why would I even think she wouldn’t do it this time, too?
“Margaret?” Harley said.
“She called the office and told us everything,” Dr. Alistair said. “How the hospital called you because of some emergency contact card Harley probably forgot was in her fanny pack, and how you decided not to call us right away. She also told us about you bringing Harley here, hoping it would help her remember what she’s forgotten. But if you’d just taken her to her apartment—”
“My apartment?” There was panic in Harley’s eyes as she looked at me. “You said I lived here.”
“You do,” I assured her.
“No,” Dr. Alistair said, “you don’t.”
He seemed to actually relish the moment. Why was I surprised? The man had never liked me. He’d probably prayed every day from the moment we met that Harley would break up with me. He likely threw a party on the day he found out Harley called off the wedding and moved out.
“You broke it off with him three months ago,” Amanda said, as she patted her daughter’s hand. “A week before the wedding.”
“He’s not your fiancé, darling,” Dr. Alistair added. “In fact, you had a restraining order against him that expired the day before the accident.”
And there it was. It was all out in the open now.
What was that old saying? Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
That was me. Back in my own personal hell.
Chapter 13
Harley
“He’s not your fiancé,” my father said, the words swirling around in my head as the air was sucked out of the room. “In fact, you had a restraining order issued against him that expired just a day before the accident.”
I stared at his familiar features, trying to make sense of what he was saying. I knew him, knew every inch of his face. There were a few new wrinkles that weren’t there the last time I remembered seeing him, but he was still my father. And my mom, sitting beside me holding my hand, was the same as she had always been. And then there was the man standing just inside the room, a shadow darkening his handsome features. Less than ten minutes ago I was kissing that man, touching him. Convinced that he was the man I pledged to marry months ago. But the thing is, I don’t remember him. In fact, I remember very little about the last three years of my life. More than I did when I woke from a medically induced coma, but not enough.
I was in an accident weeks ago. Xander told me I’d been jogging when I was hit by a car that forced me into a tree. I had an injury to my head, and I was in a coma for fifteen days before I finally woke up with a cast on my leg, several broken ribs, a broken clavicle, and the last three years of my life completely erased.
I woke to an impossibly handsome man staring at me. Xander Boggs. My fiancé.
I had no idea who he was.
He told me we were in love and I’d lived in this house with him and we were planning our wedding when the accident happened.
Well, he said we were planning our wedding. He never actually said when or where or how. In fact, he never told me any details about the wedding itself.
“I don’t understand.”
My mom patted my hand. “I know it’s confusing, sweetheart. That’s why we’re here. We want to take you home.”
My father knelt in front of me. “You’ll be safer back in Texas with us.”
“Is that what you’re worried about? That I’ll hurt her in some way?” Xander asked.
“You already have,” my father said. “How dare you convince her that your engagement was still on!”
“The doctor—”
“Don’t talk to me about doctors,” my father said, standing to confront Xander. “You never should have been at the hospital in the first place. Why didn’t you call us? Why didn’t you let her family know what was happening?”
“I tried. You were on a cruise—”
“You could have called our attorney!”
“And I could have hired a pilot to fly out to your cruise ship and bring you back.”
The sarcasm dripping from
Learning to Kill: Stories