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She looks me up and down as though I’m the crazy one, her head even angling to one side as though talking to a child. “El, I think maybe you’re misremembering the past.”

Oh, fuck no.

She is not going to fucking gaslight me into doubting myself. I know what happened. I know what we shared. I wouldn’t have relived those memories thousands of times during the hardest days at sea if they weren’t real.

I rise to my feet, causing her to stumble backward. “I don’t misremember anything,” I emphasize the word with no small amount of disgust. “You were mine. You told me you loved me, and you were supposed to be there. We were supposed to meet that morning before I went to the marina to work for DiAngelo. I waited. I waited, and you never showed up, and that’s when I was taken.”

Her hand clamps across her open mouth, horror leaking from her eyes.

“You’re making this all up, and I don’t understand why. Why would you say such a thing?”

Hearing her flat-out reject our past is the dagger to the heart that I’d been fearing. I had a feeling it was coming. She’s made it clear this whole time that I was nothing to her but an old acquaintance.

“Why would I say something so revolting as the idea that we were in love? I don’t know, maybe because it’s true.” My voice rises as I lose control of my anger.

Isa meets my fury with a wave of her own. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” She steps forward, angling her head up to keep her glare trained on me. “You’re implying I was the reason you were taken. I had nothing to do with what happened to you.”

“You’re responsible for forgetting me, and that’s worse than anything I suffered at the hands of the Greek.”

Her shoulders sag with deflated emotions.

“No, don’t turn your pity on me,” I demand. “I don’t want it. What I want is for you to remember.” Wrapping my arms around her middle, I prop her backside against the navigation console on the side of the room away from the windows.

Her hands grip my shoulders to steady herself, but she doesn’t fight me. “How can I remember something that never happened? Are you sure your mind didn’t dream something up to help you cope with what was happening?”

I ignore her, undoing the buttons on her shirt. “The first time I saw you topless, we were at your house. Ario and D ran to pick up happy hour sodas for all of us. You and I snuck away to your room and made out in your bathroom. You wore a black concert T-shirt, and when you took it off, I almost came in my pants.”

Isa watches raptly as I finish unbuttoning her shirt, then spread the two halves aside to reveal her soft, supple breasts. I cup them in my hands, relishing the feel, and when I draw my thumbs over her straining nipples, she arches into my touch with a gasp.

“The first time you touched me was at the library in one of those private study rooms. We were sitting next to one another at a table with a glass wall behind us. We’d been flirting like crazy, and I was as hard as a rock. You smiled up at me through those thick lashes and wrapped your perfect fingers around my cock without anyone the wiser. I was certain my heart would give out. It felt so fucking incredible.”

I hook my thumbs in her pajama bottoms and tug them down, relief as I’ve never known raining down upon me when she voluntarily lifts her hips to help. I squat lower as I ease her pants down over her legs, then peer up at her, ravenous for what comes next.

“And the first time I tasted you, we were on a blanket on a rooftop under a moonless sky. That was the day I learned what it was to be an addict.”

My hands rise up her shapely legs and out to her hips, where I hook my fingers in her panties.

CHAPTER 31

ISA

He’s crazy, but I must be a raving lunatic because I want this fantasy that he’s created to be real. He paints a tender and earnest picture that is exactly what I would have wanted for my younger self, but it never happened. I would know. Our families would have known. We didn’t all forget.

Poor, sweet Elio must have brought to life a crush to give him a happy place in which to escape. I was his source of strength and comfort during his darkest days. I’m happy to think that I could have been there for him in that way. I can’t begin to imagine what he went through.

How do I rip away what was so important to him? I can see how deeply it pains him that I deny it all. I don’t know what to do or what to think.

As he looks up at me, his stare pure hunger ringed with thick black lashes, the only thing that seems to matter is what he makes me feel right here, right now. Like I am the very center of his universe.

I want to be the woman he thinks I am.

He makes me feel like the woman I’m supposed to be.

When his eyes devour me—when his touch claims me—I feel alive.

“I remember every fucking second with you, and I swear to God, you will, too, even if it means recreating a whole goddamn year of our lives.” Elio begins to lower my panties.

My hands snap to his. “Wait … I, uh…” I’m suddenly engulfed in nerves because I wasn’t prepared for this.