Nick, thirty years old; him scratching his fingernails into limestone. Sammie’s terrified face. Her arms outstretched downward toward him. Her terrified face that grew smaller, and smaller, and smaller until—
“You didn’t catch my hand,” he interjected, unintentionally cutting her off.
Her expression crumpled, as her chin trembled violently and she slowly shook her head. She choked out a sob. “No. I tried. I really tried. I was distracted and didn’t see you slip. I heard the gravel and I turned around, and I tried to get to you, but you slipped too quickly, and I thought … I thought…”
She dropped her head forward as her shoulders heaved. “I’m so sorry, Nick. I’m so sorry.”
He replayed the backward series of events that made up the past three and a half decades of his life, over and over again, as his face seemed to melt into a disappointed frown, eyebrows knitted while he watched his wife sob.
And then it all finally clicked in the haze of his foggy brain.
She wasn’t his wife.
Ari never existed.
Every wonderful, crazy, frustrating, beautiful thing that had ever happened between them …never happened.
His hands somehow made their way to cover his face, and he caught sight of them briefly before closing his eyes and dropping backward onto the pillow. Tan, strong, youthful hands. The hands of a young man, which is what he still was, apparently.
He lay perfectly still for a long time, caught up in a daze of melancholy revelation until he was brought back to the current moment by the sound of her sobbing and apologizing.
“Sammie,” he began as he gently lifted her chin, rubbing his thumb across her cheek. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I didn’t catch you,” she gasped in a high-pitched voice. “And then we were trapped down there, and I had no idea what to do, and I’m just … I’m like, the worst hiking partner ever.”
He swallowed heavily as the rims of his eyes prickled again, but he managed to keep himself in control of his intense emotions.
“No,” he assured her, holding the back her head and pulling her into the crook of his neck. “No, you were thebest… hiking partner ever.”
The scent of her hair was familiar, as was the feeling of her skin. He was caught in a strange psychological limbo, feeling both completely at home and completely lost. The fuzziness of his brain wasn’t helping either. His instincts were urging him to lift her chin and kiss her, but he wasn’t sure if that was something he could do since, you know, they weren’t actually an old couple who’d been married for thirty-three years.
He racked his brain, trying to think of what the nature of their relationship was at this point. As he thought, it seemed his unfiltered mouth decided to act on his behalf.
“Can I kiss you?”
She glanced up at him and gave a breathy laugh through her subsiding tears. “I told you, you can kiss me anytime you want.”
With that, his hands seemed to be as unrestrained as his words, and he held the sides of her face, drawing her lips to his.
It seemed to unbridle his stifled emotions about everything; the fact that he’d essentially watched her dying, knowing she’d never meet their grandchild or even see Ari again; the fact that therewas nograndchildoran Ari; no lifetime of hard-fought happiness; none of it, except…
Except that, she was there. She was still there, and she was okay. Young, and beautiful, and sweet, with a lifetime of possibilities in front of her. And, myGod,he loved herso much.
So much that he couldn’t help gripping her shoulders, hoisting her halfway onto his chest, and holding her close to his heart.
So much that he desperately wanted to follow his instincts and just say it.But he couldn’t just say it because the part of his brain that wasn’t entirely fuzzy told him that wasn’t something he could say to her, no matter how much his heart seemed to be screaming it.
And somehow, he noticed his heart wasn’t communicating with the tiny, non-fuzzy part of his brain—only with his filter-lacking mouth—and the words spilled out before he could stop them.
“I love you, Sammie. I love you so much.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Samantha
“Ilove you, Sammie,” Nick mumbled in a voice still slurred and sleepy with sedation and pain meds. “I love you so much.”
Samantha’s ear was pressed firmly against his chest and the words rumbled, deep and low. Her stomach did a flip.
