Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 157175 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157175 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
My smile widens, because that right there was my wife. Defiant. Difficult.
Mine.
Hope flourishes within me.
Chapter 13
I watch her neck crane a little as we pull up the driveway to our home, her eyes taking in the grounds of our little manor. ‘I live here?’ she asks, clearly astonished.
‘We live here,’ I correct her, rolling to a stop. ‘Have done for nearly eleven years.’
I jump out and round the car, leaving Ava still taking in her surroundings from the passenger seat. I open her door, but when she shows no sign of getting out of my Aston, I dip and reach across her to unclip her seat belt. My cheek brushes her lips innocently, and she freezes, breathing in sharply. I freeze, too, my face millimetres from hers. From my peripheral vision, I can see her lips are pressed together, her eyes wide.
Have I startled her? Set her heart racing with my closeness? Something tells me it’s both. My eyes drop to her lips, instinct demanding me to just kiss her. Kiss her. Consume her. Maybe that’ll trigger whatever it is that needs to be triggered.
But she turns away from me, and the hope growing inside me dies a little. I clear my throat and back off, giving her space to get out of the car, which she does quietly and slowly, ignoring my offered hand.
She takes slow, tentative steps to the door – slow because of her injured leg, and tentative because, painfully for me, she’s nervous. Every so often she peers over her shoulder at me. I say nothing, just follow her, feeling as hopeless as hopeless could be. I push the front door open and stand back, and she hovers on the threshold, looking around the entrance hall. I simply wait for her to find whatever courage she needs to enter. The kids’ shoes are scattered in the corner, the small patch of marble tiles dull from the mud they’ve brought in from the garden. It’s a small, silly sign of our family life, but it has Ava’s undivided attention. Her home. Her hand comes up to her chest, and I see the pulses of it under her palm.
‘Take your time,’ I murmur gently. She looks up at me and smiles a tiny smile before going back to taking in the space before her. She takes a step inside towards the collection of photographs lining the wall above the console table.
My heart thrums in my chest as she edges closer to the pictures. Her hand reaches up to one of us on our wedding day, her lip slipping between her teeth and biting gently. Then she spends a while staring at one of me kneeling and kissing her pregnant tummy, her hand resting on her midriff as she does. She looks back to me and offers another small smile, which I return, so fucking nervous now, too. Then she finds one of my favourite pictures, one of the twins when they were toddlers, Jacob on my shoulders, Maddie on Ava’s. We’re on the terrace in Paradise. The blue sea behind us looks as alive as all of our eyes. The sun is as bright as my smile. Have any of these pictures spiked memories? Anything at all?
Closing the door quietly, I approach her, taking in the pictures myself. Pictures of us. Of our little family. Happiness and love are all over this wall. Everywhere I look, I’m finding things that could trigger something, and I hope so much that they do. And then there’s my Ava Wall in the family room, all transferred from my penthouse at Lusso and added to over the years. Hundreds of pictures of the four of us. Maybe that will help, too. Because being in the hospital hasn’t, the surroundings cold, clinical and unfamiliar.
Her shoulders tense when I’m just a few feet behind her, and she looks back at me, her face so sad. She recalls nothing. ‘I wondered if I was in some kind of nightmare.’ She turns back towards the photos. ‘Or someone was playing a cruel joke on me. I woke up and was told I was married and I have children, and until now I didn’t quite believe it.’ She points at the picture of us on our wedding day, her chin trembling. ‘That’s me.’ Her voice breaks, and she looks at me, tears flooding her eyes. ‘With you.’
I nod, trying to force down my own emotion. Jesus, nothing much breaks me, but my wife so distraught is guaranteed to cut me open. She looks back at the pictures, wiping at her eyes. ‘And that’s me there, too.’ She points at a picture of the twins tackle-hugging her on the trampoline in the garden. ‘With . . .’ She hiccups over her words, sniffing back her sobs. ‘My children.’ Her shoulders start jumping, and she breaks down completely, covering her face with her hands.