Page 106 of My Fiancé's Brother

“Just forget I said anything.”

“I’m not just going to forget that.”

“You have to,” I was shouting. “I want a redo.”

“You don’t get a fucking redo on that.” He shouted back.

We eyeballed each other. My breath was coming through my nose harsh and fast. I broke my gaze away first, unable to maintain eye contact with the intensity that was vibrating out of him. I started to back away from him. “It doesn’t matter now.”

He reached out and grabbed me, pulling me back. “Stop.”

I lifted up both hands. “This isn’t something you need to fix, Jackson. You were there when everything in my life was going to shit. And frankly, I don’t think anyone could blame me because anyone would fall for you.”

“I’m not trying to fix you. I'm trying to understand.” His voice sounded strained.

“I love you,” I said between gritted teeth. “What’s so hard to understand about that?”

His head jerked back as if I had slapped him. I could see the panic cross his eyes. Since I had known Jackson, this was the first time I felt him losing his grip on his emotions.

I let out a pent-up breath. I needed to let the poor bastard off the hook from his weird sense of responsibility that he carried around for everyone.

“Jackson, you and I want different things. All I want is to feel safe and have a family. Those are my two goals. You live this dangerous life, and you don’t want a wife or kids. I always knew nothing could come of us.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that you don’t have to worry that I have any expectations from you. We can’t take back what happened, and I'll always feel a lot of guilt about that, but I don’t expect anything from you.”

His head jerked, and his jaw tightened. “So what? You’re just going to go back to Matt?”

I drew my breath and then released it. I had no answer to that. Would I ever be able to be with Matt after knowing what it was like to be with Jackson? I was in love with this huge man that stood before me. There was no denying it, but it was evident that he did not share the same feelings.

A jarring sound interrupted us. It was Jackson’s cell phone.

We stood there for a long moment until finally, he brought the phone to his ear.

He answered and then listened. “Okay.”

He hung up and looked at me with resignation on his face. “Matt just woke up.”

Oh fuck. It was time to face the music.

“Okay.”

We started walking towards the hospital doors. I took deep, shuddery breaths, trying in vain to compose myself. We got on the elevator, and I could feel the emotions rippling through him. What those feelings were, I had no clue. Did it matter now? The damage was done. We had crossed a line that was so big it was impossible to come back from. Now we needed to deal with the fallout of our actions.

The doctor pulledthe three of us into the same small room.

“Well, we have some great news. Matt has woken up. We have taken him off the ventilator. His voice is raspy because his vocal cords are still tender and sore, but he’s talking, and his speech patterns seem to be fine. He knows who he is. He knows his name.”

Irene sagged back into the couch. “Oh thank God.”

“But it appears that Matt is experiencing some retrograde amnesia.”

“What does that mean,” Irene’s voice trembled.

“It seems like Matt has lost a significant chunk of time from his memory.”

“He can’t remember?”

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