Page 50 of Don't Forget Me
“I can’t…” He shook his head, turning away from Stephen. “I can’t look at it without thinking of you.”
“Hate to break it to you, but you can’t look at anything without thinking of me. It’s okay, Nick. I know it’s because you loved me.”
“I did. You’re the only person—”
“Which is pretty sad, by the way. What about the girl? The one with the pretty eyes.”
Nick smiled with his back still to his brother. “Liz is… temporary.”
“Duh. Even before me, you only ever did temporary. You were always afraid people wouldn’t love you back.”
Nick could have sworn he felt a hand on his shoulder, but when he turned, Stephen was staring down into the water that took his life.
He wasn’t finished. “And then, after me, you were afraid if they did love you back, you’d still lose them. You, my superstar bro, have somehow come to the conclusion that all love is temporary.”
Nick grunted. His brother wasn’t wrong.
“Let me ask you a question.”
With a sigh, he turned to Stephen and waited.
“When I died, did you stop loving me?”
It wasn’t a question Nick wanted to answer. When his brother died, it was like that love was amplified, filling every hole in his life with its pain. No, it didn’t go away, it only hurt worse.
“I didn’t think so.” Stephen tore his eyes from the water to fix them on Nick. “See, not temporary. You are not as awful as you try to make people think, and I don’t think I’m the only one who sees that.” He jerked his head toward the house where Liz stood on the deck in a pair of his shorts and a t-shirt, her long fingers wrapped around a mug.
“No, Stephen—” When he turned back to his brother, he stopped at the wistful expression on his face.
“I miss you, Nick.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Eventually you are going to wake up. Don’t go back to your world the same man who left it.” He arched a brow. “Get in the water. It’s the first step.” He stepped off the deck, and Nick lunged forward to stop him, but his hand only caught air because his brother was gone.
Get in the water. It’s the first step.
Nick rubbed his eyes, wondering when he’d lost his mind entirely. Stephen wasn’t here with him, he couldn’t be.
Stepping back from the edge of the dock, he drew in a breath of fresh morning air. It was already hot, the kind of morning he’d once have spent lounging on a massive party raft in the lake with his brother and a couple beers.
The raft and his brother were long gone, and he couldn’t think about beers without thinking of the accident he’d caused that got him here, but the lake was right there in front of him.
He didn’t hear Liz approach, but he wasn’t surprised when her hand slid into his. “You look like you’re thinking too hard.”
“As opposed to not thinking at all?” He raised a brow in question. Maybe that would have been easier. Drunk driving. A man was injured. I don’t know if he pulled through.
She laughed, the sound fresher than the breeze skimming the water, and it was enough to bring him from the edge of his dark thoughts. “Just something my dad says. And he’s almost always right.”
He liked that she talked about her dad with fondness, a small smile playing on her lips. It was easy to see she loved him. In the world he’d grown up in, parents provided a roof over their kids’ head and not much else. There’d been little to love about them, and he never bought into the idea that they deserved love just because they were his parents.
Love had to be earned.
Maybe that was how he’d become such a screw up.
His view of family didn’t get much better when he got to Hollywood and watched parents push their kids into their fifteen minutes of fame with no care to what it did to them. And the adults? Well, Nick knew very few people in Hollywood who even mentioned their parents, let alone with adoration in their eyes.
“I found a kid’s toy underneath one of the beds.” Liz’s eyes flicked back over her shoulder. “I’d dropped my book and leaned down to get it. Something you’re not telling me?”
He laughed. For once, this wasn’t one of the secrets either of them kept from the other. “No. This place has been a rental property for years.”
“You mean when it’s not being used as a coma time warp there are random families sleeping in those beds?”
