This Reminds Me of Us Read online

  He hurried down the carpeted hall to room 222 and knocked on the wooden door, quietly enough not to wake other guests but firmly enough that she would definitely hear. The crazy idea was multiplying into more crazy ideas. What if she answered the door in sexy lingerie? Or a towel? Or … nothing at all?

  When she answered the door in the same clothes she’d had on at the carnival, Normal Oliver slammed into him so hard it knocked the words right out of his mouth: “Care to go for a walk?”

  By the time they reached Secret Beach, normal Oliver Wolfe had been left behind again. “There’s a little cove around that bend,” he said. “Sometimes people skinny-dip there.”

  “Think anyone’s there now?” she asked.

  “We can go check.”

  The cove was empty. Was that a sign from above or what? He tugged his SCFD tee shirt from the waistband of his jeans and pulled it over his head. By the time he dropped it onto the sand, she was completely undressed and jogging toward the black water of the bay.

  It was all he could do to remember how a zipper worked. They had exchanged names and basic details on the walk over, all of which he’d left with Normal Oliver for safekeeping.

  It was early in the summer and the bay was still chilly, but he didn’t notice. He cut through the water until it was up to his chest and he had reached the spot where she floated on her back, the round tops of her breasts bobbing pale and wet in the moonlight. Her dark hair lay on the surface of the water like seaweed, and she smiled at him.

  “I would have thought firefighters could get undressed faster than that,” she said.

  “We’re generally fully dressed beneath our turnout gear.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Well, there goes that fantasy.”

  She flipped onto her stomach and began to swim away from him. He dove into the water and followed, coming up right behind her, so close he could feel the heat of her body through the cool black water. She turned and wrapped her arms around his waist, an open invitation if ever he’d seen one. He leaned down to kiss her. He could slip his hands beneath her lovely bottom, hike her up an inch or two, and he’d be inside her. And damn damn damn, if that wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be.

  Her lips were salty from the bay and he tasted them over and over, until there was nothing but sweetness left. He wanted her and she wanted him, and the opportunity was right there for both of them. They’d never see each other again. He wasn’t her type for anything beyond a roll in the hay—or surf or sand—anyway. That fact alone would have been all some guys needed—a secluded beach, one night of satisfaction, wham bam thank you ma’am. And Oliver wasn’t saying that he wasn’t that kind of guy. He’d partaken of offered pleasures in similar situations while on vacations with friends or weekends at the shore.

  This felt different, somehow. And while he was pondering why that might be, Normal Oliver snuck up on him from behind. The guy could walk on water, apparently.

  If you have sex with her tonight, you’ll want her again and again and again.

  The pleasure of holding this woman in his arms was exquisite. But Normal Oliver was right. If he indulged in it—just this once—no other pleasure would ever be enough. He knew it made no sense—and a certain appendage was vociferously arguing its case otherwise—but enough of his brain cells were still functioning for him to know it was true. Could he spend the rest of his life knowing that he’d never have it this good again? On the other hand, if he abstained tonight, he could talk himself into the idea that she wouldn’t have been that good anyway.

  Sometimes it’s better not to know, man? You know what I mean?

  That was the start of his life with Serena, a running battle between two Olivers, between the man he was and the man he wanted to be—for her. The war was won—or lost, depending on how you looked at it—the day of her accident. Since then, it was only Normal Oliver and the dreams of his other, better half.

  “Ollie?”

  Serena’s voice wasn’t part of his current dream. He knew that instantly. He had all these dreams memorized, after all, and he brooked no deviation. His waking life was so out of control, he needed to count on consistency and predictability when he slept.

  Her voice came again. “Who responded to the call?”

  He swallowed, then bit down hard on his lip to keep it from trembling. The sharp taste of blood kissed his tongue. He kept his eyes closed. Maybe she’d assume he was asleep and go back to sleep herself.

  “Ollie. Please tell me it wasn’t you.”

  He swallowed the blood. “The police got there first.”

  “They usually do.”

  He knew Serena well enough to recognize the subtext in her words. You’re not answering my question. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to answer her question. He didn’t want to remember the answer.

  “Jack got there first.” And then the words spilled out. “He called dispatch to tell me not to come. But Mattie and I were already on the way.” Don’t cry. Do not let her see you cry. But he could feel the tears clinging to his eyelashes. “It took all three of them to hold me back.”

  “Come here.”

  He opened his eyes and saw her struggling weakly to pull back the covers.

  “Get in bed with me.”

  “I’m probably not supposed—”

  “Break a rule for once, Ollie. For me?”

  He rose from the chair, blinking his eyes hard to shake off the tears. He could never say no to Serena. She knew that. She was his weakness, his Achilles heel, his kryptonite. You can’t afford to be weak anymore. He’d thought her waking up would be the end of this road. Now he realized they still had a long ways to go. If they were to get there as a family, he had to be strong enough to carry them there.

  “I’ll go get a nurse,” he said.

  Chapter 5

  Serena plastered a bright smile on her face until the door closed behind the exiting physical therapist. Then her face fell as she collapsed back onto the pillow, exhausted. She’d been awake for a week and already she was sick of the hospital. She wanted to go home. Even though “home” wasn’t the small two-bedroom apartment she remembered. Apparently, she and Oliver had bought a house two years ago—the apartment had gotten too small for two rambunctious boys.

  Her rambunctious boys.

  How did she give birth to two children and not remember it? She closed her eyes. The doctor said she might regain her memory. Or not. Or regain some memories and not others.

  And she’d been pregnant when the accident happened. She’d give anything to rewind time to before that awful day.

  She opened her eyes and peered over at the clock on the wall. She hoped Ollie would wait until after lunch to visit. The doctor had started her on solid food two days ago and … it wasn’t going well, to say the least. Oliver saw worse on the job all the time, but still. She looked bad enough as it was—her hair several months overdue for a cut, her face breaking out like a teenager’s. She’d rather not vomit up soup and gelatin in front of him on top of that.

  Even worse, she feared being a burden on him when she went home. The doctor assured her that she wouldn’t be released until she could keep solid food down consistently and had recovered her muscle strength. Right now, just walking down the hall exhausted her.

  But damn, she wanted to go home, even to a home she couldn’t remember. Any place would be better than a hospital.

  Lunch came and, true to form, she couldn’t keep any of it down. Oliver walked in right as one of the nurses was helping her into the tiny shower.

  “Let me do it,” he said, kicking off his shoes and rolling up his pants legs and shirt sleeves.

  “I don’t want you to see me this way.”

  “Naked?” he answered quietly, smiling.

  She watched helplessly as the nurse retreated and disappeared.

  “I’d rather see you this way than the way I’ve been seeing you for the past several months.” He calmly reached over and turned on the water, keeping his hand in the stream
until it was warm enough. “The doctor says this is all normal, love.”

  “Not being able to eat. Atrophied muscles. Fine. But not being able to remember my own kids is not normal.”

  He helped her sit down on the narrow tiled bench. “You’ll remember them. It’s just temporary. They’re clamoring to come see you.”

  It’s just temporary. That’s what she kept telling herself. But with each passing day, it grew harder to have faith in wishful thinking. She took a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to pull them out of school to come all the way to Baltimore.”

  “Thanksgiving is next week. How about I bring them and we’ll have Thanksgiving dinner here together? Dad offered to come with me.”

  She took a deep breath, ignoring the way moving her lungs made her feel like she’d been punched in the stomach. She scooted along the bench until she was beneath the water, where Oliver’s soapy hands began to wash her shoulders and back. The feel of his hands on her skin relaxed her. A little bit, anyway. She let the water run over her skin, imagining it washing away every worry and care.

  “Did anyone call my parents?” The question popped into her head suddenly. Oliver turned off the water.

  “I did.”

  Of course, he did. Even though they had always treated him like dirt, Oliver would do the right thing.

  “They did come visit twice,” he added.

  “Oh. Good.” She felt him drying her skin with a scratchy hospital towel. “Were they …” Any nicer? She couldn’t force the words from her mouth. But Oliver knew what they were.

  “No.” He wrapped the towel around her shoulders. “Are you okay sitting here while I go get you a clean robe?”

  She nodded and pulled the towel tighter.

  “Can I sit in the chair for awhile?” Serena asked as Oliver helped her back from the shower.

  “Sure.”

  She gave a little yelp as he sat in the chair and pulled her down onto his lap. He stretched toward the bed and yanked off the blanket, wrapping it around her. He felt a moment of protest hover in the air, then she let it go and leaned back into his chest.

  “You going to cop a feel?” she said.

  He pressed a kiss into her shower-damp cheek. “Sounds like a good idea to me.” He slipped his hands beneath the blanket and the thin fabric of the hospital robe. He spread his palms over her stomach and just rested them there. Her stomach was so completely flat now he could feel the points of her hip bones pressing into his wrists.

  Serena had never been stick-thin, and even less so after two pregnancies. He had liked the soft roundness of her belly, the way the curve of her hips melted into the curve of her thigh. That intense physical attraction he’d felt the night they met? It had yet to diminish. Not even a tiny bit.

  Case in point: the part of his body that was lengthening beneath the warm weight of her bottom.

  “You’re incorrigible, Oliver Wolfe.” But she smiled as she said it.

  “I can’t help it. Raised by Wolves, you know. Plus you’re just so damn sexy.”

  “Right. In this very sexy gown.”

  He pressed a kiss into the base of her neck, inhaled the scent of soap and skin. “I kinda’ like the way it’s completely open in the back.” He rocked his hips under her. His erection was now long and hard.

  He ran his hands up her ribs, which were too prominent beneath his fingertips, and cupped the underside of her breasts. That was all the further his hands went. He wasn’t trying to be overtly sexual, other than a certain appendage he had little to no control over. He suspected she just needed to be touched, after all these months, in a way that wasn’t clinical. Touched by someone who cared about her. Who loved her. Lord knew, he needed to be touched.

  He slid his palms back down her ribs and over her thighs. As he skimmed his hands across her skin, he felt her body relax against his.

  “Maybe you can ask the doctor when we can resume,” Serena paused for effect, “marital relations.”

  Her laughter caused her body to jostle against his. He groaned into her back. “If you don’t hold still, we’re going to be resuming in about ten seconds.”

  She carefully spun herself around on his lap, ending up straddled across his thighs. She caught his eyes as she unzipped his grey cotton pants.

  “Serena,” he whispered. Her hands were soft where he was hard. “I’m not going to last.”

  “That’s okay. I know you need this.”

  “I do. I need you back in our bed, just the two of us.”

  She was stroking him a little harder now.

  “It’s okay … you know … if …” She stared at his shirt as her hand continued to move. “You probably thought I was never waking up.”

  Oliver covered her hand with his and stilled her motion.

  “I’d understand if you did,” she added, quietly.

  A tear dropped onto the back of his rough and scarred hand. Just like that, his arousal went soft. He hated to give voice to what he thought she was giving him retroactive permission for. But he needed her to be crystal clear on this.

  “Are you asking if I was with another woman while my wife lay unconscious in the hospital?”

  “You had needs. I’d understand, Ollie, really.”

  He put himself back into his pants, pulled up the zipper. Then he lifted her teary face to meet his gaze. “I never—never—even considered being unfaithful to you.” He cupped her jaw in his palms. “I’ve been on leave from the fire department. These past four months, I’ve either been here with you or at home with the boys.” His thumb brushed away a tear from her cheek. “The only people who have been in our bed with me have been the boys. Right after the accident, we all slept in the same bed for awhile.”

  “Were they afraid to sleep alone?”

  He pulled her head into his chest and nestled it there. “No. I was.”

  Chapter 6

  The crayon and marker drawings were spread out across Serena’s lap. Fortunately, the boys had signed each one. In Mason’s drawings were burning buildings, boats on the water, and fireworks. The pictures of fireworks seemed especially carefully drawn. Cam’s drawings were all variations on a theme: four stick figures clearly meant to resemble their family in different settings. At the beach. On a boat. (Oliver had mentioned they owned a small boat—she remembered that.) In front of a house with oversized tulips off to one side.

  The boys had made dozens of drawings and her heart ached at the thought of two little boys without their mother for months on end. She was certain they had been well cared for. The Wolfe family was tight-knit. When Serena’s parents disowned her over the marriage, Angela Wolfe had been a surrogate mother to her.

  Her vision blurred over. Oliver said Angie had died of cancer not long after the accident. She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. She didn’t remember Angie even being sick—which, as Oliver pointed out, was probably a good thing. “I think she would have preferred that everyone remember her as healthy.”

  She neatly stacked the drawings and set them aside. She reached beneath the blanket and pulled out a small notepad, flipping it open. She was taking notes on everything Oliver told her about the boys. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving and they were coming to visit.

  Mason’s favorite subjects in school were gym and recess. Cam was in kindergarten but liked reading so far. Cam had a growth spurt last month and was now almost as tall as his older brother. Both boys were fanatic about Legos. Mason was a pumpkin pie man. Cam preferred apple. Favorite foods were pizza for Cam and cheeseburgers for Mason.

  She read through the pages, stopping now and then to quiz herself, to test her memory. She had no trouble remembering what happened yesterday or who said what. So why couldn’t she remember the rest?

  Her heart began to race, as it did every time she thought about the fact that years of her life were completely unknown to her right now. What had she done in those years? Nothing terrible, she was sure, but to not know was terrifying.

&n
bsp; She slipped the notepad back beneath the blanket and closed her eyes to sleep. Her boys were coming to visit tomorrow. She prayed she could fake it well enough to fool a five-year-old and a seven-year-old.

  Oliver paused outside the boys’ bedroom, listening. Between the prospect of the long Thanksgiving weekend away from school and the news that they were going to see their mom tomorrow, they had been wired and hyper all day. They were excited.

  Oliver, on the other hand, was cautiously optimistic.

  Or trying to be, anyway.

  He padded barefoot down the hall to the master bedroom, where it was considerably harder to maintain anything resembling optimism. He brushed his teeth, swapped his jeans and tee shirt for flannel pajama pants, and crawled into bed. Outside, the wind had picked up and a branch from the oak tree in the yard was tapping the side of the house like a metronome.

  He rolled onto his side and wondered whether he should trim back the tree. Then he wondered why that particular project hadn’t occurred to him until now. He had occupied his time and thoughts with home project after home project these past few months. Replaced the carpet in the upstairs hallway. Repainted the cabinets in the laundry room. Installed a heated towel rack in their bathroom and towel hooks shaped like sharks in the boys’. Planted a row of hydrangeas along the side yard and put in nearly two hundred tulip bulbs in the front—as a surprise for Serena next spring.

  But what if she didn’t remember that hydrangeas and tulips were her favorite flowers?

  They’re just flowers.

  When the doctor mentioned that the head injury might cause memory loss, Oliver had assumed that meant she might not remember certain events, a day or a week here and there. But years? Not remember the boys? That idea never even crossed his mind.