With This Man

  I collect a cup, add milk, and then tap my fingers impatiently on the worktop while I wait, scowling down at my scuffed knuckles. My eyeballs feel like they’re being scratched every time I blink, my lack of sleep catching up with me. I think I got an hour last night. An hour slumped in the chair by our bed, the rest of the night spent watching her sleep, desperate to crawl in behind her and cuddle her in my usual fierce way. But I dared not.

  As I pour coffee, I hear my phone from across the kitchen. I fetch it and answer without looking at the screen. ‘Morning, Elizabeth.’

  ‘How are things? She settled in okay?’ Her voice sounds as desperate as I’m feeling.

  No. And things are fucking awful. ‘As well as can be expected,’ I say. ‘How are the twins?’

  ‘Joseph has taken them to the driving range. We’ve got lots planned – surfing, crabbing, fishing.’

  I smile as I sip some caffeine down. ‘Thanks, Elizabeth. I really appreciate you doing this.’ I don’t think I’ve ever sounded so sincere when speaking to my mother-in-law.

  ‘Oh, Jesse.’ Her voice cracks under the pressure to remain strong, and for the first time in my existence, I wish she were here so I could give her a hug.

  ‘Listen to me,’ I say as sternly as I can muster. ‘You’ve known me for twelve years, Elizabeth. So you should know that I’m not going to let those years slip away like they were never there.’

  She coughs over a little laugh, sniffling. ‘I know we’re both terribly silly with our bickering, but you do know I adore you, Jesse Ward.’

  On the inside, I’m toasty warm with appreciation, and yes, I did know that deep down. But at the risk of breaking down, too, I’m forced to pull my arrogant self back to the surface. I can’t cry on Ava’s mother. She’s depending on me. I can’t cry on anyone. ‘Yeah, well, my heart belongs to another.’

  ‘Oh, stop.’ She laughs, and it’s so good to hear. ‘You’re still a menace.’

  ‘And you’re still a pain in my fucking arse, Mum. Look after my babies.’

  ‘Okay.’ She doesn’t argue, doesn’t even question my order. ‘Keep in touch, won’t you?’

  ‘Every day,’ I assure her, hanging up and sliding my phone onto the counter, my shoulders immediately dropping. The energy to be strong is draining me. How long can I keep this up?

  On a sigh, I wander over to the fridge and pull it open, snatching down some peanut butter from the shelf. I remain where I am, just set on having a couple of scoops, something familiar and comforting in this foreign world.

  A few minutes later, I’m halfway through the jar.

  ‘Morning.’ Her soft, unsure voice hits me like a cricket bat in the back of the head, and I whirl around with my finger in my mouth to find her at the entrance to the kitchen, her hands playing nervously where they’re linked together at her midriff. The lace nightwear has been covered with a cream satin dressing gown, her dark hair fanning her shoulders. She’s a vision. And I can’t touch her.

  I suck my finger clean and swallow, quickly screwing the lid back on as she frowns down at my hands.

  ‘Peanut butter?’ she questions. Is that humour in her tone? Would now be a good time to tell her that one of her favourite pastimes is smothering her boobs in it and letting me indulge in my two favourite things all at once?

  ‘It’s a vice.’ I put it back in the fridge and grab some orange juice, pouring her a glass, nervous and shaky in my movements. ‘Did you sleep well?’ Not once in twelve years of marriage have I ever had to ask that question. Because I’ve always been right by her side, aware when she’s sleeping peacefully or when she’s fidgeting because something is on her mind.

  ‘Not really.’ She pads towards me and takes the glass from my hands, smiling a little, before settling on a stool at the island. ‘It felt like something was missing.’ She looks away, as if ashamed to admit it. ‘I’ve concluded that it must have been you.’

  What? Hope flourishes within me again, and I’m not sure whether to welcome it or not. With no hope, there can be no disappointment. But I can’t help it. Moving to the stool beside her, I take a seat. ‘Ava, you should know that—’

  ‘Once I’ve had you, you’re mine.’

  I nearly fall back off my stool. To hell with disappointment. Nothing could hold back the joy surging through my veins right now. ‘You remember?’

  With her lips on the rim of her glass, her brow furrows a little. ‘I don’t know where that came from.’

  ‘Inside you, Ava.’ I take her juice and place it on the counter, taking her hands in mine and squeezing tightly. ‘Way deep inside you.’

  She looks at me, tears in her eyes building again. Damn those fucking tears. ‘This is so frustrating.’ She squeezes my hand in return, wanting me to understand. She has to trust me. I do. I really do.

  ‘I just stood in two children’s bedrooms for fifteen minutes, demanding to remember them. I smelled the sheets of their beds and went through their drawers. Nothing.’ A lone tear rolls down her cheek, and I catch it with the pad of my thumb. It’s no good. I lift her onto my lap, my body enveloped around hers. There’s no resistance from her whatsoever. ‘I just want to bang my head repeatedly against a wall until it all comes back.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing, lady.’ My nose in her hair, I inhale, appreciative that she’s letting me comfort her once again. Whether she wants it or needs it isn’t something I’m wasting my thoughts on. Because I need it.

  Sighing, she shuffles from my lap, forcing me to hold my breath and talk down my dick when she innocently rubs against me. There will be none of that, and I never, not ever, thought I would say that in my lifetime with her.

  ‘What did you do to your hand?’ she asks, running a light fingertip over the tops of my knuckles.

  I shake my head and remove my hand from her touch, my silent way of telling her to leave it. I can see by the wariness in her eyes that she knows full well what happened to my hand. She must have seen the mirror. Or maybe she heard it shatter last night.

  She doesn’t push it. ‘What are we doing today?’ she asks instead.

  Yes. Back to the important business.

  I get up and offer my hand, grateful when she takes it. ‘I’ve found all the photographs on the computer. I thought you could spend the morning going through those.’

  ‘The whole morning?’ She lets me lead her into the study and help her sit at the desk.

  ‘We have a lot of photographs.’ I wake up the screen, and we’re immediately greeted by a picture of the four of us. It was in Paradise. The twins were toddlers. I was forty-two, and Ava a vision of stunning perfection at thirty. Maddie’s in her arms, Jacob in mine. And we’re kicking water at each other on the seashore, all of us laughing. It’s a beautiful moment captured in time, natural and real.

  I watch as she reaches forward and touches the screen lightly, her finger drifting across all four of our faces. ‘We’re a really good-looking family,’ she muses to herself. ‘He looks like you. And she looks like me.’

  I say nothing, just kiss the top of her head and leave her to go through the endless shots of our happiness. I won’t be able to watch her do that without breaking down.

  *

  Agony. It’s pure fucking agony for the whole five hours she’s in the office looking at pictures. I wonder constantly if anything has spiked any memory. And then I finally hear her crying and know that it hasn’t.

  I look up to the ceiling, squeezing my eyes closed, anguish settling deeply in my gut. Then I pull myself together and follow her cries to the family room. I find her on her knees at the foot of my Ava Wall. Her head is in her hands, her fists clawing at her temples as if she’s trying to physically yank the memories free. Shit, she’ll open her wound.

  ‘Ava, baby.’ I run across the room, my heart tugging painfully as I gather her up. Every inch of the wall above us is covered with photograp
hs and captions written by me, Ava, and the twins now, too. There have been days when I have come in here and chilled out on the couch and just stared at it all day, taking in the sheer magnificence. Nothing ever makes me smile harder than finding a new photograph and reading the words either Ava or one of the twins has put with it. It’s one huge homage to my family, one of the most precious things in my life. And now it’s a factor of my wife’s desolation.

  My eyes fall to the most recent picture, the one Jacob and Maddie put up nearly two weeks ago. It’s me, my face moody as Ava kisses my cheek. The caption in Maddie’s handwriting reads:

  It’s Dad’s birthday. And he’s real grumpy about it!

  I swallow as I pull Ava closer to my chest and move to the couch, sitting and arranging her with ease on my lap. I quickly check her head, making sure she’s not upset her wound, as she curls up so small, huddled and sobbing into me. I say nothing and just hold her for the next hour while she cries her heart out, curses out loud, shouts and screams, and sobs some more. My eyes are stinging from the silent tears I allow to escape while her head is buried in my chest, her fingers clawing at my T-shirt to hold on to me, like she’s afraid I’ll leave her alone in her darkness. Never. We’re in this together. All the way to the end. I can’t see any light at the end of this torturous tunnel, but I pray it’s there somewhere.

  Eventually, her sobbing subsides, though I don’t push her to leave her hiding place, waiting patiently for her to brave facing the stranger who’s holding her. ‘Zero, baby,’ Ava murmurs into my chest on a sniffle. I stiffen. ‘Why do I keep hearing those words?’

  I push her away from my chest to find her eyes. They’re red and swollen. ‘It’s one of our games,’ I explain, and she frowns, encouraging me to go on. ‘I start at three, and when I get to zero—’

  ‘What?’

  I shrug, pushing on. ‘Sometimes I tickle the shit out of you, sometimes I kiss the living daylights out of you, and sometimes I put you in bed.’ That’s about as delicate as I could be in explaining the countdown. ‘Ava, baby, it’s just another part of our wonderful.’

  She smiles, just a little. But it’s still a smile. ‘Ava, baby,’ she whispers, settling back into my chest, turning her face outward so her cheek is flat on my pec, her eyes staring across the room to the wall. ‘Whenever you say that, it sounds perfectly right. Whenever you hold me, it feels perfectly right. Whenever I look at you, I know you are mine. When I look at the kids, I don’t recognise them, but something tells me to protect them. It all feels incredibly right.’

  ‘Because it is right,’ I reply, so relieved to hear that. It’s a flash of the light in this darkness I’m searching for. ‘Everything about us is right.’

  ‘So why can’t I remember?’ Her voice cracks again, and not for the first time, I try to imagine her bleakness. Try to imagine what it must be like to feel so misplaced. I’m not sure it’s fair to compare her struggle to mine. ‘You must be so frustrated, too,’ she sobs. ‘How long will it be until you give up on me?’

  Give up? Jesus, she really doesn’t know me any more at all. Ignoring the pain in my heart is hard. Hearing her doubt my determination is a killer.

  ‘You will remember,’ I vow. ‘You and I are a formidable force, Ava. Nothing has defeated us in the past, and I’m not about to let it now.’

  I take her wedding ring and bring it to my lips, kissing it gently, and she looks up at me with so much need in her eyes. It’s need of another kind. Not a sexual need, but a need for me. Just me. To help her, to support her, to love her. To remind her. ‘I once told you that I wanted to look after you for ever.’ I hold her eyes, never wavering. ‘I meant it, baby. For ever isn’t over yet. Never will be, not for us. I love you. You are the best part of me, Ava. The greatest part. That can’t be forgotten.’

  She blinks a few times, maybe a little taken aback. That hurts, too, because any other time I’ve told her how much I love her, she’s just smiled and kissed me. ‘We must love each other an awful lot.’

  ‘It’s pure bliss, baby,’ I begin quietly. ‘Total gratification.’ I lower my lips cautiously and peck her wet cheek lightly. ‘Absolute, complete, earth-shifting—’

  ‘Universe-shaking love.’ She barely breathes those final words, but I hear them like they’re being delivered through a megawatt speaker held at my ear.

  ‘Yeah,’ I confirm, cool on the outside, but on the inside I’m constantly being carved up by the fact that she’s saying things and she doesn’t know why she’s saying them. ‘I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you, do you hear me?’

  She nods through more tears and crawls in closer to me, except this time her face goes into my neck and she breathes me in, her lips resting just perfectly on my skin as her hands slip under my T-shirt and feel me. ‘You always smell so good. Are you going to tell me how old you are now?’

  ‘Twenty-two.’

  She chuckles, and I smile. ‘I can tell you make me happy.’

  ‘Good.’ I relax in my seat and we spend a few silent, blissful moments in our madness just snuggling, her hands skating over my chest, lightly touching me everywhere she can. Like she’s reacquainting herself to the feel of me.

  Chapter 15

  We’ve been rattling around the quiet, empty house for two days, leaving only once so I could take her to therapy. We left the session after no spikes in her memory, and the hopelessness seemed to multiply by a million. I’ve forced myself into the spare bed each night, and hated it with a vengeance every time I’ve left her in our suite. Each time, she watches me as I go, and each time I’ve wondered if she really doesn’t want me to leave. But there’s no way I can ask her.

  I keep seeing glimmers of a familiar look in her eyes, a pleased look, the look she used to give me every day of our lives. It’s the look that tells me she wants me. The attraction she’s never been able to hide. But now she’s holding back. She’s trying to fight it. Just like she did all those years ago when she walked into my office.

  But this time, I can’t charge her resistance down like a bull. I can’t take what I want. I have to wait for it to be given to me, and it’s killing me a little bit more each day.

  I’ve been watching her, wondering what’s going on in that mind of hers. And she’s caught me doing it often, smiling a small smile each time. She’s getting used to me. Weighing me up.

  It’s now night-time again, and dread fills me as I walk her up to our room, the bed still unmade from this morning. I’d normally strip her down to her skin, lift her into bed and crawl in behind her. But that fear of scaring her to death or being rejected stops me again. I don’t know if I could take it. Yet walking out and leaving her kills me, too. Kate’s words crawl into my mind. Where’s the Jesse Ward we all know and love?

  On that note . . .

  ‘Arms up,’ I order Ava, taking the hem of her T-shirt.

  She gazes up at me, a little surprised. There’s uncertainty in her eyes, and she flinches when my fingers brush the flesh of her tummy. In return, I flinch, too, yet my reaction has nothing to do with the usual flame on my skin whenever I touch my wife, and everything to do with her wariness.

  I drop her T-shirt and step back, giving her space, trying to control the agony in my chest before it puts me on my knees and has me begging. ‘Never mind. I’ll give you some privacy.’ I turn before she catches sight of my watery eyes and take myself away from the one person in this world who brought me back to life. And the one person in the world who can finish me.

  Closing the door behind me, I stalk away, aware that if I stop and try to gather myself, I’ll either put a hole in the wall or crumple to the floor and cry my fucking heart out. I roughly brush at my damp eyes as I take the stairs, eager to put as much space between us as possible so that when I roar my frustration, she’s not as likely to hear.

  My pace quickens as I round the bottom of the stairs, and I stagger into the games room
and shut the door behind me, falling against the wood, my body rolling with the effort it’s taking to breathe. Bang. I smack the back of my head on the wood, squeezing my eyes shut, quaking with a fury I’m unable to control.

  Why? Why is this happening? I’ve pushed her too far too soon. The roar I’ve been suppressing since I escaped our room bubbles up from the pit of my stomach and explodes out of me, and I turn, throwing my fist into the door. The door doesn’t splinter, but my already split knuckles split some more. It doesn’t hurt. The only pain I feel is in my fractured heart. ‘Fuck!’

  I stay where I am, forehead resting on the door, fists clenched, for as long as it takes me to cool down. It could be two minutes, it could be an hour. I don’t know. I feel as though precious time is slipping like sand through an hourglass. Unstoppable.

  It’s the sound of my phone that eventually pulls me from the door. Feeling numb, I walk over to the table and swipe it up. It’s Kate.

  ‘Hey.’ I slump onto the couch and inspect my bloody fist.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘My wife doesn’t know who I am, Kate. So, no, everything isn’t okay.’

  She doesn’t reprimand me on my curtness. ‘No progress, then?’

  I sigh, long and tiredly. ‘I keep getting glimmers of hope. Small things that make my heart leap with promise. And then they disappear, my hope dies, and I’m back to square one.’

  ‘I know it’s not your forte, but you need to be patient, Jesse. Like the doctor said, there’s a cog in her mind that’s jammed.’

  ‘And it keeps jittering and then grinding to a stop again. It’s so fucking frustrating.’

  ‘You’re frustrated?’ She laughs a little. ‘Imagine how Ava must be feeling, Jesse. She’s woken up with a husband and two kids and sixteen years of her life missing.’