Chapter 2

I took his hand and pulled him through every room, pointing out the things we'd picked out together, one by one.

I pointed at the couch and said, "You remember this throw pillow? You grabbed it during that Black Friday sale at Target. You came home with bruises all over your feet from people stomping on you in the crowd."

I nudged him toward the window and said, "That plant on the balcony was a clearance rescue. The guy at the nursery swore it was a lost cause, but you actually kept it alive."

I laughed and said, "And this pan. This one's my favorite. You were secretly teaching yourself to cook behind my back, and you burned straight through the bottom.

"So you ran out in the middle of the night, bought the exact same one, and even scorched the bottom to make it look used. You were so scared I'd notice."

But Dylan's face stayed empty the entire time. His eyes gave me nothing. My laughter thinned out, and then it stopped altogether.

My story with Dylan was anything but romantic.

His parents were drunks and gamblers. They owed money to a bar owner and left Dylan there as collateral, like he was something they could trade.

In the dead of winter, they chained him to the front door in nothing but a T-shirt. He sat there like a stray dog, and no one stopped to help.

That was the same day both of my families threw me out.

My birth parents sat me down and said, "Mila's health is fragile. Having you around just reminds her that she's not our biological daughter. It'd be better if you went back to your other family for a while."

My foster parents shrugged and said, "We're not your real parents. We don't have room for you here. Maybe you should go talk to your birth parents again."

I got bounced back and forth between the two houses like a ball no one wanted to catch, and I eventually ended up alone in a rundown studio apartment.

Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was loneliness. Either way, I brought Dylan home with me.

Dylan's talent revealed itself early. He had a gift for mathematics, an instinct for numbers that most people could only dream of.

He made the state team and took first place at the national math competition before anyone saw it coming.

He was cold and sharp.

Countless boys and girls tried to get close to him, drawn by admiration or the hope of friendship, but he shut every one of them out. No one could reach him.

His coach said more than once that Dylan was born cold-hearted and completely detached.

But those cold eyes softened the moment they found me. All that ice melted into something gentle and tender, like frost giving way to spring.

The untouchable prodigy would pout and complain that I didn't care about him, all because I hadn't been the first to hug him.

The same clumsy boy would follow recipes over and over again, practicing his cooking just so I would take one more bite.

He wasn't good with words, but he would tell me with quiet patience and steady conviction that our parents had it all wrong, that they couldn't tell glass from a diamond.

That version of Dylan burned with devotion, and there was nothing cold about him.

I could handle his amnesia. But after growing so used to his love, facing those distant, detached eyes felt almost unbearable.

In the end, I could only fool myself by pressing my hand over his eyes and burying my face in his chest, where I still felt safe.

I whispered against him, "Dylan, please remember soon. Don't make me wait too long."

He pulled my wrist away, and his voice came out flat and measured. "Ms. Stewart, have some self-respect."

My heart clenched with a raw, stinging ache, as if someone had squeezed it in their fist and thrown me straight off a cliff.

He frowned, as though the words were hard to get out, but he forced them anyway. "Forgive me for being blunt, but bringing men home when you were underage." He paused, then finished. "That's cheap."

If I had known he was faking the amnesia, maybe things wouldn't have ended the way they did.

But I didn't know. So I swallowed every last ounce of humiliation and did everything I could to help him remember.