Page 97 of From West, With Regret

“Because!” he sobs. “If I had and you still didn’t remember, would you have believed me? You would have run away and then I’d be left with another disgusting layer of regret all overagain. I’ve spent the past fifteen years living with this immense guilt.”

Seeing him broken breaks me.

“You promised you would find me again,” I rasp, holding my hand to my chest, over West’s necklace. Sadness eats away at me for all the years stolen from us. “Right here, in this place, you promised. You swore you’d find me after the Walkers adopted me. Then when you did find me, you still didn’t say anything. What was your plan? To just live our lives together never mentioning our past? Letting me believe we didn’t start until these past few months?”

“I don’t know.” He pushes his hair off his forehead and narrows his teary eyes as he takes a large step forward to reach out for my hand. “I didn’t have a plan. All I knew was that I’d found you again. I’d let you slip through my fingers that day at Coney Island, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Every single day of the past fifteen years I’ve been living in regret, drowning in it.”

“Coney Island?” I ask him, jerking back. “You saw me at Coney Island?”

“Middle of summer. I was seventeen. You were fifteen. You wore a worn pair of black and white chucks. Jean shorts and a blue shirt that read NYU in faded letters.” His neck bobs as he swallows. “You were wearing five gold rings, one on each finger, just like you wear now. Your nails were painted this light blue glitter color that shimmered in the sunlight, matching the ball of cotton candy you were holding.”

“West.” God, the earth is slipping out from under my feet. It’s shifting, not waiting for me to hold onto it.

He lifts his hand and traces his finger along the side of my face, leaving a trail of warmth on my cold, damp skin.

“You looked at me but didn’t recognize me,” he whispers. “I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say, thinking I would onlyembarrass myself. I was heartbroken that day, thinking you’d forgotten me.”

“I…I…” I try to say, but he cuts me off.

“I didn’t know what had happened to you until my mother told me Heath’s new wife had amnesia. I didn’t think anything of it until Julianna’s birthday party when I saw you with him. It was then I knew you hadn’t forgotten me by choice. Your memories were stolen from you.” He runs his finger along my cheek again, where my dimple rests when I smile. “From us.”

I haven’t moved, allowing his words to settle into my broken heart and my now pieced-together memories. The puzzle pieces all fit, clicking into place with ease. The whispered promises he made to me after saving me, telling me to go live my life with a safe, loving family but still swearing he’d come find me. I’d done that, but in the trade, I’d lost all memories of him.

“I regretted walking away from you that day,” he confesses, filling the eerie silence. “Then again when I watched you walk out of my bar. But you left this behind.” He reaches inside his pocket and pulls out a folded napkin. My napkin. My empty eulogy.

My shoulders rack with new tears. Chest caving in, I fall more and more in love with West.

“I had hope that one day you would come back to me, and you did,” he says, dropping it into my hand.

I unfold it, revealing my sketch of Big Ben.

“You don’t understand the depth of my love for you, Dimples,” he says, pulling my attention back up to him. “I would have done whatever it took to keep you. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you again. Even if it meant you would never remember our history together. Because with the memory of my love for you also came with the pain of what happened here. It hurt me to know that if you remembered me, you also remembered the worst part of your past, and the thought of youbeing hurt tears me up inside. You are the air I breathe, London. Without you, I’m nothing but a ghost wandering through this life that I won’t have,can’t have, without you.”

With tear-filled eyes, I look up at West. God, seeing him now as the man he’s turned into from the young man I now remember is an arrow aiming straight for my heart.

“I love you, West.”

My confession rocks him. He stumbles, shifting on his feet, and he lifts his hand to his mouth to stifle his sob. It’s as if our entire world has come crashing down around us, but somehow, it’s being pieced together at the same time.

“Look at me, West,” I beg, grabbing his hand. “You found me.” I tip my chin up, pressing his hand to my chest, over the Big Ben charm resting above my heart. “You saved me, then you found me.”

He breaks. His mouth opens as he exhales, tears slipping from the corners of his kind blue eyes. With fevered hands, he cups my face. “I love you, London.” He crashes his mouth against mine, breathing me in. A sob escapes both our chests as our mouths meet. “God, how I fucking love you.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

LONDON

I used to lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering what it would feel like to regain my memories.

I always imagined it clearly, everything slipping into its rightful place. Each memory compartmentalized into neat, tiny boxes. All of them are connected yet still organized, as if I’d been spending my life blindly searching for the light switch to the room that is my life, and once I found it, the room would light up and I’d feel right at home again.

I imagined living a happy life—one where I had two loving parents who only gave me up for reasons out of their control. I imagined a life of sunshine and rainbows. Other than the blip of me ending up in a foster home, my life was perfect.

Oh, how I wish that were true.

“Are you okay, Dimples?” West asks me for the millionth time.

“Yes.” I sigh, giving him the same exact answer. I try to give him a small smile of reassurance. He accepts it with a twitch of his mouth before focusing back on the gate that leads into the parking garage below his apartment building.

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