Chapter 186
The voice had been so familiar. It tugged at something deep in her memory — something locked behind a door she could not open.
Aaden sat in the chair, swinging his legs. A small smirk played at the corner of his mouth.
“Is he coming?” he asked.
“Yes,” Carmen whispered, pressing her fingers to her temple. “He’s coming.”
“Let’s wait downstairs,” Carmen said, standing abruptly. The office felt too small. The air felt too thin.
She took Aaden’s hand. His small fingers curled around hers, warm and trusting, and that same electric charge of familiarity shot up her arm.
They went down to the lobby coffee shop, which buzzed with tourists and business travelers. Carmen bought Aaden a cookie but could not eat anything herself. Her stomach was in knots.
“He sounded really worried,” she said, watching the revolving doors.
Aaden took a bite of his cookie. “He’s dramatic.”
Ten minutes later, chaos arrived.
A black government sedan screeched to a stop in the no-parking zone outside. Security guards moved forward, then halted when they recognized who stepped out.
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Justin Collins burst through the revolving doors.
He looked nothing like the polished politician on television. His suit jacket hung open, his tie was skewed, and his hair was windblown. His eyes swept the room with a wild, urgent energy.
He spotted Aaden first.
Then he saw the woman sitting beside him.
Justin stopped dead in the middle of the lobby. People moved around him, bumping his shoulders, but he did not budge. He forgot how to breathe.
Carmen felt the weight of his gaze before she turned to find it. When she did, she saw a tall, handsome man staring at her with an expression of such raw agony and desperate hope that it frightened her.
She rose instinctively. “Mr. Collins?”
Justin walked toward her slowly, the way you approach a wild animal that might bolt — or a hallucination that might dissolve the moment you reach for it.
He stopped two feet away. A trembling hand rose toward her face. Then he pulled it back.
“Carmen?” he whispered. Tears pooled in his eyes, refusing to obey him.
Carmen stepped back, unsettled. “Do I know you, sir?”
The question struck Justin like a blow to the chest. He flinched. The light in his eyes flickered and went out, replaced by a crushing, intimate devastation.
She doesn’t know me.
“It’s me,” he choked. “Justin.”
Carmen studied his face — the strong jaw, the blue eyes. Something stirred in the back of her mind, the shadow of a memory, but it hit a wall of pain and dissolved. Her head throbbed violently.
“I’m sorry,” she said, keeping her voice steady despite her racing heart. “I think you may have me confused with someone else. I’m Carmen Golden.”
Aaden watched them both, deeply disappointed. Why aren’t they kissing? In the movies, they kiss now.
Justin looked at her — cataloging every detail. The same eyes. The same curve of her lip. The tiny white scar on her chin from when she fell off a bicycle in Tuscany.
It’s her. She’s alive. And she has forgotten everything.
.