t remember anything?” She looked regretful, but her ey
es drank me in. That was a good sign. She still liked my looks, at least.

  “They did. Listen, if you want me to hang around, I’ll be here as long as you want me here. And if you want me to leave you alone, I’ll do that too. Whatever you want, beautiful. Whatever you need. Anything at all, June, it’s yours.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to take it day by day, won’t we?” She looked away for a moment, and I could see pain in her face.

  “What’s hurting you?” I sat in the chair beside her bed, but I didn’t move to touch her. The nurse had warned against that.

  “It’s just my leg. This is all so weird.”

  I smiled wryly. “I bet. One minute you wake up with no idea who you are, and the next you have a husband, a name, and you still can’t remember any of it. That’s gotta be screwing with your head.”

  “It’s completely blowing my mind, actually. No offense, but you could be anybody to me.” She tapped a fingernail against her teeth, an old habit, before she stopped and turned her head back to me. “I’m sorry, I just don’t know who you are. How long have we been married?”

  “Just a little over a year.” I wasn’t sure what to tell her about our arrangement just now, so I didn’t volunteer anything.

  “Wow, still newlyweds then. That explains a lot.” Her hand went to her stomach, but she didn’t say anything about the baby, so I let that go. “What about family? Do I have any?”

  “Your father passed away when you were eighteen, I’m sorry to say. Your mother isn’t in your life now.” I didn’t elaborate. Learning her father was dead for the second time in her life was bad enough. She didn’t need to hear about the dirt-bags her parents had been.

  “I wish I could remember him.” She said softly, but I couldn’t help but think maybe it was best she didn’t remember him, from the little she’d said about him.

  “How old am I?”

  I grinned at her, she was full of questions. “You’re twenty-five. Your birthday was in January.”

  “Oh, still a spring chicken then. Good.” She grinned, blushing, and I couldn’t help but sigh. She was in there, my wife, my friend, the woman that made me whole.

  I’d let her slip away the first time around. I’d let my own stupidity build a wall between us that should never have been there, but I wasn’t going to allow that to happen again.

  I would do whatever it took to get her memory back, to get her healthy again, and to help her to remember that she’d loved me once upon a time. If I had to work at it until my last breath.

  I’d been given a second chance with her. And this time, I knew what I had to lose.

  This time, I’d show her what she meant to me.

  18

  June

  Time passed by, measured in appointments. Twice a day the physical therapist came, checked my progress, adjusted weights, and helped me with my exercises. Twice a day the doctor came. Eventually, they both started coming once a day. We all knew I wasn’t about to be released any time soon, but the doctor still had to check my progress.

  And of course, there was Tiago.

  My husband.

  I couldn’t remember anything about my business but my second in command had taken over most of the duties, some things I still had to sign and approve. That terrified me because most of the time I had no idea what I was about to consent to. It was almost as scary as the moments when a new face popped up.

  The first week I had so many people come to visit along with him, people I couldn’t remember, that it became too much. Faces, names, none of it was familiar. The little girl, Layla, that came with her parents, Ella and Tim, was the girl from my memory, the only memory I’d retained. The sound of her laughter was all that was familiar, and I knew that had to mean something.

  Tiago was great, but it hurt that I couldn’t remember the man that had loved the old me so very much. It was obvious to me how much he’d cared for the woman I used to be. Was I still her, I often wondered now. I didn’t have her fears, her reserve, Tiago had told me.

  Two weeks passed, and then three. The doctor deemed me well enough to go home, but I’d have to remain in traction, and a therapist was arranged, along with a nurse to come and check that the points where the pins for the frame were infection-free. I’d still have to spend most of my time in bed, but I could go back to more familiar surroundings.

  We hoped.

  Oscar was retrieved and taken back to the house, though I couldn’t remember him either. Tiago told me all about my love-hate relationship with the cat, how I adored the long-haired white creature, but it hated me. I couldn’t believe I’d love something that obviously didn’t like me. But I’d apparently dragged the angry little furball from the car when I escaped it, so apparently, I did.

  Soon after I was identified, the accident was discovered. Somehow the paperwork had gotten buried, and then lost, but it was found as soon as someone started to put the pieces together. It turns out that I’d dragged myself quite a ways away from the scene of the crash before I was found, so people didn’t really put two and two together until finally it’d clicked with someone.

  A cement truck. That’s what had smashed into me. The driver had been drinking, and had plowed right through a red light, straight into the side of my car. The truck driver had died instantly, and somehow, my car had caught on fire. We’d also been on a side-street when it happened, so there hadn’t been any witnesses. There being no witnesses and me having crawled off, when the emergency workers and neighbors did show up, everyone thought the guy had crashed into a parked, empty car.

  I could have been identified by serial numbers on the car, or some such thing the policeman told me, but the heat had damaged the paper left on the car, and then the car had been towed to the wrong lot, and it was all a giant fiasco.

  In the end, I’d been found, and identified. The fact that there’d been a camera at the light helped to identify the other driver as the one at fault. I felt terrible that he’d died, and it haunted me that I couldn’t remember any of it.

  I went home to find that the cat I’d rescued, twice, didn’t hate me so much after all. The house wasn’t familiar at all, nor was Oscar, but he curled at my side through most of the day, content to purr and sleep. The visitors came to a slow trickle and I spent a lot of time going through photo files in my cloud storage, or through papers and books Tiago brought me from my old apartment.

  And then, one day, a few weeks after my release, he told me the truth.

  He told me everything—the truth about our marriage, and how we’d come to be. I watched, stunned, as he came clean about it all.

  “I agreed to marry you for money?” I asked, horrified at my old self, how greedy was I?

  But Tiago shook his head. “No, June. Not like that. You needed money for your nonprofit organization. Plus, that little girl? Layla? You marrying me helped me fulfill the terms of my father’s inheritance. It got money freed up—money that went right into getting that little girl the doctors and care she needed to survive.” He shook his head again. “So, no, June. It wasn’t greed at all.” He assured me, but I still felt dirty.

  “How did I get pregnant if it was a marriage of convenience between us?” I put my hand on my stomach, a little rounder than it was but not by much.

  “Well, on our honeymoon, we kind of…” He smiled, this smile that I felt right through my chest.

  “We fell in love, I guess. We crashed into each other harder than either of us expected. We found something we weren’t expecting, June,” he said quietly, sadness in his eyes.

  “But?” I could sense a but, there was something he hadn’t told me.

  Tiago looked away.

  “You were leaving me that night, the night of your accident.”

  My heart sank as the silence draped over both of us.

  “Why?”

  I mean, seriously. This man was gorgeous, he clearly loved me, and I’d obviously loved him from the pictures I’d seen of us together. Everybody had sent me pictures, so I had ple
nty to judge my former emotions by.

  “Because, June. Because we somehow let this wall build up between us. This fucking pressure from my dad’s will about us having a baby in order to fulfill the rest of the terms. It got to us, baby. He got to us, and we let it turn into this wedge between us. I didn’t even know whether I should mention all of this or just try to make you love me all over again.”

  Tiago paused, and I was just too shocked to say anything else.

  “I felt like trying to make you love me again was wrong. You fell in love with me the first time because you couldn’t help it, I didn’t make you do anything, you just did. And I wanted you to know the truth of it, all of the truth. I felt dishonest, not telling you before.”

  That’s why I loved him. I knew it without even having to think about, the second he told me. Yeah, I got that a man who looked like Tiago could make my panties wet, if I could get them over the leg-brace. But I knew then that it was so much more than that. He was honest, and that was sexy, and insanely attractive to me. He also had eyes that could make me melt.

  “I think...” I cleared my throat. I had to pause to figure out exactly what I thought. “I think you loved me, Tiago, and I think I’m pretty sure I loved you. If I left, then I was stupid, completely stupid.”

  “No, I was. I wouldn’t let you use the fertility drugs or talk to me about IVF. Like I said, we have to produce a child within two years of our marriage for me to inherit all of it. You wanted to give me that money, for Layla, and I was too stubborn to admit we should try it.”

  “Well, obviously you were right, Tiago.” I managed a small, shy smile. “I’m pregnant, so apparently we didn’t need it.”

  He laughed quietly and shifted on the bed beside me. He’d arranged a very large hospital bed and we could both fit in it comfortably. I liked the fact that each side adjusted up or down independent of the other. It made me a lot more comfortable. Oddly enough, it hadn’t been strange to sleep with him beside me. It had felt right from the first night when I’d asked him to stay and talk to me and we’d fallen asleep together.