Just stopped.
It was Maddox, but he seemed different. Softer somehow, his golden eyes reflecting life and love instead of cold determination. His tanned skin was healthy, his hair shorter than it was now. He was smiling.
He wasn’t alone.
A white dress. Evangeline was wearing a white dress.
A wedding dress.
The Evangeline in the photo looked different, too. She was happy. Leaning into the embrace of the big shifter who managed to dwarf such a tall woman, his arms were wrapped snugly under her chest, her fingers intertwined with his. This was a picture of two people on the happiest day of their lives and their beaming grins proved it.
She had a wedding band on the ring finger of her left hand.
Evangeline gulped. When she woke up in the hospital, all of her jewelry was gone. They gave her a sealed bag with her necklace, earrings, and a bracelet in it when the hospital discharged her.
There was no ring.
“I… I don’t remember any of this.”
“I know, and it’s okay. I’ll help you remember. I promise. And, if you can’t, we’ll start over. You’re my wife—my mate—and I love you. I’ll always love you. Whatever happened, we can start all over again.”
He didn’t get it. The buzzing in her skull was starting up, the precursor to the mother of all migraines, but Evangeline shoved it all aside. No. Not now. Not when she had to focus.
“No,” she snapped, the word coming out louder than she intended. Maddox’s eyes widened, but at least the warning signs of her headache seemed to fade. “You don’t understand. I remember everything else. Everything! Everything that happened in my life up until about a year before the accident, then everything after they left me out of the hospital. But I don’t remember you.”
He kept his expression flat, his voice neutral. “I know, Angie. I know.”
“But… how is that possible?” A terrible, awful suspicion crept in. Why hadn’t she thought to ask this before? “How long have I known you?”
He pursed his lips.
“Damn it, Maddox. How long?”
It took him a few seconds to answer her. When he finally spoke up, she caught a hint of fang. Her shifter was trying to hide it, trying to stay calm, but his wolf was riding him and it was riding him hard.
“You lost little more than a year. That’s about how long we were together.”
Evangeline’s mouth opened. No words came out.
Maddox seemed to understand. “I found you about a year before the accident. I knew you were mine right away, but you insisted on dating. We were mated about six months in, and then you insisted on human marriage before I claimed you as my bonded mate. We got married, just like you wanted. You even took me home to meet your parents.”
Everything inside of her seemed to screech to a halt.
“My… my parents?” Evangeline felt her heart lodge in her throat. “You met my parents.”
“I did. Took ‘em ages before they got over the fact I was Para.”
Did they, wondered Evangeline. Because something was very, very clear to her. Her dad didn’t like to talk about the accident and she understood that. But her mother? She spoke to Naomi almost every day.
When she grew frustrated about the things she couldn’t remember, her mother was the one who told her about her life during those missing moments. Her job at the publishing house, her home in Woodbridge, her everyday existence. It helped her retain her sanity, knowing she had someone who could fill her in when she came up against a blank wall inside her whole mind.
Not once did her mother ever mention that Evangeline was with anyone—especially a paranormal who she was married to.
“She never told me. My mom never told me.” The photo slipped from trembling fingers. “Why wouldn’t she have told me?”
“I don’t know.”
Yeah. She didn’t know, either.