I shook my head. “That was the night I took you to the hospital.” As Reid’s smile fell, I rubbed my jaw. “You were having headaches. Horrible headaches. It turned out to be something more serious than expected.”
“Was that the night I had surgery for the bleed?”
“Yes.”
“So…you saved my life twice.”
I didn’t answer, letting his deduction linger in the air as a confirmation. Lost in thought, he traced circles on the arm of the chair, while I had to force my leg to stop bouncing up and down from anxiety.
Reid’s fingers stopped moving, and his head shot up. “But…the bowling.”
“You remember bowling?” I wondered what exactly had him looking scared shitless when that had been such a good night. In an attempt to lighten things, I said, “You were terrible. I’m assuming you remember the gutter balls.”
He swallowed hard. “That’s…not…” His chest began to move up and down at a rapid pace.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Were we…friends?”
“Yes.”
“Just…friends?” His breathing was coming so hard that I thought he might hyperventilate, but when I reached toward him to try to calm him down, he jerked away.
“Reid, just breathe. I’ll explain everything, but I need you to calm down. Do you need a bag?”
“No, I don’t need a bag,” he snapped. “I need the truth. I remember”—his face pinched as he shut his eyes and took a deep breath—“I was jealous. Of a guy in a red shirt.”
My heart beat wildly in my chest, as the memory of that night came hurtling back in vivid clarity.
“Why would I be jealous of a guy, Ollie?”
“I didn’t know you were jealous then.”
“Then? What does that mean?”
“It means we became…close.”
There was a beat. “Close? Like best friends close?”
I shook my head. “Not just best friends, no.” Reid stared at me, and I couldn’t tell if he wasn’t comprehending, or if he was in shock. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“No,” he whispered, but his face betrayed the lie.
“Do you remember anything else? About me? About us?”
“Us,” he repeated, clenching his jaw. “No, I can’t say I remember any ‘us.’ Is there something you’d like to fill me in on?”
I could already feel the tide turning, Reid’s defensive walls going up even as he listened. The open mindset wasn’t there, though, which meant no matter what I said, this was not going to turn out well.
With a sickening sense of dread in my gut, I said, “Let me just say first that I’ve always had your best interests at heart, Reid. I swear to God. I would never do anything to hurt you or force you to do anything you don’t want to do. I never have, and I never will.”
“Right. Sure. So can we maybe skip to the part where there’s an ‘us’? Because I’d really like to hear what the fuck you say I chose to do while I was temporarily out of my head.”
Fuck. He was angry. Confused. Alarmed. And so very angry. I’d thought about showing him the note I carried around from him in my pocket, but there was no way I was giving him that sacred piece of the puzzle tonight. Not when he was like this.
“I care about you, Reid. And for a while there…you cared about me too. That’s all that matters.”
His nostrils flared as he stared at me, his jaw clamped shut so tight that I thought he might break a molar. When he spoke again, it was through clenched teeth. “I don’t…believe you.”