Last Summer(70)

“Do you remember what I said to you?”

She nods. The memory is so clear. “I want us to always come back here and find each other.”

“I still feel that way.”

Ella moistens her lips, tasting whiskey and coffee. “Then why didn’t you stop me when I told you Luxe Avenue was putting me back on the Donovan exclusive?”

“I did.” Damien sets aside his mug. “I mean, I tried. I asked you to come to London, remember?”

“You asked me to ditch my interview. Why didn’t you just come out and tell me about him?”

“You’re right. I should have. But I was distracted. The internal investigation has been a total nightmare and it’s taken so much of my time. I tried to stop you after our last phone call.”

“What call?” Ella asks but at the same time the answer comes to her. The argument they had after Nathan had taken her snowmobiling. The call when she’d told Damien she was going to Alaska. Clarity appears out of nowhere and she draws back a step.

“You called Nathan that night.” The phone call that came just as they’d finished dinner. Nathan had stepped out onto his deck to take the call, only to return agitated.

“I couldn’t reach you.”

“I was conducting an interview. I silenced my phone. And if you recall, I wasn’t too happy with you at the moment.”

“I figured, so I called Donovan instead. I wanted to remind him of the restraining order I threatened him with when he showed up at the hospital. I thought he would pull the exclusive and you’d fly to London.”

Damien called and threatened him. Nathan must have seen his chances of convincing Ella to be with him slipping away at that phone call.

The whiskey sours in Ella’s stomach. She sets down her mug and tucks loose wisps of hair behind her ear. “Nathan hadn’t invited me to Alaska yet when you called. I don’t think he would have, but he did right after he hung up with you,” Ella softly confesses.

Before Ella can blink, Damien hurls his mug into the sink. Pottery shatters. Coffee splatters against the backsplash and cabinets.

He grasps the counter’s edge with both hands, his back to Ella, and it takes a moment for her to realize he’s crying. Silent sobs that draw out her own tears. She gently lays a hand on his back. He’s perspiring. She can feel the damp heat of him through his cotton shirt.

“Damien, love. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“What’s wrong?” he asks in a voice thick with self-loathing. “I am. I keep fucking us up.”

“No, no, no. That’s not true. I made mistakes, too. Big ones. Whatever’s happening with us is on us both. And we’re going to fix this together.”

“We can’t,” he says, pinching the tears from his eyes. He turns to her. “I don’t think we can.”

“What do you mean? We can. We’ll talk this through and come up with a solution. We’ll learn from our mistakes. We’ll be honest from now on. I promise.”

Damien slowly shakes his head. “You can’t deny love.”

“I’m not. I love you. I love you so much,” she says, grasping his arms.

“I’m not talking about me.” He cups her face.

Ella shakes her head hard. “I don’t love him. I don’t. I swear.”

He turns away and lets go of her. “The photo.”

“Means nothing! Nathan means nothing. I don’t love him.” She’s crying now, desperate for Damien to believe her.

“I think you do. You just blocked it out. What happens when your memories come back?”

“I don’t want them to, I swear,” she says, shocked by her own admission. The truth about the months leading up to her accident is worse than she could ever imagine.

“He can give you a child, Ella. I can’t.”

He looks past her, toward the entryway.

Ella follows his gaze and sees what he’s been up to while she slept in. A large roller case and a garment bag wait at the door.

He’s leaving her.

“No!” She grasps his fingers and holds his hand to her breasts. “I love you, Damien. You’re it for me. You’re the one that I want.”

“But you also want a child. That’s what you told me on our trip.”

“Which trip?”

“The Maldives. You said you wanted to start trying for kids. I wasn’t prepared to tell you about my . . . issue. I convinced you to table the discussion until we got home. But then—”

Ella’s shoulders drop. “I went on assignment for Nathan’s article. You flew to London where I joined you afterward and—”

“And several weeks later you found out you were pregnant. You were overjoyed. I knew it wasn’t mine, but I couldn’t take that happiness away from you. You know us—reuniting in London—you would have thought it was mine.” He lays a gentle kiss on her forehead. “I don’t know why you left Nathan last summer, but you chose to stay with me. And you chose me again at the hospital. You told me you could fix our mistakes. You said you knew how to suppress your memories of Nathan. You’d block your memory of the night of the accident, when we argued and I told you about my sterility. You didn’t want to feel anything for Nathan. You didn’t want to remember I was sterile, and you wanted to still believe that I didn’t want kids. You described it as ‘cleaning the slate.’ We could start over. Go back to the way we were. But it didn’t work, Ella. You ended up right back in his arms.”