Page 76 of The Rook’s Obsession

“No.”

“Even if I told you to.”

“Even then.”

She nods slowly. Then something crosses her face, something more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen from her, and I’ve seen a lot from this woman. “There’s something I need you to understand. I need you to actually hear it, not just listen to it.”

“I’m listening.”

“I can’t guarantee I’ll ever be Laura again.”

At first, there’s nothing but jet engines to fill the silence while her words echo in my head. She gives me time to process, or at least to begin processing, before she continues.

“I know the doctor said it might happen.” Her voice is steady, but I hear the strain underneath it. “I know you and Liam have been hoping for it since the day you found me. Every time you take me somewhere from our childhood, every time you tell me a story about the girl I used to be. Every time you watch my face and hope something clicks—I see it. I feel it. And I can’t stand the thought of spending the rest of my life watching you look at me that way. Expectant. Waiting for someone who might never show up.”

“Wait a minute⁠—”

“Let me finish.” She holds my gaze, and I hold hers, because she asked me to hear this, and I owe her that much. “I need you to decide who you want to be with. Laura, or me. Because we might not be the same person. She was a girl who loved you when she was fifteen. I’m a woman who loves you now, and I come with a lot of damage. Twelve years of things I’ll never be able to undo. If you’re waiting for Laura to come back and fix all of that, you might be waiting forever, and I won’t do that to either of us.”

I have to look at her, really look at her. The way I’ve been looking at her for weeks, but with something cleared away now. A fog I didn’t realize was there until she pointed at it and made me see. She’s right. Some part of me, buried very deep down, was still hoping even now. Every time I took her to a familiar place or told her a story about us, there was a sliver of hope underneath that this would be the moment. The trigger. The thing that brought Laura back.

And every time it didn’t happen, there was a flicker of disappointment I thought I was hiding. Clearly, I was not.

How fucking unfair to her. To both of us, when I think about it.

I was a kid when Laura knew me. A teenager who thought the world was simpler than it turned out to be. I loved a girl on a dock at sunset and believed that love was enough to keep people safe.

I’m not that kid anymore. Years of working with Liam, building something from nothing, tearing down things that other men built—I’m not the boy she remembers any more than she’s the girl I remember. People change. Time changes them. Trauma changes them. You don’t get the same person back just because you want to. You get the person they became, and you decide if you can love that person, too.

I already decided. Weeks ago. I just didn’t say it out loud.

“I’m going to cut your ties,” I tell her, pulling out my knife. “And I’m going to need you to not hit me.”

The corner of her mouth twitches. “I’ll consider it.”

I lean forward and cut the zip ties. She rubs her wrists absently, more out of habit than discomfort, then watches as I settle back into my seat.

“I will never stop trying to help you remember,” I tell her. “If that’s something you want. If you want to know who Laura was, I’ll tell you every story I have. I’ll take you to every place we ever went together. I’ll do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, because those memories are yours, and you deserve to have them back.”

She opens her mouth, but I hold up a hand.

“But if you don’t want that? If it’s too much, or it hurts more than it helps, or if you just want to be who you are now without the weight of who you were—I can accept that. I’ll talk to Liam and make him understand. None of this is your fault. Pushing you isn’t going to bring anything back. It has to come on its own, or not at all.”

She’s holding very still, the way she holds still when she’s keeping something inside from getting out. But her eyes are bright.

“I’m not the same person, either,” I continue. “The kid I used to be is gone. He grew up. You’re not the only one who changed. But the part of me that loves you didn’t change. It just grew up with the rest of me.”

I lean forward, closing the distance between us until my knees touch hers. “I love you. Not Laura, not Ivy. You. Whatever name you go by, whatever memories you carry or don’t carry; however many fake passports are in your drawer. I love you for who you are. I love your heart and your courage, and your stubbornness. I love the way you make me absolutely insane. I love you because you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, and because you let me see the parts of you that aren’t strong. Because you made me dinner the night after you killed a man, and your hands never shook once.”

My voice isn’t steady anymore, but I don’t care. “I love you because we stood together on that bridge, and you told me you’d never done that with anyone else. It meant you chose me. Out of everyone and everything and all those years, you chose me, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of that choice.”

She’s looking at me with those big green eyes, and something behind them is cracking, giving way. It’s the wall she built, the one made of survival. It’s starting to fracture, and I watch it happen in real time.

A single tear rolls down her cheek. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, fast, like she’s angry at it for existing.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she admits in a rough voice. “How to be someone who stays. I don’t know how to trust it. I’m going to be difficult and guarded. I’ll probably be impossible sometimes. I might never remember being fifteen, and I’ll probably always carry a knife in my jacket.”

“I’d be worried if you didn’t.”