he said with an ache in his voice that chipped away at my barriers. He sighed, dropping his head into his hands. "And I see those scars on you and wonder...fuck, my darling, I can’t stop imagining what it is you've faced all this time.”
I remained silent, my eyes falling to a scar on my arm in a criss-crossing shape. I traced my finger across it, remembering the blade Quentin had twisted into me and the scream that had raked my throat raw. If I had lost Nicoli and found him again months later, cut up and hurt, with no memory of me, wanting no memory of me...how terrible a fate that would be.
I looked to Ramon with my heart weighing down in my chest as he lifted his head from his hands.
"Is there anything I can do to get you to speak with me? Are you truly so angry with me, darling?" he begged, his voice rough with grief.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes. I hated being someone to this man. I hated that I was hurting him and that he'd suffered all this time while I'd known nothing of him. But I also couldn't give him what he needed to heal. The person who had worn his wedding band, who'd smiled mischievously at him on his wedding day, who'd licked vanilla frosting from her fingers...was gone. She was the caterpillar and I was the butterfly. At our cores we were the same being, yet we were nothing alike. To look at each of them, you wouldn't know they were related at all.
"That man...Nicoli, did he...hurt you?" he growled.
I shook my head fiercely and he nodded, seeming to accept that.
"You seem very attached to him," he said, his voice breaking a little and I nodded, my eyes filling up with tears. Tears for Ramon, for me, for everything lost between us that I could never know again. My throat eased and I was grateful when words came to my tongue.
"I'm sorry," I whispered and his eyes widened as he slid off the bed, lowering down to his knees before me in his fine suit trousers.
"You have nothing to be sorry for. I'm sorry I didn't find you, I'm sorry you were taken...do you remember that night my darling?"
I shook my head, my interest piqued as he inched a little closer, but not close enough that he could touch me.
"They came into the house and stole you away from me. Five men," he growled, hatred in his voice. "That was back before I upped security on my home - our home," he corrected quickly. "They beat me bloody and stole you from my arms."
My breath caught and suddenly an image flashed through my mind. Ramon yelling the name Sasha, desperation in his voice. There were hands on me, digging in, bruising. I blinked hard, drawing my knees to my chest and burying my face against them. I tried to hold onto the memory, although it made my heart pound and my palms sweat. I could taste cigarette smoke in my mouth. Duke.
"This was the day they took you."
I lifted my head, finding Ramon with the iPad, showing a picture on it of me in a white dress with little red flowers peppering it. I wasn't looking at the camera, I was lying on the grass, gazing up at the sky with a book resting against my chest.
"Do you remember anything about this day?" he asked, hope in his voice. "You baked bread in the morning and we ate it out on the lawn in the sunshine.”
The scent of hot dough seemed to drift under nose as I pictured it, but I couldn't quite grasp anything more about the memory than that.
"You went to the bank that afternoon," he said. "You said you were going to withdraw some money for a surprise for my birthday. We were in my office. I told you you looked like a summer rose. Red with-"
"With skin like petals as soft as velvet," I finished for him, those words winding through my mind. A flicker of Ramon sitting in a wing-backed chair in a fine suit and a seductive smile on his face flashed through my mind. But it was gone before I could fill in any more of the details. My heart thrashed, hungry for more now that these channels of my past were opening. But I feared that remembering would mean losing a piece of my new self. I didn't want to straddle