relief and he took in a deep breath. The door closed, and her soft footsteps stopped right behind him. His gaze stayed focused on his boots.
“Is that better?” Her voice was as soft as a summer shower washing away the heat and grime.
He nodded when all he really wanted to do was beg her to hold him. He might not have clear memories of her, but she was somewhere inside him. The need to be close to her had him wanting to share his fears and concerns.
He didn’t share with anyone.
Despite his best efforts to keep her at a distance, she settled in next to him. One more inch and she could rest her head on his shoulder. His gut tightened. “We’ve done this before. Sat on the steps and looked at the stars. You’d rest your head on my shoulder.” The memory was like an old photograph, without any sense of time or reason.
One move and she had her head resting on him, her hand flat against his heart. “You remember.”
He hated the hushed excitement in the soft voice.
“No. More like a feeling of déjà vu.”
The smell of honey and wildflowers surrounded him in the quietness of the night. The scent made him want to bury himself in her hair and hide, but he didn’t. The scent was so familiar. More so than his own name. He snorted at the irony of that.
“What is it?” she asked him.
He reached out and touched a strand of hair falling along the side of her face in a long, lazy curl. The rest of her hair, dark and thick, sat in some sort of fancy twist on the top of her head. “I know your scent. Summer Sunshine.” He closed his eyes and groaned.
Before the last word was out, he wanted to pull it all back. “That sounded kind of creepy.”
“How do you not know me, but you know the name of my shampoo and lotion?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe smell has its own memory bank?”
“It’s from a local farm. I’ve worn it since high school. No matter where you were, each Christmas I’d get a basket full of the soaps, shampoos and lotions, even laundry pods and candles from you.”
“I haven’t been…” The words stopped. Not a single found it to his lips. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
She waited but then must have realized he couldn’t speak.
“No.” She sighed. “I was debating whether to go and buy it myself. It would mean you were really gone. But you must have set it up on an annual thing because I received a box in the mail. The first year I cried like a baby.” She sat up and pulled her knees up to her chest. “Receiving the gift was strangely like losing you all over again.”
Unshed tears were in her voice, but she wasn’t crying. He wanted to make it right but didn’t have a clue how to go about doing that.
With a sigh and her face turned to his, she touched the corner of his eye, tracing the scar that went to his jaw. “What do you remember?”
He searched his memory, trying to pull up something, anything, that might make her smile, but it was still blank. “I’m sorry. Until they extracted me from the camp, I thought I was someone else. My brain is a scrambled mess of false information.”
She stood and walked to the other side of the steps, gripping the railing. He readied his body to catch her if she fell again. To his relief, she settled in one of the rocking chairs.
“You know my scent, but you don’t know who I am?” she repeated.
Xavier didn’t say a word. Instead, he studied the night sky. In her voice there was so much hurt. Hurt he had caused. “Now that I’m home, the doctors say I have a good chance of recovering most of my memories. And with therapy, my eyesight could be healed.”
“Your eyesight?”
He tapped his fingers against his head. “I had some damage. Brain trauma. My vision was affected.” He stopped talking and closed his eyes. “But I know your voice. It’s here.” He touched his temple. “I just need to sort through the information.”
She gasped. “You’re blind.”
“Not really. More of depth issues and…” He rubbed his forehead. “Words are sometimes hard to form. There’s a disconnect from my head to my mouth. It all comes and goes.”
Wife. Selena. Yes. Those words he knew. They just needed filing in the right place, connected to the right images. Then he could get his life back.
Carefully, he opened his eyes and tried to explain again. But how could he when he didn’t understand it himself?
“Xavier, this is just so overwhelming.”
Before he could reply, the door opened. He stood, not wanting to be in a position of weakness. A blur of figures rushed the porch. One didn’t stop at the steps but leaped from the porch into his arms.
All four of her limbs wrapped around him. She was crying his name repeatedly, her words coming so fast he couldn’t organize them.
But the smell of her was so familiar that tears burned his eyes.
“Belle, sweetheart. Ease up a bit.” Selena now stood behind her.
This was his cousin, raised with him as a sibling. She squeezed, silently refusing to let him go. His arms tightened. He had hurt her. This tall woman he had protected since she was a small girl. He had promised to always be there for her through all the trials they had faced together. To the world she had looked strong and fierce, but he had known the truth.
She had needed him in ways no one else had.
Was that why he remembered her instead of his own wife? He took in the front of the house. And then it hit him.
This was where he had grown up. Memories bombarded his brain, images, sights and sounds ricocheting and pinging around his mind until he couldn’t make any sense out of them. Pain and anger mixed with laughter. It was like someone recording as they made a mad dash through an art museum.
He tried closing his eyes again to block the imagery, to take control and slow down the flood of memories he didn’t have the time to process.
Belle pulled back and gripped his face. “It is you! How? I can’t believe this.”
Selena gently tugged her off him. “He doesn’t remember us. Give him some space.”
A small sob came from Belle.
Guilt kept him from pointing out he did know Belle. Not any detailed memories, but he knew who she was to him.
One more hug and she dropped to her feet. Reluctantly he let her go. The two women were complete opposites in stature. Tall and strong, Belle looked more than capable of running a ranch. He turned to the woman behind her, his wife. She was the opposite. So small he could imagine she’d break easily.
More people gathered on the porch. He took a step back. Unable to make out details or faces, he closed his eyes again. How many of these people was he supposed to know?
Xavier glanced around, uneasy at all the unfamiliar people staring at him. His head was pounding, his stomach upset, his whole body aching. He leaned closer to Belle and lowered his voice. “Is there somewhere more private I could sit down?” He brought his eyes up to his sister’s face. “I’m sorry. I just…”
His sight blacked out, his heart raced, and heat suffused his body. All the signs of a panic attack were being checked off. He needed to get somewhere fast.
Soft hands touched his upper arm. Looking down, he fell into the large golden-brown eyes of Selena, his wife. A memory surfaced of sitting across from her in a booth, laughing as she stole food from his basket after claiming not to be hungry. She worried that her tiny hourglass figure would turn into a beach ball.
He had laughed, but his words had never reassured her, so he had let her steal his fries