MY ALMOST EX (The Greene Family #2)

Chapter 3

Mandi’s hand is so tight around my wrist, she’s going to pop open a vein with her nails.

Lucy stops outside the doors to the inn.

My stepsister Mandi owns this place and I’m assuming she was appointed the designated Greene to watch out for me showing up here because as soon as my truck pulled into the parking lot, she was out the door, telling me to go home.

How can I go home? I drove Alicia home and she tried to lure me into her house by palming my d**k through my pants. Sadly, nothing happened, not even a chub—the consequences of having your estranged wife show back up in town is limp d**k apparently. So I walked her to the door and said good night.

I told myself to drive home. I really did. To just go to bed. But I couldn’t convince myself I’d get any sleep. Still, waiting until tomorrow, like my dad said, is good advice. But somehow, my truck took a wrong turn and then another wrong turn, leaving me outside the inn.

“Hey, Luce,” Mandi says, still with a vise grip on my wrist. Seriously, her hands are freakishly strong. “Did you need something?”

Lucy shakes her head, our gazes finding one another under the dim lights of the parking lot. “No. Just thought I’d clear my head.”

“Where’s your mom?” Mandi asks.

“Getting ready for bed.” Lucy zips up her jacket and shuffles her feet in place. “Adam, do you want to talk?” Her voice is so shaky and raspy, I barely recognize it.

I dislodge myself from Mandi’s Herculean grip and walk toward her. “Sure.”

“Adam…” Mandi’s tone holds warning, but I raise my hand.

“It’s my life.”

She says nothing else, and Lucy smiles over my shoulder at what was once one of her good friends. Mandi’s only a year older than us, and when Lucy and I were dating in high school, it was usually Lucy, Mandi, Chevelle, and me hanging out in the basement of our parents’ house. I wonder if Lucy remembers that.

“Please don’t make me the one responsible for organizing a search party, okay? Don’t run off,” Mandi says to our retreating backs.

“Don’t worry. I’ll bring her back within an hour,” I say.

“An hour?” Mandi screeches.

But I’m too busy soaking in the fact I’m walking toward the bay with Lucy next to me. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her, so it’s odd how normal yet weird it feels to be near her.

Lucy is taking in everything as we increase our distance from any sign of life.

With tourist season starting tomorrow, our small town of Sunrise Bay is more crowded than normal. Luckily, down by the inn, it’s more secluded. The majority of guests staying at the inn are probably having fun in the square, where most of the festivities are tonight. I find us a spot on the rocks closer to the shoreline and we sit. I pick up small pebbles and toss them in, needing to keep my hands busy before I do something stupid like touch her.

I’m not sure what to say, so like an i***t I blurt, “If I’m dead tomorrow, your mom probably killed me.”

“I get the gist she isn’t a fan?” Lucy sits next to me, picking up her own pebbles and throwing them in the water.

I glance over. The moonlight shines down on her face, reminding me of the nights in our cabin up in the mountains when we’d look at the stars and end up making love on our deck. I shut my eyes because that no longer exists. We aren’t that naive couple who thinks love can conquer the world anymore. In fact, now I know for certain it can’t.

“What do you remember?” I ask her.

I know absolutely nothing about amnesia, other than what I’ve seen in the movies, and I’m pretty sure that’s not completely accurate. Like that rom-com Lucy made me watch once where the guy is in a coma and when he wakes up, they convince him he has a fiancée. But whoops, she fell in love with the brother while he was fighting for his life.

“At first nothing. I didn’t know my name. But the doctors called my parents, and as soon as I saw them, I remembered them. They thought my memory issues would be temporary, but then nothing else came for a long time.”

“So you forgot all about me, huh?”

“I guess,” she says. “I remembered they were my parents, but I couldn’t recollect much else. Then when I saw you, I remembered you’re my husband.”

“Soon-to-be ex-husband.” I mentally reprimand myself for my tone when her shoulders sink.

“Can I ask you what happened between us? Did we break up because of your girlfriend?”

I guffaw. Of course I must be the one at fault. Anger is a hot pit in my stomach, but it’s still hard to admit one of the most embarrassing and painful things that’s ever happened to me. “I was never unfaithful to you. You left me.”

Her forehead wrinkles. “Why?”

What did I do in my life to deserve this torture? To have to relive all this s**t again just as I was starting to feel like I could move past it. I stare at the water, at some of the fishing vessels there. I’d like to dive in and ask them to take me with them out to sea for months.

I shrug, trying to appear unaffected. “You said you wanted to live your life. That you weren’t happy anymore.”

“Oh.” Her voice is meek and weary.

I want to curse myself for the instinct that wants to fix what’s troubling her. That’s something a husband does, not a soon-to-be ex-husband.

Too antsy to sit, I stand and head closer to the shoreline. The sky is dark, the stars overfilling the sky. A romantic scene for some maybe, but not for us. Those days are long gone.

“How come when I saw you, none of that came back? For a moment there, I was so happy.” She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them, staring at the water.

“I’m sure all the reasons for your unhappiness will come back to you,” I say in a derisive tone. Which is the exact reason I’ll be keeping my distance. Otherwise I’ll get close to her again, just for her to sweep the rug out from under me once she remembers. Then I’ll be back to pulling myself up from the depths of despair and I can’t do it again.

“On the way back to the inn, I remembered your thirteenth birthday party.”

I glance back at her and she has a soft smile on her lips. I remember it was the first time I ever touched her. I f*****g loved Cam for suggesting a chicken fight that day. “I wished for you to be my girlfriend when I blew out the candles that day.”

She sucks in a breath and I wish I would’ve kept that to myself. I’m not sure if I ever told Lucy that before or not. “Really?”

“That was over a decade ago. First crushes and all that shit.” I throw a rock out and it sinks into the water. My heart feels a kinship with it.

“You always had a great arm,” she says.

I nod. “So that’s all you remember, huh? That I was your husband, at thirteen you went to my birthday party, and I have a great arm?” I head back to the rocks.

“So far. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“I can tell my appearance bothers you. That I’ve upset you.”

I blow out a breath.

“What?” Her legs drop and she reaches out but retracts her hand immediately. “I’m upsetting you?”

I shake my head. “It’s just weird… you don’t remember much about me other than that I’m your husband, but you can still read my body language.”

“Yeah, that is weird, I guess. My doctor said it’s different for everyone. He pushed for me to come here, but my mom wasn’t very receptive to the idea. I’m starting to understand why.”

The last thing I want to discuss right now are her parents. I’m not the person to fill in her missing pieces. Welcoming her and helping her might be the right thing to do, but it’s not my place. Not anymore. “Why’s that?”

“My mom said she didn’t come to our wedding?”

I huff that even while Lucy is sick, Susan is trying to turn her away from us—from me.

“What? What am I missing?” Lucy asks.

My head falls back. “It’s her job to tell you, not mine.”

“Seriously?”

Her voice raises and it throws me off at first. Hell, sure we had our fights, but Lucy was a second grade teacher and she rarely lost her temper or ever raised her voice. I always said she had the most patience of anyone I ever met.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to not know anything?” She rises up from the rocks and walks back toward the inn. “I thought we shared something. That you’d tell me. You are my husband.”

“Was!” I yell. “I was your husband until you walked out on me. I’m sorry you got flung from a horse and can’t remember that, but do you have any idea what I’ve been through this past year? The love of my life left me without anything more than a ‘you just don’t make me happy anymore.’”

Her shoulders fall and she slowly pivots around to face me. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

She crouches and buries her head in her hands. “You hate me!”

Fuck me. My jaw tenses and my fists clench at my sides. “I don’t hate you. I—”

“Lucy!” Susan screams from the balcony of the inn, then rushes down the stairs toward us.

“f*****g hell,” I murmur.

Lucy’s head flies up. “So you hate her too?”

I shake my head and don’t answer because Lucy doesn’t remember the hell they put her through. All she must remember are her parents from when she was younger. I’m sure not going to be the one to help her figure this out.

“You can’t just take her like that,” Susan says when she reaches us, trying to catch her breath.

Mandi is right behind her, along with my stepbrother Jed. He sighs and gives me that look to say this sucks.

Yeah, tell me about it.

“I didn’t take her,” I grind out.

“You expect me to believe that? You have a new girlfriend, why don’t you just keep moving on?”

Lucy stands, and her mom wraps her arm around Lucy’s shoulders.

“Susan, you’re being unfair,” Mandi says. “I was there. Lucy wanted to talk to Adam.”

“I did, Mom,” Lucy says.

I blow out a breath and run my hand through my hair, pulling at my neck to relieve the tension building there.

Susan ignores Lucy’s comment. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you inside.”

“She’s not ten,” I say.

Jed groans.

Mandi sighs.

Susan stops and turns around. “Your animosity toward me isn’t going to help her.”

“Maybe a call from Idaho would’ve been helpful.”

“Okay, let’s go.” Jed puts his arm around my shoulders, as if I’m drunk or something.

“Listen to your stepbrother, Adam. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.” She walks away, Lucy’s eyes filled with questions.

Once they’re gone, I sit down and lean back, staring at the sky and wondering how the f**k I got here. Jed falls down next to me and Mandi follows. No one says anything. They don’t give me advice or tell me what to do. They just lie there and let me collect my thoughts.

How can Susan Davis find our family so despicable? We’re there for one another all the damn time, which is more than I can say for her.