by Ivy Smoak
I’m pretty sure I sighed out loud from how romantic that was. But instead of telling him that, I took another huge bite of food. I still had a lot of questions for him and no good segue. The note I had found in the trash was burning a hole in my pocket. And his scars were still staring back at me.
“How did you get your scars?” For some reason, that question seemed like the easier of the two.
“From when I got shot on our wedding night. Three times.” He gestured to his bicep, his stomach, and his ribcage. “My lung collapsed and I had my spleen removed, but I’ve made a full recovery.”
“And the new one? You told me you took some of the poisoned pills too. What happened?”
He immediately looked more tense. “I had a cardiac episode.”
“Like a heart attack?”
“Not exactly. It wasn’t as severe. Just set me back a little. And I tweaked my knee when I fell down the stairs. But nothing serious. I’ve been going to physical therapy for everything. I’ll be good as new soon enough.”
I thought about all the times I saw him take a break from walking. Or put his hand down for balance. “All of it sounds serious to me. They clearly had to operate.” I pointed to his chest. “You’ve been telling me to take it easy, but you should be too. I wasn’t the only one that got hurt.”
“I’m fine. I’ve always had issues with stress so…poison didn’t help with that.”
“Huh. I never would have guessed that you have stress issues. You seem so carefree.” I smiled at him as he laughed. “But seriously, James. Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes. When have I ever lied to you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Ever since I woke up?”
He smiled. “Well, I promise I’m not doing that now. The physical therapy is working. I’m feeling stronger every day. How are you feeling?”
“Honestly? I physically feel okay. Nothing hurts. But when I think about everything, I feel so overwhelmed. Do you know that Scarlett doesn’t believe I’m her mom? She thinks I’m some imposter.”
“Yeah. I’ve talked to her about that. I can talk to her again.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll figure it out. But it is upsetting. Dr. Nelson stole my memories. And I know that I have children. But it still feels like I’ll never have them. I always pictured a bunch running around, you know? And I expected to remember being pregnant with them. He stole all of that from me.”
“I know. I pictured that too.”
I bit the inside of my lip. “Do you really think we’re safe now? From Dr. Nelson I mean?”
“The police think so. They think he’s long gone.”
“And you?”
“Our security detail has been very diligent. There hasn’t been any suspicious activity. No sightings. Nothing. It’s not like the guy is going to be able to practice medicine here ever again. Maybe he went somewhere he could start over.”
“That makes sense.” I took a deep breath. “So maybe we could get rid of all these cameras? They make me nervous. I feel like I’m being watched right now.” I looked up to one of the ones mounted in the dining room.
James ran his fingers through his hair. “Most of them are already disabled. We found out that they were how Dr. Nelson got access to our apartment in the first place.”
“He broke into the security system?”
“I thought this was the safest apartment in the whole city. But everything worked against me. I’m updating the software. Until then, there’s only a few active ones.”
“You’re updating it?”
“That’s what Hunter Tech does. I thought we were un-hackable. I was wrong. We’re going back to the drawing board. Well, mostly the company. I’ve been preoccupied.”
“But you mostly teach, right?”
“Yeah. After what happened I took a leave of absence from the university though. Another professor is handling my summer session classes.”
“Will you go back in the fall?”
“That depends on a lot of things. How Liam is doing. If you remember me.”
I laughed. “You can teach without me remembering anything. Your life can’t just stop. You’ve said that yourself.”
“I know. But it feels like it’s stopped. It’s hard to breathe when I look at you and you don’t look at me the same in return.”
I was about to say I was sorry when music started playing lightly in the other room. I looked past him to the living room. Melissa winked at me and then disappeared down the hall.
When I turned back to James he was standing beside my chair with one hand stretched toward me.
“May I have this dance?”
This was part of the evening he had planned for me. And I wanted to remember. How could I not want to remember loving this beautiful man? I slid my hand into his and he pulled me to my feet. His hand squeezed mine as we walked into the living room and stopped in front of the amazing view.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
He spun me around and pulled me into his chest. Our laughter drifted together. It felt right to have his hands on my waist. I lightly wrapped my hands around the back of his neck. All of it felt right. But there was still a note in my pocket that claimed I didn’t love all this. That I wasn’t happy even though life had handed me everything I could possibly dream of. I had to ask him about it. But I didn’t want to break the spell. “What song is this?”
James spun me again. “Hands Down by Dashboard Confessional.”
“And it means something to you?”
He lifted one of his hands off my waist and placed it on my cheek. “To us. We played this song during our first dance at our wedding. It was also the first song we ever danced to when we started dating. We were on a walk in Central Park.”
My mouth felt dry. I could picture it so clearly.
We walked slowly back toward the hotel. It was nice walking through the street holding hands like a normal couple. We'd never be able to do this on Main Street. Maybe he was right. Disclosing our relationship would be for the best. I heard music playing in the distance.
A smile spread across Professor Hunter's face. "Come with me." We jogged into Central Park until we came to a guitarist. He was strumming his guitar and singing. I laughed as Professor Hunter twirled me and then pulled me in close.
His hand was on the small of my back. It reminded me of when he had walked me home in the rain. The smell of him and the look in his eyes took my breath away.
"Do you know this song?" My voice sounded airy. I wanted to know what it was so I could find it on YouTube and remember this moment forever.
"I believe it's called Hands Down." He twirled me again and placed both of his hands on my waist.
"Every day I spend with you I fall harder and harder." I looked up into his eyes.
He leaned down and kissed me. When the song ended he didn't pull away. We kept swaying to the loud sounds of the city. "I should get you home."
"Does that mean going home with you? Or are you sending me back to my dorm?"
He laughed. "I'd like to bring you home with me."
"I don't want tonight to end." I put my hands in his hair and brought his lips back down to mine.
There was a quiet groan in his throat as he pulled away. "I love you, Penny."
"I love you, James."
“Penny?” James’ voice pulled me back to the present. Or out of my fantasy? Or out of whatever that was.
I felt it. I felt his story come to life. My mind filled in the details. Whether it was memories or fantasies I had no idea. But the image of us in Central Park made my heart pound faster. And my breath catch. It was perfect. Too perfect. It made me sick knowing what would happen to us after that dance. How we’d slowly break.
“Do you remember?” His voice sounded so hopeful as his eyes searched mine. He had seen me leave the present. He had seen my mind go somewhere else.
I shook my head without really even focusing on his question. “I don’t know.”
“Baby, you have to try. Tell me what you were
thinking. Tell me you saw our first dance on our wedding night. Tell me you remember.”
My heart pounded faster. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. My mind was spinning.
He pulled me closer, his cologne making it harder to think straight. I felt like I was suffocating.
“I need you to try,” he said. “I need you.”
All I needed was air. And space. Hadn’t I just asked him to take things slow? “Why? Because I’m the light to your darkness? That’s what you said, right? James, that’s too much pressure. You can’t put all your happiness on me. That’s not realistic.”
“If you would just let your heart…”
“I don’t remember, James. I’m sorry. I can’t remember.” I shook my head and pushed his hands away from me. “And even if I could…I don’t know if I’d be happy.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Light and dark and black and white isn’t what I want, James. That isn’t what love is. Dull tones of gray. Love is…” My voice trailed off as I turned to look out the window. Dusk was settling over the city, casting a beautiful sunset over Central Park and between the buildings in the distance. “Love should be more of a…a whirlwind of color.” I turned back to him. “And I have to assume that isn’t what we had.”
The music stopped as James stared at me. “Okay. You’re not the light to my darkness. You’re my…whirlwind of color. It doesn’t matter how I put it. What matters is how much I care about you. How much I love you. Because I do love you, Penny. I love you with every ounce of who I am.”
“It’s not about that. You can’t just change how you describe our relationship. I don’t think our life was colorful. I think you had it exactly right. It was black and white and honestly I feel like it was mostly darkness. I…” God, just rip the freaking Band-Aid off. “I tried to kill myself, didn’t I? That’s why you were hiding so much stuff from me? So I wouldn’t figure it out.”
“What? No.” He stepped forward and grabbed both my hands. “Penny, we were happy. You have to trust me on this. I don’t know how else I can convince you…”
“I found the note, James.”
“What note?”
In that moment, I knew he was lying. He knew which note I was referring to. And he was playing dumb. I couldn’t trust anything he told me. All of it could have been lies. “The note where I said goodbye.” I kept going because he was still playing dumb. “Where I told you to move on.” Still nothing. “My suicide note, James. That note.”
“Fuck. I thought I threw that away.”
“So it’s true?” I pulled my hands out of his. “What was so wrong with my life that I’d try to do something like that?”
“You didn’t, Penny. You were poisoned. The note was a what if. You tried to add it to our will in case something went wrong during childbirth. That’s it. That’s the only thing that makes sense. It was just inconvenient timing of when I found it. You’d never try to take your own life. You loved your life. You loved our life together.”
“You couldn’t possibly know that for sure. Only I would know what that note meant.”
“But I know you better than you know yourself right now…”
“No you don’t.” Screw him. I knew myself. The real me. Not whatever person I had become after meeting him. “No matter what you do to convince me that what we had was perfect, I know it wasn’t. Nothing is perfect.”
“I never said our life was perfect. Of course we have issues. Everyone has issues.”
“Like my severe depression?”
“You weren’t depressed…”
“Stop lying, James. Please stop lying. For one minute can’t you…”
He grabbed the back of my head and pulled me into a kiss. I tried to push him off, but within a second I was completely captivated by his lips. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. I was paralyzed by that kiss. A hot, passionate, mind-blowing kiss. God. It wasn’t just a kiss. It was everything. Every. Single. Thing.
He pulled away far too soon. “I can prove to you we were happy. Just…don’t move.”
When his hands left my body I immediately felt cold. The reaction I had to him was all-consuming. He disappeared out of the living room and I silently cursed myself. I meant to just ask him about the letter. I didn’t mean to fight. And why was I so turned on whenever we fought? What the heck was that all about?
I smoothed down my hair and tried to even out my breathing. But all I wanted was his fingers in my hair again. I wanted his hands on the small of my back, pulling me closer. I wanted more. I swallowed hard. There was no way I was ready for more. Besides, he was healing from his cardiac episode. And I was healing too. Nothing heals the past like time. That’s what he had said earlier. I didn’t know if that was true. It felt like every time James and I took one step forward we took two steps back. And he wasn’t being patient with me. He was suffocating me. And intoxicating me.
James reappeared with a huge stack of papers in his hand. No, not just papers. He handed me my manuscript. Temptation by Ivy Smoak. The pages were worn, like he had read through it a lot. “You’ve read it?”
He pressed his lips together. “Several times. I may have tried to recreate a few scenes. I didn’t remember every detail. But you did. When you wrote it.”
“And Ivy Smoak is my pen name? Why wouldn’t I use my real name?”
“We have enough publicity. You wanted to do this on your own. Anonymity has its perks.”
“Do I have a publishing deal or…”
“Read it. We can talk about everything after you’ve read it. I just need you to understand how we started. How hard and fast we fell in love. How much we love each other. How real everything I’ve said is. Read it and then we can talk.”
I looked back down at the worn pages. He said he had read it several times. That was touching. “What did you think of the writing?”
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever read.”
I laughed. “Yeah right.”
“It’s emotional, and raw, and real. I barely made any notes. And I’m all about making notes. I’m a professor.”
“So you didn’t go all professorly on me and mark everything up?”
He smiled. A genuine, knee-weakening smile. “Professorly isn’t a word, Penny.”
“Really?” I scrunched my mouth to the side. “It feels like a real word. I’m the author though. If I want to use professorly, I think it’s okay.”
“Yeah. I think it’s okay too.”
My eyes drifted to his lips. “I didn’t expect you to kiss me.”
“I can only resist so much temptation.” He nodded to the manuscript.
“Hence the name Temptation?”
He smiled. “I don’t know…you’re the one that titled it.”
I looked back down at the book. Now that I was holding it, I felt like I finally had all the answers. I didn’t know what time frame it covered, but I hoped it was everything I was missing.
“Full disclosure, it’s pretty detailed,” James said.
I met his gaze. “What does that mean exactly? Too much detail?”
“No, I think it’s the perfect amount.”
I didn’t recognize the look he was giving me. Amused maybe? “If there’s something wrong with it you can tell me. It’s not like I remember writing it.”
He smiled. “Just read it, Penny. I’m going to head back to the hospital for a bit. I’ll be back soon.”
“Okay.” I bit the inside of my lip. Was he going to see Liam or to flirt more with that nurse?
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He laughed. “I know when something is bothering you. What’s wrong?”
I hugged my manuscript to my chest, but then immediately pulled it away. That was how Scarlett had held her favorite book. I didn’t want James to think of me as a child. I lifted my chest slightly.
The amused look on his face only grew.
Damn it. “Nothing really. I just happened to notice that yo
u seemed awfully close with the nurse…”
He stepped forward. And I held my breath. He’s going to kiss me again.
But instead, he lifted my hand and placed it on the center of his chest. “Baby, my heart beats for you.” He leaned forward, sending my own heart into a fit, and kissed my temple. “And for our children. I’ve spent as many hours as I could in the NICU. Liam is the only reason I’m going.”
“Good.” The word came out squeaky and high-pitched.
“Good.” He smiled down at me. “So unless there’s something else…” His eyes dropped to my lips.
I swallowed hard. “No, that was it.”
“You sure?” He moved a fraction of an inch closer.
All I had to do was stand on my tiptoes in order for my lips to brush against his. Instead, I closed my eyes and inhaled the smell of his sweet cologne, willing him to be the one to kiss me.
But instead of his hot breath intertwining with mine, I suddenly felt cold. I opened my eyes to see him a few feet away from me with the biggest smile on his face.
“Have fun reading, Penny.” He winked at me and walked away.
I was pretty sure he left me with my mouth hanging open. God, he had me wrapped around his finger. Temptation. I looked down at the manuscript. That seemed like a perfectly fitting name. I wandered over to the couch and dove into my book.
Chapter 31
Monday
Oh my God, tell him. I read the words as fast as I could. It was a scene I could picture clearly. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was a great writer or if it was because it was helping me remember. James had said the book was super detailed. But those probably weren’t the reasons I could visualize what was happening so easily. I had walked the green hundreds of times. I knew the campus like the back of my hand. No! Tell him!
The chapter ended with the door closing with a thud. And me referring to seeing James again as a date. And leaving the lie of me being at least 21 hanging there. Why the fuck hadn’t I just told him the truth? I just wanted to scream at the character, rip her out of the pages, and shake her. So mortifying.
I blamed the booze. Vodka was a seductive mistress. I was also horrified that my shirt was see-through in the rain. And that I had just kneed Tyler in the nuts. And that I was drunk and underage in front of my dreamy professor. A girl could lose her senses when all that had just happened.
