Her breath hitches and she bites her lower lip. Her eyes well and a tear spills over, followed by another. “I told myself I could do this, that if you came out of the fugue, I could be your friend. I could help you sort things out with the kids and be there for you should you need me. You know what?” She stares vacantly out the window in the direction of the beach. “I used to crush it surfing fifteen-foot waves. That’s not an easy feat, but it’s a cake walk compared to what happened yesterday.”
“What happened yesterday?” he asks uneasily.
She lifts her face and her brilliant green eyes meet his. She drinks him in as though he’s completely lost to her. “The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life was shake your hand at the airport and act as if we just met when all I wanted to do was run into your arms.
“I haven’t seen you since November and it’s killing me.” She thumps her chest. “Killing me that you haven’t kissed or hugged me. You used to hug me as though you were afraid to let me go. God . . .” She sucks in a ragged breath. “I want you to touch me. I just want you to hold me.” Her voice breaks on the last word.
James desperately wants to hold her, too. She’s destroying him. But he isn’t the person she truly wants. He isn’t her Carlos. He cares about her, but he doesn’t love her, not the way Carlos did, or the way she expects him to. He isn’t sure he can love like that again.
“I’m sorry, Natalya. I’m so, so sorry I’m not the man you want me to be.”
As the words leave him he feels as if he’s apologizing for so much more. For demanding Aimee bury Phil’s assault. For not listening to Thomas when he told James to back off on Phil’s case. For chasing Phil to Mexico without asking for anyone’s help. For uprooting his sons from their birth country. And for not remembering how much he once loved Natalya.
Overwhelmed by his own emotions—anger, despair, grief, and shame—he lets his gaze slide to the room’s door out to the lanai. God, he’s an asshole for coming to her room, but at this moment, he needs to get out. Run, bellow, rage, or even punch something. “I should leave.” He shouldn’t have tried to fix what was wrong with them because he royally sucks at repairing relationships.
“I love you, James,” she says when he grips the doorknob. “I loved you as Carlos and I love the man you are now.”
His arm shakes, rattling the knob. He lets go and turns to look at her. She stands alone in the middle of the room, her face tear-streaked, hands twisting a ratty tissue. “You’re a brilliant human being and a wonderful father. I knew you would be.”
Go to her!
A voice shouts in his head, and for a split second of insanity he wonders if it’s Carlos.
She gives him a sad smile, and it’s as though everything settles into place. Carlos gave him the gift of his memories in the form of the written word. I am you, he’d written.
That’s when it hits him. James is her Carlos.
He crosses the room in three long strides and grabs her up in his arms. She cries out, tensing at the quick, unexpected contact. Then her hands latch around him and he feels her melt. He tucks his head into the crook of her neck, curving his body around hers as though he’s her shelter, and groans against her skin, a cry of anguish. It’s been far too long since he’s held anyone, or that anyone has wanted to hold him.
His hands glide up her back and he realizes that she’s shaking. They both are. Large, hoarse sobs rack her body as her fingers dig in his hair and he just holds her. He drags his mouth over her shoulder, her neck, and then the shell of her ear. That feeling of having a woman who loves him touch him, hold and caress him, rocks him to his core. His own eyes well.
Natalya presses her lips to his shoulder. He feels the heat of her breath through his shirt, then the nip of her teeth against the skin exposed above the neckline. The sensation ripples across his corded muscles, and he groans. He roughly breathes her in―her distinct, warm scent and the salty, musky aroma of her arousal―and he suddenly wants nothing more than to have her. He needs her.
Her lips move over him. She murmurs his name—James—and God help him, his heart beats faster and his blood runs south. She tugs his shirt, and heat bursts through his body. Every part of him ignites, like a dry forest after years of drought.
“I want you. I want you so badly.” She tugs his shirt again.
“I know, baby.” But he keeps his shirt on.
“Kiss me,” she breathes against his mouth. And he does. He allows himself that one thing. It’s almost his undoing.
Every passage in the journal describing what it feels like kissing Natalya pales in comparison to actually kissing her. He wants her with the desperation of a man who’s been lonely for years and the longing of a man who’s lost so much.
But he had started his relationship with Aimee based on lies and half-truths. He kept secrets guarded for years, and in the end, he had destroyed them. As ashamed as he is of his family, as well as his own behavior, he won’t make the same mistakes. Whatever this is with Natalya, whatever it has the chance to become, must start right. She needs to know who he is, not what she learned of him through Carlos. And she needs to know what he’s done.
He cups her face and slows their kiss. Natalya whimpers, and when he lifts his head, she blinks up at him, confused. Her lips are wet and swollen, and it takes all his willpower not to dive back in.
“What’s wrong?” Her eyes search his. Apparently she finds an answer, and her face falls. “You don’t want me.”
“No, that’s not it at all. I do want you. Can’t you feel how much I want to be with you?” The corner of his mouth lifts as he pulls her hips tighter against him.
Her eyes shift left and right, looking into each one of his. “Then why won’t you . . .” She stops as it dawns on her. Her shoulders drop, and she seems to shrink an inch or two. She lifts a shaking hand to his chest and rubs a pinch of his shirt between her fingertips. “It’s too soon for you.” She smooths her hand along his shirt.
He clutches her hand to his chest. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, and my body is raging at me for stopping, but, yes, I need more time.”
“O . . . kay,” she murmurs. Her gaze casts downward. Rejection mars the passion that had put a blush on her cheeks mere seconds ago.
He pulls her against him and cradles her head. His fingers dive into her glorious hair. “I’m not saying no, Natalya. I just need to figure things out. Just give me a little bit more time to catch up on us.”
Present Day
June 29
James slowly wakes with the previous night on his mind. He’s slept with three women in his lifetime and can only recall one. Aimee. As for Raquel, he doesn’t know too much about her, which pains him because she’s the mother of his sons. The journal entries at that time hadn’t been as detailed as those that came after Carlos learned about his original identity. What James does know is that he once loved her immensely, their mutual affection immediate and intense.
His thoughts move to that woman’s half sister. Natalya. They spent the better part of the night on the lanai, drinking beers and talking. She told him about her fears. As much as she wanted to marry Carlos and be a mother to Julian and Marcus, she’d been afraid to commit, terrified he’d see her as another burden, or an obstacle that kept him from returning home when he surfaced from the fugue. He’d divorce her for Aimee. Because that’s the woman James loves.
When Natalya asked, he told her he had seen Aimee. Just last week and not fighting for her had been one of the most difficult decisions he’s made. But it was the right one. She had moved on and was in love with and married to another man. He then shared the parts of his past he’d kept from Aimee. His family’s shame when their community and church on the mainland’s East Coast shunned them because his mother loved her biological brother and had a child. It was why his family relocated to California. They wanted to start fresh where the family’s scandal and his father’s humiliation remained hidden. He explained how it had been beaten into him and Thomas to never acknowledge Phil as a brother in public.
It was after three a.m. when Natalya fell asleep on the lounge chair. James carried her to bed, and when he turned to leave, she grasped his hand. “Please stay.”