The Lost Fisherman (Fisherman #2)(71)

How did I never think about our texts? How did he not scour through all his messages right after his accident to piece together some missing memories?

I’d imagined so many scenarios. Memories lost forever. Retrieved memories. The possibility of him remembering something big about him and Angie. And that something taking him away from me. What if she would have been pregnant?

But never did I think our time together would be the pulled thread that threatened to unravel everything. And it ate at me the rest of the day. I couldn’t think of a worse scenario than him being angry and confused because of me and Angie being the one there to comfort him.

On my way home, I called him, hoping he wasn’t at rehearsal dinner yet.

“I can’t talk now.” That was how he answered his phone.

My heart clenched and a new round of tears stung my eyes. “I love you. I’ve loved you for so long.”

“I can’t talk now.” His voice was so cold.

“When can we talk?”

“When I’m ready.”

I swallowed my shaky emotions. “Are you with Angie?”

“She’s still in the shower.”

Still … what did that mean? They were in the shower and she stayed after he got out? It made me feel nauseous.

“I couldn’t talk earlier. I was late for work.”

“Well, I can’t talk now. I guess we’ll talk if or when it works out.”

“If? Don’t do this. Don’t cherry-pick pieces of your past and try to piece them together by yourself. Making assumptions. Nothing about us was simple.”

“No shit.”

“Fisher,” I said as my voice cracked.

“Angie put it all on the table. What the fuck did you do? Was it a game?”

“No! It wasn’t a game. I wanted …” I sighed. It sounded so good, so right in my head for the longest time. It made sense. It felt romantic even. So why did it feel all wrong when it mattered the most?

“I have to go.”

“Fisher …” I grasped for every last second, but all I could do was say his name. “I love you.”

“I have to go.” Fisher ended the call.

I batted away my tears and drew in a shaky breath. He needed space, but he wasn’t getting space. He was getting Angie, and there wasn’t anything I could do.





Chapter Thirty





That night, it felt like all the bad things I had done in my life were being served back to me in the cruelest revenge. Like God was mad or Karma was having a nasty case of menstrual cramps.

“Do you uh … happen to follow Angie on Instagram?” Rose asked after dinner, glancing at her phone while on the floor.

Rory was just above her on the sofa, stroking Rose’s hair with one hand while holding an open novel in her other hand, readers low on her nose. “Me?”

“No,” Rose said. “You, Reese?”

I’d reread the same page in my book for nearly an hour, thinking only of Fisher. “No. Why?”

“She has pictures from the rehearsal dinner with Fisher. And it’s captioned ‘Time to cut him off.’” Rose held up her phone.

I scooted to the edge of the recliner and leaned forward, squinting. Fisher was sitting at a table, laughing while holding a beer in one hand. The table space in front of him was filled with empty beer bottles.

“Looks like he’s having a good time.” Rose cringed. “Of course, he’s going to feel like shit for the wedding tomorrow.”

“Good.” I frowned.

That got Rose’s and Rory’s attention.

“Trouble in paradise?” Rory asked, eyeing me over her readers.

“Kinda,” I frowned. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. Not with Fisher drunk in Costa Rica with Angie.

“This morning I talked to Fisher on the phone right before I had to be at work. He said something that triggered a memory of us. An intimate detail. And I freaked. Major panic. Completely lost my head and hung up on him when he started to question me. And by the time I got a break, I had a million messages and missed calls from him. He just found our texts from five years ago. They are confusing, and they did nothing but fuel his anger. So he knows we were more than friends, but only from a few vague texts and another cherry-picked memory.” I stared off to the side, chasing away the emotions that threatened to make me cry. I didn’t want to fall apart. Not yet.

“And now he thinks you lied to him. Or the omission of the truth which feels like a lie,” Rory said.

Biting the inside of my cheek, I nodded.

“He’ll be home Sunday. That’s not that far away. You can talk it over then.”

Another nervous nod.

“Reese?” Rory said my name slowly.

I forced my teary-eyed gaze to her.

“He won’t do anything stupid.” She read my mind.

But I wasn’t so sure.

Did he like me more than a friend when he had sex with Teagan the orthodontist? Did he even think twice before having sex with Angie after his accident? I mean … it wasn’t that long after that he decided he liked me. What if sex wasn’t a big deal to men like it was to women? Not that I could talk … I gave away my virginity to Brendon when deep down I knew I was never going to marry him.