“I’ll let him know you came by.” I lock up my car and move past her and, on shaking, unsteady legs, walk back into the house.
14EMERY
My pulse doesn’t get a chance to recover, because Luca is awake and trying to get up when I come back inside. He’s sitting at the side of the bed, gripping the edge of the mattress, and seems to be steeling himself to push up to standing. Honey sits near his feet, looking up at him as if thinking,Bro, be careful, I’ve been there.
“Hey, hey.” I run over, setting a hand on his shoulder before quickly pulling it back. “Still feeling groggy?”
Luca shrugs. “A little.”
“Do you know what day it is?”
He looks up at me, squinting. “I don’t think you told me what day it was when I woke up in that machine. But it was three nights and two days ago.”
Huffing a laugh out of my nose, I murmur, “Fair enough. It’s Monday.” Careful to give him space, I sit beside him. “Do you remember your name?”
“Luca Tómas Martín.”
“And mine?”
“Emery. You didn’t tell me your middle name.”
“It’s Rose.”
A smile flickers across his mouth. “That’s pretty.”
“I’ll tell my grandmother you said so. It’s her middle name, too.” I almost move to bump his shoulder with mine but stop myself. From the first night we met, there’s never been a moment where I couldn’t touch Luca, kiss him whenever I want. It’s always been the simplestpart of our relationship. We gravitated to each other like charged particles, inevitable and inseparable. It’s almost physically impossible not to touch him now.
Clearing my throat, I say, “Her name is Gin, short for Virginia.” I wait for any sign of recollection on his face, but there’s none, and I shake the sting of this off. Luca adores Nana Gin. “Roses are pretty delicate, but Virginia Rose certainly isn’t.”
He considers this. “Does she like me?”
“Are you kidding? Everyone adores you.” I turn to look out the bedroom window. “Well, except Dave, two houses down. He’s always been kind of a dick to you, but I think it’s because you generously fixed his sprinklers when he drunkenly ran over one of the lines with his golf cart, and his wife, Alice, kept running out in her bikini to bring you snacks and iced tea.”
Luca lets out a small laugh and reaches down to scratch Honey’s ears. “Who is this, by the way?”
“This is Honey, a fellow patient. She was our first.”
Now he meets my eyes. “The first who went through the BioVIVE, you mean?”
I nod, feeling wary. Is he going to remember the lab and how he thought I did something to him just so I could test it out? The thought makes me nauseated.
“Honey’s doing great,” I assure him. “A few hiccups at first: disorientation, some joint instability, and she had to relearn some basic things. But she’s healing beautifully and such a good girl. So smart, aren’t you, Honey?”
A tail thumps on the floor, and Luca smiles down at her.
“She hasn’t left your side.” I smile as she bumps her nose against his leg for more scratches. I inhale, building the nerve to ask, “You don’t still think that I…” I start, then trail off.
“No.” He swallows, but there’s the tiniest hesitation. “I believe thatyou thought it was the only way. It’s just sort of hard to wrap my head around it all. Being hit, dying, waking up in some secret machine with no memory of the wife who invented it all.”
“I’m sure.” I pull in a shaky breath. “I’ll—I mean, I promise to be here to help you work through it.”
We fall quiet for several long moments, the only sound in the room the scratching of fingers on Honey’s head and her soft, happy grunts.
“We always talked about getting a dog,” I tell him. “We were sort of waiting for it to be the right time.”
He nods, swallowing, and murmurs, “I could see that.”
I choke back a renewed swell of emotion. I know this man better than almost anyone on earth, but not only does he not know me, he doesn’t know himself.