Chapter Thirty-Nine

Paige refused to greet rays of the morning sun entering the room. She wasn’t ready to stop reliving her and Brenden’s movie date at the Franklin Theatre, their hand-in-hand midnight stroll, or the kiss that sent her body up in flames on the Riverwalk. Their weekend had been beautiful, nostalgic.

A semblance of life before the accident and the loss of their baby had returned. They no longer seemed to be two ships passing in the night. The change could be attributed to two weeks of marriage counseling, or even sex. In truth, progress was made the day Brenden opened up about his mission to find the man who poisoned her.

Paige clung to her happiest thoughts and snuggled back under the covers. Just as she began to drift off, Raja’s bark echoed. In a matter of seconds, the Lab dashed in, hopped on the bed, and begged for her attention.

“That a girl!” The sexiest masculine chuckle rang out as Raja nuzzled her side. “Get her up, girl, or she’s going to be late for work.”

“What are you doing here?” Paige giggled, petting Raja on the head. “I thought you left already.” She sat up in bed, caving to Raja’s sweetness while staring at her husband standing watch in the doorway.

God, it should be illegal for him to parade around in running gear. And his smile would’ve melted her panties if she had any on.

“I’m taking the day to get a few things in order.” Brenden’s eyes connected with hers even as he sipped from his favorite morning roast.

“Oh, like what? And why are you standing in the doorway like that?”

“If I come any closer, you won’t make it to work on time.” His brow arched in that matter-of-fact way.

Paige couldn’t stop the grin spreading across her face. Her body heated up as she reminisced on all the naughty things they had done last night. Sex with Brenden wasn’t just sex. Their bodies joined together gave definition to making love, even if he couldn’t remember being in love with her.

A pang struck hard in the middle of her chest. Her smile fell and there was no longer any joy in petting Raja. Paige eased from the covers, bracing the cool reality of the life she hadn’t been ready to wake up to.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she mumbled while moving to the bathroom.

“Paige.” Brenden’s tone firmed and his hand gripped her wrist, halting her stride. “What is it? Your entire demeanor changed.”

“Nothing,” she said again, purposely avoiding eye contact.

His hold remained. They both ignored the dog’s bark as he pulled Paige closer. “I don’t read minds. I know what’s wrong only if you tell me.”

Paige met his penetrating stare. She read his frustration. There was so much she had to say yet so much she couldn’t. Brad, Bellamy, his parents, her parents, the marriage counselor, and everyone with Brenden’s best interests at heart always came back to the same word: patience. Pushing him back into a life he seemed to still be navigating could lead to devastating effects.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She wriggled her wrist from his grip and continued into the bathroom.

Paige cloaked herself within the warm spray of the shower. She scrubbed her body, wishing in the same way water removed dirt that the obstacles barring her from the life she once lived would wash away. So much for wishful thinking. Real life was waiting on the other side of the bathroom door.

She cut the shower and dried off. A sigh escaped her as she made steps toward the bedroom. The moment she opened the bathroom door, Brenden’s arresting stare took her hostage.

“It’s been two weeks, five sessions since we first went to counseling, and you still won’t open up.”

“Me?” Paige sighed, shaking her head. “Aren’t you still hiding your nightmares of Daniel?”

Brenden flinched, rising from the bed bench. “Nightmares of Daniel?”

“Really, Brenden? We’re back to this?”

“I’m not asking about me right now. I’m asking about you. What are you so afraid of, Paige?”

She clutched the towel tight to her body. From the moment he walked out on her in Germany, she had held the answer to this very question in the darkest recesses of her mind. Speaking her foul thoughts into existence could only be construed as treason against her heart. Why did he need to know this? Why had she promised to answer all of his questions?

“You,” she choked over a sob. “You, never loving me again, Brenden.”

He hauled her into his arms. “I will learn to love you.”

“No.” She pushed him away, tears rolling down her cheeks, fists curling into balls. “I don’t want you to learn. You have to remember. If you remember me, then you love me, and I’ll know what we have is real.”

“Paige, you’re my wife and—”

“Which right now is a title empty of meaning. I’m a wife to a husband who doesn’t love me. How much more do you want me to take?”

For a while, they stared into each other’s faces. She had done exactly what everyone told her not to do. Every bit of progress they had made in the last fifteen days felt like it had been stripped away. Patience was to have been her friend, except it abandoned her just like Brenden’s love.

“I come home”—his fingers raked through his hair—“married to this beautiful, sexy as hell, smart woman who I can’t remember because I’m unable to recall the last almost three years of my life. At times my job seems foreign, and I have custody of my dead sister’s kid. This isn’t easy for me, either.”

With disappointment and guilt burdening her heart, Paige turned away from him and sat on the bed. She closed her eyes, again wishing life would return to the time before the accident. Her thoughts were interrupted by Brenden’s warm hands against her thighs. She opened her eyes to him kneeling before her.

“One thing I remember about me is that I don’t give up. I fight for what I believe in.” He gently lifted her chin until their eyes met. “Have faith in me…in us. I will fight to remember. This is my promise to you.”

That brilliant mixture of gray and blue with specks of brown seized her heart. She would never be able to protect herself from the charms of Brenden Jasper. Not when she was over the moon in love with him.

“Will you accept my promise, Nichols?”

The rhythm of her heart stuttered. The hungriest parts of her soul devoured his affection. If she held any hope in believing in their future, then she would accept his promise. “Yes, Jasper.”

…

The moment after she accepted his promise, Brenden should’ve told his wife not to be afraid because he would remember her, them, and their love. For a second he contemplated as much because he knew he was falling for her. But the truth was, he didn’t know if the part of him that remembered loving her would ever come back. Therefore, he said nothing as he watched her dash out of the house for work.

Her absence created a void he wasn’t able to dismiss. His body, his mind, and his heart thirsted for her. For the last two weeks, he had committed himself to the life he was desperate to remember. In the process, he discovered it was something he was willing to defend at all costs.

The time they’d spent together over the last month revealed an exceptional woman, one who created art when she was sad, loved his niece like she was her own daughter, and laughed at all his rotten jokes before giving herself freely to their intimacy. Would he be the selfish bastard he knew he could be and continue taking her love while waiting for his memory to return?

He couldn’t. Nor could he ignore the sensation jump-starting his heart the minute their eyes locked as he spilled his seed deep within her womb.

Brenden released a long sigh, dragging a hand through his hair, and then decided to focus on what he could control. He dialed the marriage counselor’s office and set a one-on-one appointment. The confession he managed to get out of Paige as she dressed for work regarding the nightmares of Daniel didn’t sit well with him. Chunks of his life were still missing, but the part featuring Daniel’s death had been best forgotten ever since the briefing in Belarus.

At least until now.

As he climbed the stairs, he shook the overwhelming urge to scavenge fragments of his nightmares. There was another, more important reason why he had chosen to stay home today. And his need to shield Paige from further hurt or harm was why he hadn’t asked her to stay.

He stopped outside the door to the nursery. Guilt and sadness greeted him without hesitation. Since the day he’d come home and found Paige broken down inside this room, she’d never stepped inside again. Nor had he.

There was too much pain. It crippled him now as he turned the door handle. Still, he pressed on. The room couldn’t remain as it was.

When Brenden opened the door and stepped inside Emeline’s room, destruction was everywhere. Shattered lamps, holes in drywall, paint-stained carpet, and torn curtains revealed the aftermath of Paige’s downward spiral to be worse than he remembered. He chose not to focus on any one thing in the room. The more he detached himself from tangible reminders of the child he would never have, the easier it would be to achieve his goal of emptying the room.

After dismantling the crib, he tossed it, along with a broken rocking chair, and remaining nursery furniture onto a donation truck. He then set to work with the efficiency of ten men and disposed of anything identifying the room as a baby’s nursery…except for the mural.

He grabbed a bucket of paint from the art supplies left in a corner and went to the center of the room. For a long while he stood fixated on the palette he imagined Paige had used while painting the mural. Once his thoughts ceased, he channeled the strength of a thousand soldiers and looked up at the walls she painted.

She had confessed the mural to be the one thing she painted that hadn’t been therapeutic. His grip tightened around the handle of the paint can. Paige had channeled all her joy of becoming a mother into the walls of the room. Fairies dancing along a riverbank while a unicorn grazed in a flowering sunny meadow were images that denoted happiness. The color of green she chose was brighter than any emerald and the water sparkled like the moon’s shine. But now there were splotches of black, evidencing her sadness.

A huffed, ironic chuckle escaped Brenden. Since when did he psychoanalyze art? Easy—since he had taken time to relearn his wife. He had heard more about brushstrokes and symbolism than a first-year art student.

In the last few weeks, he found himself eager for the new art wing at Andover to open while listening to the lectures she prepared. The way she spoke about art and decoded her morning piece always left him hungry for more. His affections were growing for Paige while reinvigorating his love of art—my love for her.

A sharp pain pinched his chest, and his grip tightened on the handle of the paint can. He backed away from the mural, then went to the corner and began removing the remaining paint supplies. They would have to keep pretending Emeline’s room didn’t exist because he couldn’t bring himself to erase the mural with a fresh coat of white paint. The painting was special, and full of the spirit he saw whenever he looked into his wife’s eyes.

Emotions Brenden was afraid to acknowledge suffocated him. His attempt to escape the room failed when the paint can, paintbrushes, and pages from her sketch pad tumbled from his arms and scattered across the floor. When he kneeled to reclaim the materials, a page from the sketch pad made him go still.

Brenden brought the paper to his face. He swallowed hard, wondering, wishing he could remember when Paige had sketched him half naked, draped in sheets, and why his gaze was so distant. The charcoal of her pencil captured unspoken emotion upon his face. He thought he appeared vulnerable.

But, why? Was he? The questions sprinting through his head were not simple. Not when he felt as hopeless now as he had whenever the sketch was made.

Muted thoughts produced blurred images of a candlelit room. At once, memories rushed in. He remembered how the shadows of their bodies danced in the light of the candle. That night had made him contemplate his future and the many possibilities of a life with Paige, even if she was a complication.

Like a starving man hungry for more food, Brenden collected the remaining pages from her sketch pad. He sat staring at drawings of the Rhineland, a moon illuminating its light over the ocean, Raja, and then he closed the pad. He had hoped to retrieve other memories. Instead, he had been a peeping tom into Paige’s window of pain.

He alone had the power to heal her. He just needed to remember it all.