“It’s not him.”
I swivel my head to the side. While I was studying the tall man, the other man—the one with the sunglasses and beard and Mets cap—sat down next to me. Ziggy notices too and trots over to him. The man reaches into his pocket, pulls out a treat, and Ziggy happily eats it right out of his hand.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Please don’t feed my dog without asking.”
The man lifts his face to look at me. He pulls off his sunglasses so that I can see his eyes and…
Oh my God. It’s Harry.
Chapter 22
It’s Harry. It’s really him. I can’t even believe it.
“Harry!” I can’t help myself. I throw my arms around him and get the hug that I’ve been wanting and needing the whole day since I woke up this morning and my whole life was turned upside down. Harry hugs me back like he needed it just as badly, and for a moment, we are both clinging to each other. He still has that same familiar smell. Dial soap and that shampoo he uses that has the woodsman in the picture on the front.
I lift my face and bring my lips to his, but he gently pushes me away. There’s a pained expression on his face. Although it’s nothing compared to the ache I’m feeling inside.
“Harry…”
“We can’t.” He shoves his sunglasses back up his nose to hide his eyes. With those shades and the beard and the cap, he was hard to recognize—he looks very different. “Camila is right there. She’ll see.”
“But—”
“Please, Tess. Don’t make this harder.”
The frustration in his voice mirrors what I’m feeling inside. This man is my fiancé. Why can’t I kiss him? There’s something wrong with the world if I can’t do that.
But instead of the passionate kiss that I badly want, he instead shifts down the bench so there’s a good two feet between us. I look over at Camila, who is reading on her Kindle. She doesn’t even seem to notice us.
“The last thing I remember,” I say, “is being engaged to you. We were living in that house together, and we were planning our wedding. And our honeymoon…”
“Someplace hot with lots of beaches,” Harry finishes for me with a crooked smile.
“We never got married though.” My voice breaks on the words. “And now I’m married to some guy named Graham Thurman. How did that happen?”
Above the rim of his sunglasses, Harry’s eyebrows are bunched together. “I don’t know, Tess. It’s not what I wanted. That’s for sure.”
“Are… are you married to someone else?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “There’s never been anyone else but you.”
I drop my eyes. I can’t keep talking about this, or else I’m going to cry. “I found a note to myself this morning. I wrote it on my leg, where nobody but me would see it. It said… it said that Graham has been drugging me.”
“Yeah. That’s what you’ve been telling me.”
“I… I have?”
Harry adjusts the baseball cap on his head. I miss his hair—the way it always sort of stuck up a little on top, no matter what he did. I want to be with him so much, it’s physically painful. Especially since he’s so close, I could reach out and touch him. “You contacted me about a month ago. You tracked me down and we met. You told me about your accident and your suspicions about Graham, and you asked me to help you.”
“And…?”
“Of course I tried to help. But it’s been challenging.” He glances over at Camila. “It’s hard to get you alone. And of course, every morning you’ve forgotten everything that happened the day before so we have to start from scratch and you don’t always believe me.”
I drop my eyes. “I… I’m sorry. It’s hard to know what to believe. Graham told me I lose my memory every night.”
“Right, and that’s strange.” Harry is looking at me, but his expression is hard to read with those sunglasses concealing his eyes. “I spoke to some doctors, and they said that losing your memory every night like that… It’s not what you would expect with a brain injury. It’s more like what you might expect with a drug, although they couldn’t name any drugs that would do something like that.”
Self-consciously, I reach for the scar on the right side of my skull. “But there was an accident. I have a scar.”
“I’m not disagreeing that you were in an accident. I’m just wondering if it was the accident that did this to you.”
“So…” I bite down on my lip hard enough that I’m worried I’ve drawn blood. “You think it’s true. You think Graham is drugging me.”
“I…” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes. That’s exactly what I think.”
I sit there, staring down at my hands, absorbing this piece of information. I was happier thinking that it was all just a delusion. But this is real. Graham is really doing this to me.
“Now that I know,” I say, “I’ll be careful around him. I won’t drink or eat anything he gives me unless he’s eating it or drinking it himself.”
“Yeah…” Harry shifts on the bench. “The thing is, you have said those exact words to me multiple times now. You knew he was drugging you. You tried to avoid it. And… the next day, nothing has changed. You’ve still lost your memory.”
“So… maybe that means it’s not a drug?”
He pulls the brim of his baseball cap down lower. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Ziggy trots over to me, carrying a stick in his mouth. He places it on my lap and looks up at me expectantly. I take the stick and throw it across the length of the park. He goes nuts chasing after it.
“What if we take off?” I say. “You and me. What if we just leave right now? We can take Ziggy with us.”
Harry flashes a sad smile. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”